Cha’palaa

Last Updated: 2019-07-25

Background

Language Family: Barbacoan / Cayapa-Colorado

• Also known as Chachi or Cayapa, Cha’palaa is spoken in norther Ecuador.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t d	tʲ dʲ		k ɡ	ʔ
Affricates		ts	tʃ
Fricatives	f v	s	ʃ			h
Nasals	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants	w	l		j ʎ
Note: Phonemes to the left of each cell are voiceless and phonemes to the right of each cell are voiced; the exception is the approximant row, where phonemes on the right are lateral.

Vowels

• Vowel length is contrastive (Floyd 2014, 80). Vowel length is written by doubling the vowel character.
• Lindskoog, John N. and Brend, Ruth M. (1962) argue that vowel clusters do not form diphthongs (pp. 38-39), so I have opted not to treat them as such.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme
a	/a/
b	/b/
d	/d/
e	/e/
f	/f/
g	/ɡ/
i	/i/
j	/h/
k	/k/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ñ	/ɲ/
p	/p/
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
v	/v/
w	/w/
y	/j/
’	/ʔ/
Digraph
ch	/tʃ/
dy	/dʲ/
ll	/ʎ/
ng	/ŋ/
sh	/ʃ/
ty	/tʲ/
ts	/ts/

Syllable Structure

• The syllable structure of Cha’palaa is CV(V)(C) (Floyd 2014, 80; Lindskoog, John N. and Brend, Ruth M. 1962, 37).

Lenition Rules

• Stops voice post-nasally (Floyd 2014, 79).
• /h/ sometimes deletes word-medially (Tapuyo Pianchiche 2009, xvii).

Misc. Rules

• /w/ becomes [v] before front vowels (Floyd 2014, 79).
• /n/ adapts to the place of following bilabials (Floyd 2014, 80).
• The contrast between alveolar consonants and their palatalized equivalents collapses before /i/ (Lindskoog, John N. and Brend, Ruth M. 1962, 34).
• /f/ exists in free variation with [ɸ] (Lindskoog, John N. and Brend, Ruth M. 1962, 36).

References

Floyd, Simeon. 2014. “Four Types of Reduplication in the Cha’palaa Language of Ecuador.” In Reduplication in Indigenous Languages of South America, edited by Gómez, Gale Goodwin and van der Voort, Hein, 77–113. Brill.

Lindskoog, John N., and Brend, Ruth M. 1962. “Cayapa Phonemics.” In Studies in Ecuadorian Indian Languages: I, edited by Benjamin Elson, 31–44. Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Tapuyo Pianchiche, Víctor. 2009. Cha’palaachi Dape Pilla: Diccionario de La Lengua Chachi. Ministerio de Education, Ecuador.