About

My name is Eduardo Rivail Ribeiro. I’m a Brazilian linguist interested in the documentation of indigenous South American languages (particularly those of the Macro-Jê stock), as well as the dialectology of (Brazilian) Portuguese. I’m a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago’s Department of Linguistics and currently live in Baltimore, Maryland, with my wife and kids. Kawina is my Karajá name, given to me by a friend from the Southern Karajá village of Krehãwa (Araguaia River, Central Brazil).

Besides being interested in all things Karajá (the Macro-Jê language which is the topic of both my MA thesis and my PhD dissertation), I’m mainly interested in historical linguistics and morphology (and, better yet, a combination of both). I’m currently working on:

  • my (rather overdue) PhD dissertation, “A Grammar of Karajá”, which I shall have defended by the end of the current year;
  • a reconstruction of Proto-Jê, which will soon be submitted for publication;
  • a number of short papers on specific comparative topics (a comparison among the poorly-documented Macro-Jê languages of the Brazilian northeast, an investigation into the diachronic origins of a pattern of replacive morphology in Karajá, the description of some unsuspected caveats of long-range genetic comparison, etc.);
  • an investigation, with Walkíria Neiva Praça (an expert on Tapirapé), into past and ongoing language contact in the Araguaia region (Central Brazil).

I have recently published a paper, with Hein van der Voort (an expert on Rondonian languages), in which we propose the inclusion of the Jabuti family into the Macro-Jê stock. Although this claim is not completely original (we follow in the footsteps of the great ethnographer Curt Nimuendaju), it is a potentially controversial one.

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In 2006, J. Pedro Viegas Barros and I organized a symposium for the 52nd International Congress of Americanists, Advances in Native South American Historical Linguistics (Seville, Spain). The program (including abstracts) is available here.


"O senhor saiba: eu toda a minha vida pensei por mim, forro, sou nascido diferente. Eu sou é eu mesmo. Diverjo de todo o mundo… Eu quase que nada não sei. Mas desconfio de muita coisa."

(Riobaldo Tatarana, em Grande Sertão: Veredas, de Guimarães Rosa)

Page tags

agriculture caipira chiquitano contact dzubukuá ergativity historical_linguistics jabutí jê karajá karirí kipeá kirirí language_contact loanwords macro-jê maxakalí morphology ofayé paleobotany person_marking phonology portuguese possession proto-jê purí tapirapé vowel_harmony

Web projects

I'm one of the moderators of Etnolinguistica.Org, a discussion list and online repository of information on Native South American languages.

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I also manage the Curt Nimuendaju Digital Library, an online collection of hard-to-find books and articles on South American languages.

I have also recently launched a collaborative, interdisciplinary project to create an online Macro-Jê bibliography.
Este site é melhor visualizado com senso crítico. © 2009-2011 Eduardo R. Ribeiro