Chapacuran languages

The Chapacuran languages are a nearly extinct Native American language family of South America. Almost all Chapacuran languages are extinct, and the four that are extant are moribund, with the exception of Wariʼ. They are spoken in Rondônia in the southern Amazon Basin of Brazil and in northern Bolivia.

According to Kaufman (1990, 1994), the Chapacuran family could be related to the extinct Wamo language. His suggestions have not been accepted as valid by others.

Below is a full list of Chapacuran language varieties listed by Loukotka (1968), including names of unattested varieties.

List of Chapacuran languages from Angenot (1997):

Birchall et al. (2013) classify the dozen known Chapacuran languages as follows:

All languages are rather closely related.

Extinct languages for which Loukotka says 'nothing' is known, but which may have been Chapacuran, include Cujuna, Mataua, Urunumacan, and Herisobocona. Similarities with Mure appear to be loans.

Birchall, Dunn & Greenhill (2016) give the following phylogenetic tree of Chapacuran, based on a computational phylogenetic analysis.