Editing Xavante language (section)

== Classification ==
Xavante is a member of the Jê language family, itself a member of the Macro-Gê stock.<ref name="Rodrigues">{{cite book|last =Rodrigues|first=A.D.|title=The Amazonian Languages|date=1999|publisher=Cambridge University Press}}</ref> This stock is spoken in a wide distribution of non-central Brazil; Macro-Gê is also popular in the eastern, northern, and central, and southwestern parts of the country, as well as being distributed in nearby Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina, but the Jê family is its only remaining large subgroup, with other languages remaining in isolates due to extinction. Within Jê, its 16 languages are distributed in four divisions; northern, north-eastern, central, and southern, and are better preserved than other languages in the stock due to its inland-inhabiting speakers. Xavante is classified in the central, alongside Xerente, Xakriaba, and Akroa. The stock is marked by a large presence of [[nasal vowels]], this also being marked in the proto- Jê reconstructed language. [[Consonant]] inventories of the Macro-Ge stock are of medium size, with Xavante historically undergoing a phonological change from velar consonants to [[glottal stops]]. All are mildly synthetic, without complex [[Morphology (linguistics)|morphology]], and have SV constituent orders.