Cubeo language

Cubeo language
Cubeo
Spoken in Brazil, Colombia
Native speakers 4,632  (date missing)
Language family
Tucanoan
  • Cubeo
Language codes
ISO 639-3 cub
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The Cubeo language (otherwise known as Cuveo, Hehenawa, Kobeua, Kobewa, Kubwa, or Pamiwa) is a SOV language spoken by the Cubeo people and is a member of the central branch of the Tukano language. It has many lexical loans from the Nadahup languages and has a grammar which was apparently influenced by Arawak. The language is spoken in the Vaupés department, Cuduyari, and Querarií rivers and tributaries of Columbia. It is also spoken in Brazil.

Contents

Phonetics and Phonology

Vowels There are 6 oral vowels and six nasal ones. (See /ɨ/ if you are not familiar with this letter.)

Back Central Front
High i ĩ ɨ ɨ̃ u ũ
Mid ɛ ɛ̃ o õ
Low a ã

Consonants

bilabial alveolar prepalatal velar
voiceless stops p t k
voiced stops b d
voiceless Affricate tʃ
Fricative x
Rhotic r
Semi-vowel w j

Strangely, Cubeo has a velar fricative /x/ but not strident fricatives. When older Cubeos use Spanish loans with /s/, they pronounce it as /č/ before vowels. The /s/ deletes in word-final position in loans as in [xeˈtʃu] < Sp. Jesús [heˈsus] 'Jesus'.[1]

Stress

The stressed syllable is the first syllable with high tone in the phonological word (usually the second syllable of the word). Stress (and by extension, the position of the first high-tone syllable) is contrastive.[2]

Nasality

Most morphemes belong to one of three categories:

  1. Nasal (many roots, as well as suffixes like -xã 'associative')
  2. Oral (many roots, as well as suffixes like -pe 'similarity', -du 'frustrative')
  3. Unmarked (only suffixes, e.g. -RE 'in/direct object')

No roots are unmarked with respect to this nasal/oral division, however some roots are partially oral and nasal, /bã'kaxa-/ [mã'kaxa-] 'to defecate'.[3]

Suffixes that begin with consonants without nasal allophones may be only nasal or oral (not unmarked) although suffixes that begin with consonants that have nasal allophones (/b, d, j, w, x, r/) may belong to any of the three classes above. It is impossible to predict the class to which a nasalizable consonant-initial suffix may belong.

There are some suffixes that are partially oral and partially nasal, like -kebã 'suppose'.[4] There are no cases in modern Cubeo in which -kebã is divided into separate oral and nasal suffixes.

Nasal assimilation

Nasality spreads rightward from the nasal vowel, nasalizing all oral vowels within a word provided they are not nasal and that all intervening consonants are nasalizable (/b, d, j, w, x, r/)

bu-bI-ko
/buˈe-bi-ko/
[buˈebiko]
'She recently studied.'

Unlike the previous example, in the next one nasality spreads from the initial vowel to the following one, but is blocked from the third syllable by a non-nasalizable /k/:

dĩ-bI-ko
/dĩ-bĩ-ko/
[nĩmĩko]
'She recently went.'

Nasal spreading is blocked by underlyingly oral suffixes or vowels that are underlyingly oral in a nasal/oral morpheme.

References

  1. ^ Morse (1999). Gramatical del Cubeo. SIL. 
  2. ^ Morse (1999). Gramatical del Cubeo. SIL. pp. 6. 
  3. ^ Morse (1999). Gramatical del Cubeo. SIL. pp. 9. 
  4. ^ Morse (1999). Gramatical del Cubeo. SIL. pp. 7, 43. 

External links


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