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Ayoreo language
Ay oreo is a Zamucoan language spoken in both Paraguay and
Boliv ia. It is also known as Morotoco, Moro, Ay oweo,
Ayoreo
Native to Paraguay, Bolivia
Ay oré, and Py eta Yov ai. Howev er, the name "Ay oreo" is more
common in Boliv ia, and "Morotoco" in Paraguay . It is spoken by Region Chaco, Alto Paraguay
Ay oreo, an indigenous ethnic group traditionally liv ing on a departments
(Paraguay), Santa
combined hunter-gatherer and farming lifesty le.
Cruz department
(Bolivia)
Ethnicity Ayoreo people
4,300 (2006–2009)[1]
Contents Native
speakers
1 Classification Language Zamucoan
2 Geographic distribution family
Ayoreo
3 Phonology Dialects Tsiracua
4 Grammar
Language codes
5 Notes
ISO 639-3 ayo
6 References
Linguist qro (http://multitre
7 External links List e.org/codes/qro)
Guarañoca
Glottolog ayor1240 (http://glot
Classification tolog.org/resource/la
nguoid/id/ayor1240)
Ay oreo is classified as a Zamucoan language, along with
Ayoreo[2]
Chamacoco. Extinct Guarañoca may hav e been a dialect.
zamu1245 (http://glot
tolog.org/resource/la
Geographic distribution nguoid/id/zamu1245)
Zamuco[3]
Ay oreo is spoken in both Paraguay and Boliv ia, with 3,7 7 1
speakers total, 3000 of those in Paraguay and 7 7 1 in Boliv ia. Within Paraguay , Ay oreo is spoken in the
Chaco Department and the northern parts of the Alto Paraguay Department. In Boliv ia, it is spoken in the
Gran Chaco Prov ince, in the Santa Cruz Department.

Phonology
Bertinetto (2009) reports that Ay oreo has the following v owels, which appear both as oral and nasal:

Front Central Back

High i u

Mid e o

Low a

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Grammar
The prototy pical constituent order is subject-v erb-object, as seen in the following examples (Bertinetto
2009:45-46):

Sérgio ch-ingo caratai aroi tome Ramon.

Sérgio 3-show jaguar skin to Ramon

‘Sérgio showed the jaguar’s skin to Ramon’.

Enga ore ch-ijnoque Víctor aja señóra Emília i-guijnai.

COORD 3P 3-carry Víctor towards señora Emília house

‘And they carried Víctor to Señora Emília’s house’.

Ay oreo is a fusional language. [4]

Verbs agree with their subjects, but there is no tense-inflection. [5] Consider the following paradigm, which
has prefixes marking person and suffixes marking number (Bertinetto 2009:29):

y-aca I plant
b-aca you plant
ch-aca he, she, they plant
y-aca-go we plant
uac-aca-y you (pl) plant
When the v erb root contains a nasal, there are nasalized v ariants of the agreement affixes:

ñ-ojne I spread
m-ojne you spread
ch-ojne he, she, they spread
ñ-ojne-ngo we spread
uac-ojne-ño you (pl) spread
Ay oreo is a mood-prominent language. [4] Nouns can be div ided into possessable and non-possessable;
possessor agreement is expressed through a prefixation. [6] The sy ntax of Ay oreo is characterized by the
presence of para-hy potactical structures. [7]

Notes
1. Ayoreo (http://www.ethnologue.com/18/language/ayo/) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Ayoreo" (http://glottolog.org/resour
ce/languoid/id/ayor1240). Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human
History.
3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Zamuco" (http://glottolog.org/resou
rce/languoid/id/zamu1245). Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human
History.
4. Bertinetto, Pier Marco 2009. Ayoreo (Zamuco). A grammatical sk etch. Quaderni del Laboratorio di
Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. 8 n.s. [1] (http://linguistica.sns.it/QLL/QLL09.htm)

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5. Ciucci, Luca 2007/08. Indagini sulla morfologia verbale nella lingua ayoreo. Quaderni del Laboratorio di
Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, n.s. 7. [2] (http://linguistica.sns.it/QLL/QLL07_08.htm)
6. Ciucci, Luca 2010. La flessione possessiva dell'ayoreo. Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola
Normale Superiore di Pisa, n.s. 9,2. [3] (http://linguistica.sns.it/QLL/QLL10.htm)
7. Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Luca Ciucci 2012. Parataxis, Hypotaxis and Para-Hypotaxis in the Zamucoan
Languages. In: Linguistic Discovery 10.1: 89-111. [4] (http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Jour
nals.woa/2/xmlpage/1/article/404?htmlAlways=yes)

References
Bertinetto, Pier Marco 2009. Ayoreo (Zamuco). A grammatical sketch (http://linguistica.sns.it/QLL/QLL09/Be
rtinetto_1.PDF). Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. 8 n.s.
Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Luca Ciucci 2012. Parataxis, Hypotaxis and Para-Hypotaxis in the Zamucoan
Languages (http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/2/xmlpage/1/article/404?htmlAlw
ays=yes). In: Linguistic Discovery 10.1: 89-111.
Briggs, Janet R. 1972. Quiero contarles unos casos del Beni. Summer Institute of Linguistics in
collaboration with the Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Dirección Nacional de Antropología. Cochabamba
Briggs, Janet R. 1973. Ayoré narrative analysis. International Journal of American Linguistics 39. 155-63.
Ciucci, Luca. 2007/8a. Indagini sulla morfologia verbale dell'ayoreo. (http://linguistica.sns.it/QLL/QLL07_08/C
iucci_2.PDF) Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale 7.
Ciucci, Luca 2010. La flessione possessiva dell'ayoreo (http://linguistica.sns.it/QLL/QLL10/Ciucci_ayoreo.pd
f). Quaderni del Laboratorio di Linguistica della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, n.s. 9,2
Higham, Alice; Morarie, Maxine; and Greta Paul. 2000. Ayoré-English dictionary, 3 volumes. Sanford, FL:
New Tribes Mission.
Sušnik, Branislava J. 1963. La lengua de los Ayoweos - Moros. Etnolingüística 8 (Boletín de la Sociedad
Científica del Paraguay y del Museo Etnográfico). Asunción 8: 1- 148.
Sušnik, Branislava J. 1973. La lengua de los Ayoweo-Moros. Estructura gramatical y fraseario etnográfico.
Asunción: Museo Etnográfico “Andrés Barbero”.

External links
Ayoreo man recounts first encounter with bulldozer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0O0aeINaHk)
(streamed video). Survival International.
"Lengua ayoéro" (http://www.proel.org/index.php?pagina=mundo/amerindia/ecuatorial/samukoan/ayoreo) (in
Spanish). Promotora Española de Linguistica (PROEL). The page provides colored linguistic maps (habitat,
other language families).
Sorosoro Project (http://www.sorosoro.org/en/zamucoan-languages)
Lenguas de Bolivia (http://www.ru.nl/lenguasdebolivia/) (online edition)
ELAR archive of Documentation and Description of Paraguayan Ayoreo, a Language of the Chaco (http://ela
r.soas.ac.uk/deposit/0296)

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