Antipassivization in Wayampi

This paper presents an analysis of the prefix poro‑ in Wayampi, a grammatical marker that can only be attached to transitive verb stems. It is proposed here that this prefix has an antipassive function. The main objective of this study is to provide hard evidence to support this hypothesis, based mostly on non-elicited data. Three criteria are used to show that the verb forms marked with poro‑ are intransitive in Wayampi, thus demonstrating that this marker cannot refer and is therefore an antipassivizer. This assumption is also put into perspective with a similar one recently proposed in Tupi-Guarani linguistics for cognates of poro‑ in Tenetehára, Paraguayan Guarani, and Tupinambá.