Chayahuita

Last Updated: 2020-06-26

Background

Language Family: Cahuapanan

• The language is known by several names, the most common of which are Chayahuita and Shawi.
• Chayahuita is spoken within the Loreto and San Martin regions in northern Peru, and along the Paranapura, Cahuapanas, Sillay, and Shanusi rivers.

Phonology

Consonants

• /β/ is attested as phonemic in (“Shawi Phoneme Inventory,” n.d.), but is described as allophonic in Julia Barraza de García (2005) (see the Misc. Rules section).
• Hart, George and Powlinson, Esther (1976) and Julia Barraza de García (2005) both list /r/ as a “vibrant,” a general term that could mean either a trill or a flap; because (“Shawi Phoneme Inventory,” n.d.) comes down decisively on the side of the flap, I have opted for that analysis.
• /ʔ/ and /h/ only contrast before voiceless consonants; otherwise, only /ʔ/ is attested (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 53). Because of this, and because of the lack of clear attestation of /h/ in the orthography (i.e. sometimes, but not always, ⟨h⟩ is marked), I have opted to only use /ʔ/.
  • Neither glottal consonant is attested as phonemic in Hart, George and Powlinson, Esther (1976).
• /ɾ/ and the glottal consonants do not occur word-initially (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 47).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p	t			k	ʔ
Affricates			tʃ
Fricatives		s	ʃ
Nasals	m	n
Flaps		ɾ
Approximants	w			j

Vowels

• Hart, George and Powlinson, Esther (1976) list four suprasegmental features that can be added to vowels: (length) /ː/, (aspiration) /ʰ/, (glottalization) /ˀ/, and (nasalization) /◌̃/ (p. 2). These do not seem, however, to be phonemic.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Low		a

Alphabet

• Spanish loanwords into Chayahuita incorporate several letters not used in native words: ⟨d e f j l ñ u z⟩ (Hart 1988). However, these rarely occur, so I have omitted them from the ruleset.
• The acute accent indicates “emphasis or intensity” but does not carry phonemic value (Hart 1988). Thus, accented vowels will be transcribed to their plain counterparts.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
c	/k/
ë	/ɨ/
i	/i/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/u/
p	/p/
q	/k/	typically followed by ⟨u⟩
r	/ɾ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
y	/j/
’	/ʔ/
Digraph
ch	/tʃ/
hu	/w/
sh	/ʃ/

Syllable Structure

• Chayahuita has a (C)V(C) syllable structure (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 43).

Lenition Rules

• Root-final nasals delete in suffixed words (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 45–46).
• Consonants voice when (1) preceded by a nasal or (2) occurring in the third or later syllable of a word (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 48–49; Hart, George and Powlinson, Esther 1976, 5–6).
  • However, consonants do not voice in /ʔ/-final syllables (ibid.).
  • For some speakers, especially near the Cahuapanas River, consonants in such positions weaken even farther, either becoming a glide or deleting completely (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 49).
• Suffix-initial consonants are deleted when between two identical vowels. In such cases, the adjacent vowels are produced as a single long vowel (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 50).
• Word-final nasals delete, and nasalize their preceding vowel (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 56).

Misc. Rules

• /w/ deletes in the following sequences: /uwa, uwi/ (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 44).
• /w/ spirantizes to [β] before /i/ (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 51–52; Hart, George and Powlinson, Esther 1976, 7).
• /j/ deletes when preceded by /i/ and followed by /a/ (ibid.).
• Various minimal pairs can be found on pages 39-42 of Julia Barraza de García (2005).
• When a vowel-initial suffix is added onto the end of a vowel-final root, the consecutive vowels are reanalyzed into a diphthong (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 45).
• /p/ and /m/ are produced as [pʷ] and [mʷ] when before /ɨ/ (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 51; Hart, George and Powlinson, Esther 1976, 5).
• Epenthesis of /ʔ/ occurs at the end of monosyllabic roots, as well as between root-medial identical vowels (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 53).
• Nasals assimilate to the place of articulation of following consonants (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 51; Hart, George and Powlinson, Esther 1976, 7).
• /s/ palatalizes to [ʃ] before /i/; in this environment, the contrast between /s/ and /ʃ/ is neutralized (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 52).
  • Similarly, word-medial /t/ goes to [tʃ] before /i/ (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 52–53).
• When occurring after a consonant-final syllable, /ɾ/ nasalizes to [n] (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 55).
• In the sequence /tuɾu/, the first /u/ deletes (Julia Barraza de García 2005, 57).
• The sequence /wɨ/ collapses to [u] word-finally (ibid.).

References

Hart, Helen. 1988. Instituto Linguistico de Verano.

Hart, George, Hart, Helen, and Powlinson, Esther. 1976. “La Fonologia Del Chayahuita.” In Datos Etno-Lingüisticos, 28:1–19.

Julia Barraza de García, Yris. 2005. “El Sistema Verbal En La Lingua Shawi.” PhD thesis, Universidad Federal de Pernambuco.

“Shawi Phoneme Inventory.” n.d. http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~saphon/en/inv/Shawi.html.