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Maipure, was a language once spoken along the Ventuari, Sipapo, and Autana rivers of Amazonas and, as a lingua franca, in the Upper Orinoco region. It became extinct around the end of the eighteenth century. Zamponi provided a grammatical sketch of the language and furnished a classified word list, based on all of its extant eighteenth century material. It is historically important in that it formed the cornerstone of the recognition of the Maipurean (Arawakan) language family.
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References
- ↑ Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (1999). "The Arawak language family". In Dixon, Robert Malcolm Ward; Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (eds.). The Amazonian languages. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57021-3.
- Ramirez, Henri. 2001. Línguas Arawak da Amazônia Setentrional. Manaus: EDUA. 745pp.