Velar consonants alternate with palatal consonants before /e/ and sometimes before /a/. Examples include ~ "autumn" and ~ "stork". The palatal approximant /j/ alternates with the palatal fricative /ç/ before /i/, as in ~. Syllables in Maká may be of types V, VC, CV, CCV, and CCVC. When a consonant cluster appears at the beginning of a syllable, the second consonant must be /x/, /h/, /w/, or /j/.
Morphology
Nouns
Gender
Maká has two genders—masculine and feminine. The demonstratives reflect the gender of a noun (Gerzenstein 1995:153: In the plural the gender distinction is neutralized, and the plural demonstrative is the same as the feminine singular: ne’ sehe-l these land-pl ‘these lands’ ne’ naxkak-wi these tree-pl ‘these trees’
Number
Maká nouns inflect for plurality. There are several distinct plural endings: -l, -wi, Vts, and -Vy. All plants take the -wi plural, but otherwise the choice seems to be unpredictable :
singular
plural
gloss
sehe
sehe-l
land
naxkax
naxkax-wi
tree
tenuk
tenuk-its
cat
Case
Maká does not have any overt case marking on nouns. Consider the following sentence, where neither the subject nor object shows any case :
Verbs agree with their subject and object in a rather complex system. Gerzenstein identifies five conjugation classes for intransitive verbs. The following two examples show intransitive verbs from conjugation classes 1 and 3. Transitive verbs belong to a different conjugation class, Conjugation 6. The following forms show a transitive verb with a 3rd person object: If the object of the transitive verb is 1st or 2nd person, then certain combinations of subject and object are shown by a portmanteau morpheme. Other combinations involve an object agreement marker which may either precede or follow the subject marker :
łe-ts-ikfex
2:subj-1sg:obj-bite
'you bite me'
xi-yi-łin
1pl:obj-3-save
'he/she saves us '
Applicatives
Verbs in Maká have a series of suffixes called 'postpositions' in Gerzenstein, which have the effect of introducing new oblique objects into the sentence. The following examples show the applicative suffixes -ex 'instrumental ' and -m 'benefactive '
In noun phrases, the possessor precedes the possessed noun : Noun phrases show the order N :
Sentences
Affirmative
The basic word order for a transitive clause in Maká is subject–verb–object, as seen in the following example For intransitive clauses, the basic order is verb-subject :
Interrogative
In yes-no questions, the usual subject–verb–object order changes to verb-subject-object following an initial particle /me/ : Sentences with wh-questions show a sentence-initial question word. Maká has a very small inventory of question words, with only three members: łek 'who, what', pan 'which, where, how many', and inhats'ek 'why'. The following example shows an interrogative sentence with an initial question word (Gerzenstein 1995:178:
