Language and Cosmogony in Bakairi: Research Practices Focused on Knowledge of Original Languages

Abstract

This article takes as its object the Bakairi language, a modality spoken in the Bakairi Indigenous Land, located in the city of Paranatinga, Mato Grosso, Central Brazil. The data were collected mainly in two villages - Aldeia Pakuenra and Aldeia Paikum, both located in the Bakairi IL. The main goal to be achieved aims at the organization of the lexicon in the Bakairi language, described and analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective, putting into play the relationship between language and cosmogony, when working through the bias of the French school of Discourse Analysis and, in parallel, working on the formal analysis of the data along the lines of Derivational Morphology. As secondary objectives, we seek to focus on two main mechanisms: (i) the discussion of word formation motivated by the group's cosmogony through the presence of closed and non-productive formatives (morphemes), which are restricted to the creation of words in a mythical time and (ii) the analysis of other morphemes in the language, giving rise to open words. Among the set of closed words, which are that found the Kurâ identity and bring us to the social organization of the people as a whole and to moral and social values, we have chosen two to be the focus of our discussion: udodo and pekobaym. The approach presented here contributes to the knowledge and description of the language system both for native speakers and for researchers who focus on the ethnic dimension inscribed in the discursive materiality of the language.