Carib

Last Updated: 2020-06-26

Background

Language Family: Carib / Northern / Galibi

• Also known as Galibi, Carib is spoken in the north end of South America in French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, and Venezuela.

Phonology

Consonants

• /ʔ/ only occurs in syllable codas, while no other stops appear in that position (Courtz 2008, 32). It seems likely that /ʔ/ historically entered the language through a debuccalization process; however, because it is unclear where any specific instance of /ʔ/ may have occurred, and because /ʔ/ is distinctively marked in the orthography, I have opted to treat it as a full phoneme.
• Syllable-final nasals assimilate to the place of following stops, but before /s/ they are realized as [ŋ] rather than the alveolar [n] (Courtz 2008, 32). For this reason, my ruleset will be treating /ŋ/ as a distinct phoneme that occurs in syllable codas.
• Per Peasgood (1972), /m/ and /ŋ/ are the only nasals that occur word-finally (p. 40); otherwise, they agree with Courtz’s analysis.
• Hoff (1968) and Peasgood (1972) see /b d ɡ/ as contrasting with the voiceless series of stops, but he sees the contrast as marginal, so I have found Courtz (2008)’s argument for allophonic voicing to be more compelling.

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p	t			k	ʔ
Fricatives		s
Nasals	m	n			ŋ
Flaps			ɽ
Approximants	w			j

Vowels

• In diphthongs, /i/ can follow any non-identical vowel; the other permissible diphthong is /au/ (Courtz 2008, 23).
• Older texts record vowel length as significant, but Courtz (2008) argues that it is unnecessary because vowel length can be predicted based on stress, which is itself predictable (p. 38).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Diphthongs
/ai/, /ei/, /ɨi/, /ui/, /oi/, /au/

Alphabet

• Some orthographies use ⟨b d g⟩ for postnasal stops (Courtz 2008, 37), which I have accounted for in the rules.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
e	/e/
i	/i/
j	/j/
k	/k/
m	/ŋ/; /m/	/ŋ/: in word-medial syllable codas; /m/: elsewhere
n	/ŋ/; /n/	/ŋ/: in syllable codas; /n/: elsewhere
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/ɽ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w	/w/
y	/ɨ/	⟨ï⟩: used in older orthographies
’	/ʔ/

Syllable Structure

• Carib has a (C)V(V)(C) syllable structure (Courtz 2008, 23).
• Any consonant can occur syllable-initially, but the sequence /ji/ never occurs (ibid.).

Lenition Rules

• Stops voice after unstressed nasals or /CV/ sequences (Courtz 2008, 31).
• Syllable-final nasals sometimes delete, leaving behind just a nasalization of the preceding vowel (Courtz 2008, 32).
• /ʔ/ spirantizes to [h] before voiceless consonants (ibid.).
• Hoff (1968), conversely, sees /ʔ/ as going to [x] instead before voiceless consonants (p. 48).
• Nasals delete before /j/; when this happens, the /j/ undergoes compensatory lengthening, and the preceding vowel may be nasalized (Courtz 2008, 33).
• /ʔ/ is produced less distinctly before /s/ (Courtz 2008, 44–45).

Misc. Rules

• Epenthesis of glottal consonants occurs between stressed vowels and following syllable-initial stops: if the stressed vowel is short, [ʔ] is inserted, while if long [h] is inserted (Courtz 2008, 31).
• Unstressed word-initial /ɨ/ deletes (ibid).
• High non-back vowels sometimes delete word-finally when preceded by /m/ (ibid.).
• /s/ palatalizes to [ʃ] near /i/ (Courtz 2008, 32).
• /ɽ/ becomes [ɾ] after front vowels (Courtz 2008, 32; Peasgood 1972, 37).
• /Nɽ/ sequences collapse to [n] (Courtz 2008, 33–34).
• /j/ is sometimes realized as [w], most often between a back vowel and /a/ (Courtz 2008, 34).
• Root-initial /a/ is realized as [o] when stressed; similarly, some verb stems with stressed /o/ in the first syllable reduce it to [a] when unstressed (Courtz 2008, 35–36).
• Epenthesis of [ʔ] occurs between adjacent vowels in different syllables (Courtz 2008, 43; Peasgood 1972, 38).
• Consonants palatalize when in a syllable with /i/ or a diphthong that includes /i/ (Hoff 1968, 31–32; Peasgood 1972, 36–37).
• Non-labial obstruents are backed after back vowels (Peasgood 1972, 37).
• /o/ centralizes to [ɵ] after palatalized consonants (Peasgood 1972, 39).

References

Courtz, Hendrik. 2008. A Carib Grammar and Dictionary. Magoria Books.

Hoff, B. J. 1968. The Carib Language: Phonology, Morphonology, Morphology, Texts and Word Index. Brill.

Peasgood, Edward T. 1972. “Carib Phonology.” In Languages of the Guianas, edited by Joseph E. Grimes, 35–41. Summer Institute of Linguistics.