Arabela

Last Updated: 2020-06-26

Background

Language family: Zaparoan

• Also referred to as Chiripuno, Arabela is spoken in Peru, specifically in two villages of the Napo tributary.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Bilabial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p	t			k
Fricatives		s	ʃ			h
Nasals	m	n
Trills		r
Approximants	w			j

Vowels

• Vowel length is phonemic (Carvalho 2013, 95). Long vowels are represented by duplicate vowel graphemes.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
c	/k/
e	/e/
i	/i/
j	/h/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/r/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
y	/j/
Digraph
qu	/k/
hu	/w/
sh	/ʃ/

Syllable Structure

• The syllables permitted in Arabela follow the order of CV and CCV (Topintzi 2016, 84).

Lenition Rules

• /t/ often becomes a flap [ɾ] (R. G. Rich 1999, 14).
• /k/ often spirantizes or becomes voiced (F. Rich 1963, 194, 195).
• Vowels tend to be deleted between homorganic consonants (R. G. Rich 1999, 14).

Misc. Rules

• /n/ and /r/ occur in free variation in some instances (F. Rich 1963, 194).
• /t/, /n/, /ʃ/, /r/, and /k/ geminate allophonically between homorganic consonants (F. Rich 1963, 195).
• /w/ and /j/ are nasalized following nasals or nasal-vowel sequences (F. Rich 1963, 196, 197).
• Vowels are nasalized following nasals and /h/ (most often) (F. Rich 1963, 197).

References

Carvalho, Fernando O. de. 2013. “On Záparoan as a Valid Genetic Unity: Preliminary Correspondences and the Status of Omurano.” Revista Brasileira de Linguística Antropológica 5 (1).

Rich, Furne. 1963. “Studies in Peruvian Indian Languages 1.” In, edited by Viola G. Waterhouse, 193–206. Summer Institute of Linguistics of the University of Oklahoma.

Rich, Rolland G. 1999. Diccionario: Arabela-Castellano. Edited by Mary Ruth Wise. Instituto Lingüística Peruana.

Topintzi, Nina. 2016. Onsets: Suprasegmental and Prosodic Behavior. Cambridge University Press. https://www.ebook.de/de/product/10047162/nina_topintzi_onsets.html.