• Source: Macorix language

Macorix (also spelled Maçorís or Mazorij) was the language of the northern coast of what is today the Dominican Republic. Spanish accounts only refer to three languages on the island: Taíno, Macorix, and neighboring Ciguayo. The Macorix people appear to have been semi-sedentary and their presence seems to have predated the agricultural Taíno who came to occupy much of the island. For the early European writers, they shared similarities with the nearby Ciguayos. Their language appears to have been moribund at the time of the Spanish Conquest, and within a century it was extinct.




Divisions


Upper Macoris was spoken on the north-central coast of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua from Puerto Plata to Nagua, and inland to San Francisco de Macorís and further. It was also distributed on the southeast coast of Hispaniola around San Pedro de Macorís.
Lower Macoris was spoken in the northwestern part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Magua from Monte Cristi to Puerto Plata, and from the coast inland to the area of Santiago de los Caballeros.




Lexicon


Little is known of Macorix apart from it being a distinct language from Taino and neighboring Ciguayo. A negative form, baeza [baˈesa], is the only element of the language that is directly attested. Baeza could be Arawakan (though not Taino or Iñeri), analyzable as ba-ésa 'no-thing' = 'nothing'. (Cf. Manao ma-esa 'no, not', Paresis ma-isa 'not'. The negative prefix is ba- in Amarakaeri which, even if it is related to the Arawakan languages, is not close enough to be relevant here.)




Toponyms


There are also some non-Taino toponyms from the area that Granberry & Vescelius (2004) suggest may be Waroid:

(Cf. a similar list at Guanahatabey language.)




See also


Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles




References



Granberry, Julian, & Gary Vescelius (2004) Languages of the Pre-Columbian Antilles, University Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, ISBN 0-8173-5123-X

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Macorix language
• Macorix
• Warao language
• Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean
• Evolution of languages
• List of language families
• List of extinct languages of Central America and the Caribbean
• Pre-Arawakan languages of the Greater Antilles
• Indigenous languages of the Americas
• Ciguayo language