Mehináku language
E155587
The Mehináku language is an indigenous Arawakan language spoken by the Mehinaku people of Brazil’s Upper Xingu region in the Amazon.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Mehináku language canonical | 2 |
| Mehinako language | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1357303 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Mehináku language Context triple: [Arawakan languages, hasLanguage, Mehináku language]
-
A.
Chemehuevi language
Chemehuevi language is a critically endangered Uto-Aztecan language traditionally spoken by the Chemehuevi people of the Great Basin region in the southwestern United States.
-
B.
Walapai language
The Walapai language is a Native American language of the Yuman family traditionally spoken by the Hualapai people of northwestern Arizona.
-
C.
Kavalan language
The Kavalan language is an endangered Austronesian language of the indigenous Kavalan people of northeastern Taiwan.
-
D.
Yana language
The Yana language is an extinct Native American language once spoken in northern California, notable for its complex verb morphology and documentation by linguist Edward Sapir.
-
E.
Esselen language
The Esselen language is an extinct and poorly documented Native American language once spoken by the Esselen people of coastal central California.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Mehináku language Target entity description: The Mehináku language is an indigenous Arawakan language spoken by the Mehinaku people of Brazil’s Upper Xingu region in the Amazon.
-
A.
Chemehuevi language
Chemehuevi language is a critically endangered Uto-Aztecan language traditionally spoken by the Chemehuevi people of the Great Basin region in the southwestern United States.
-
B.
Walapai language
The Walapai language is a Native American language of the Yuman family traditionally spoken by the Hualapai people of northwestern Arizona.
-
C.
Kavalan language
The Kavalan language is an endangered Austronesian language of the indigenous Kavalan people of northeastern Taiwan.
-
D.
Yana language
The Yana language is an extinct Native American language once spoken in northern California, notable for its complex verb morphology and documentation by linguist Edward Sapir.
-
E.
Esselen language
The Esselen language is an extinct and poorly documented Native American language once spoken by the Esselen people of coastal central California.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (44)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
Arawakan language
ⓘ
Brazilian indigenous language ⓘ South American language ⓘ indigenous language ⓘ |
| country | Brazil ⓘ |
| endangermentStatus | vulnerable ⓘ |
| ethnicGroup | Mehinaku ⓘ |
| hasAlternativeName |
Mehinako
ⓘ
Mehinako ⓘ
surface form:
Mehináku
|
| hasBorrowingsFrom |
Portuguese language
ⓘ
surface form:
Portuguese
|
| hasContactLanguage |
Portuguese language
ⓘ
surface form:
Portuguese
|
| hasDomain |
mythology
ⓘ
ritual chants ⓘ traditional ecological knowledge ⓘ |
| hasNeighbouringLanguages |
Kayabí language
ⓘ
surface form:
Kamayurá language
Kuikuro language ⓘ Trumai language ⓘ Waurá language ⓘ Yawalapiti language ⓘ |
| hasPhonologicalFeature |
contrastive nasalization
ⓘ
five-vowel system ⓘ simple consonant inventory ⓘ |
| hasSociolinguisticSituation | bilingualism with Portuguese among younger speakers ⓘ |
| hasSpeakerCommunityType | village-based community ⓘ |
| hasTransmission | primarily oral ⓘ |
| hasTypology |
agglutinative morphology
ⓘ
head-marking ⓘ |
| hasWordOrder | SOV-dominant ⓘ |
| ISO639-3Code | mmh ⓘ |
| isPartOf |
Xingu Asuriní
ⓘ
surface form:
Upper Xingu multilingual area
|
| isSubjectOf | descriptive linguistic studies ⓘ |
| isUsedAlongside | Portuguese in some contexts ⓘ |
| languageFamily |
Arawakan languages
ⓘ
surface form:
Arawakan
Maipurean ⓘ |
| region |
Mato Grosso
ⓘ
surface form:
Mato Grosso state
|
| spokenBy | Mehinaku people ⓘ |
| spokenIn |
Amazon Basin
ⓘ
Brazil ⓘ Upper Xingu region ⓘ |
| subfamily |
Upper Orinoco Arawakan
ⓘ
surface form:
Southern Arawakan
|
| usedFor |
daily communication within Mehinaku villages
ⓘ
oral tradition ⓘ ritual practices ⓘ |
| writingSystem |
Latin alphabet
ⓘ
surface form:
Latin script
|
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Mehináku language Description of subject: The Mehináku language is an indigenous Arawakan language spoken by the Mehinaku people of Brazil’s Upper Xingu region in the Amazon.
Referenced by (3)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
Mehinako language