Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, schemes and diagrams
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Organisation and cross-referencing
- List of abbreviations
- Map
- 1 The language and its speakers
- 2 Phonology
- 3 Word classes
- 4 Nominal morphology and noun structure
- 5 Noun classes and classifiers
- 6 Possession
- 7 Case marking and grammatical relations
- 8 Number
- 9 Further nominal categories
- 10 Derivation and compounding
- 11 Closed word classes
- 12 Verb classes and predicate structure
- 13 Valency changing and argument rearranging mechanisms
- 14 Tense and evidentiality
- 15 Aspect, Aktionsart and degree
- 16 Mood and modality
- 17 Negation
- 18 Serial verb constructions and verb compounding
- 19 Complex predicates
- 20 Participles and nominalisations
- 21 Clause types and other syntactic issues
- 22 Subordinate clauses and clause linking
- 23 Relative clauses
- 24 Complement clauses
- 25 Discourse organisation
- 26 Issues in etymology and semantics
- Appendix. The main features of the Tariana dialects
- Texts
- Vocabulary
- References
- Index of authors, languages and subjects
2 - Phonology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of tables, schemes and diagrams
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Organisation and cross-referencing
- List of abbreviations
- Map
- 1 The language and its speakers
- 2 Phonology
- 3 Word classes
- 4 Nominal morphology and noun structure
- 5 Noun classes and classifiers
- 6 Possession
- 7 Case marking and grammatical relations
- 8 Number
- 9 Further nominal categories
- 10 Derivation and compounding
- 11 Closed word classes
- 12 Verb classes and predicate structure
- 13 Valency changing and argument rearranging mechanisms
- 14 Tense and evidentiality
- 15 Aspect, Aktionsart and degree
- 16 Mood and modality
- 17 Negation
- 18 Serial verb constructions and verb compounding
- 19 Complex predicates
- 20 Participles and nominalisations
- 21 Clause types and other syntactic issues
- 22 Subordinate clauses and clause linking
- 23 Relative clauses
- 24 Complement clauses
- 25 Discourse organisation
- 26 Issues in etymology and semantics
- Appendix. The main features of the Tariana dialects
- Texts
- Vocabulary
- References
- Index of authors, languages and subjects
Summary
Tariana has a large inventory of phonemes, compared with the closely related Baniwa of Içana and with neighbouring East Tucano languages. Tariana phonology has undergone a strong areal impact from Tucano (see Aikhenvald 1996a and 1999c).
Segmental phonology
The basic syllable pattern in Tariana is (C1)V(C2) where C2 can be h, y and rarely n, and C1 can be any consonant (see discussion in §2.2.1). A notable feature of Tariana is that phonotactic restrictions on the occurrence of consonants and of vowels depend on the type of morphemes (roots, affixes and clitic) summarised in Tables 2.2 and 2.4.
Consonants
The phonological system of Tariana consonants is shown in Table 2.1. Consonants differ in frequency and in phonotactic restrictions (summarised in Table 2.2 at the end of this section).
Tariana has labial, apico-dental and velar stops, with voicing distinctions only in the labial and dental series. Voiceless stops can be aspirated or unaspirated. In the remainder of this section I discuss the occurrence of consonants.
A. STOPS. Voiceless bilabial stops – unaspirated and aspirated – occur in roots in initial and in medial position, e.g. pú:we ‘capuchin monkey’, pumenípeɾi ‘sugar’, dípe ‘his meat’; kú:phe ‘fish’; phiɾimítfi ‘cotton’, phiɾìpanakwári ‘nightingale’, yáphini ‘thing’. The unaspirated p occurs in the initial position in suffixes, e.g. -pi ‘classifier: long thin things’, while ph occurs in both initial and medial positions, e.g. -phe ‘classifier: leaflike’, -mapha ‘classifier: completely covered’.
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- Information
- A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia , pp. 25 - 65Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003