Uma descrição gramatical da língua xikrín do cateté (família jê, tronco macro-jê)

This dissertation is a description of aspects of the segmental phonology, morphology, morphosyntax and syntax of Xikrín, a language of the northern branch of the Jê family, Macro-Jê stock (RODRIGUES, 1986, 1999). This study has been developed within the framework of anthropological linguistics, taking language as a cultural tool that is in turn itself moulded by culture. I have followed standard analytical procedures for describing a language, such as the use of language data from natural speech acts. To that end, it has been crucial that I am myself a fluent speaker of Xikrín, having lived among the Xikrín for two years, and been in constant contact with them for 12 years now. Other procedures followed here are contrastive analysis, observations of distributional criteria, and the paradigmatic organization of language components. This thesis is founded upon a series of reference works that form the wider context in which the Xikrín language data are best understood. Here is not the place to list all of those bibliographical references, except to highlight the works by Rodrigues that guided his Macro-Jê-Tupí-Caríb hypothesis (cf. RODRIGUES, 2009). This thesis aspires also to serve as a reference description to support training for teachers of Xikrín, and thereby to engender further research, not least by native-speaker teachers as authors of new publications on their own language.