VERBAL MORPHOLOGY OF THE MAIN SENTENCE IN NINAM OF UPPER MUCAJAÍ, A YANOMAMI LANGUAGE

The Yanomami are a linguistic family located in the Orinoco-Amazon jungle, between Venezuela and Brazil, in South America. The family is characterized by a highly polysynthetic typology, especially related to the verb. This work describes the morphemes that comprise the verbal complex in the main sentences of Ninam, a Yanomami language spoken in the Upper Mucajaí. The work begins with a brief historical review related to the Yanomami people with special emphasis on the Ninam of the Upper Mucajaí. A summary of the important aspects of phonology is given, along with the orthography used for the presentation of the data. The presentation of the morphological features of the verbal complex begins with a look at the types of verbs, followed by a description of the preverbal morphemes, which mark subject, object, simultaneity and evidentiality. The postverbal morphology marks valency changes, adverbials, aspect, directionals, locatives, and tense.