Colorado

Last Updated: 2020-05-04

COMPROMISED: orthographic ambiguity around glottal stops

Background

Language Family: Barbacoan / Cayapa-Colorado

• Also known as Tsafiki, Colorado is spoken in Ecuador.

Phonology

Consonants

• Adelaar and Muysken (2007) as well as Curnow and Liddicoat (1998) express the ambiguous phonemic status of /ʔ/ (p. 145; p. 387); however, they do not expand on the matter or state how it’s ambiguous. Moore (1962; as cited in Curnow and Liddicoat 1998, 387) classifies it as a phoneme, but Moore (1966) doesn’t even mention it. It is clear from Dickinson (2011) that glottal stops predominantly occur intervocalically (p. 311), which may be the point of confusion (as it could very well be phonetic), but there isn’t a clear consensus on whether it’s a phoneme in Colorado or not. Nevertheless, I have chosen to include it below
• There is also mention of aspiration being a phonemic suprasegmental feature, preceding consonants (Moore 1966, 96). Adelaar and Muysken (2007) note that because of this, the inventory might include other fricatives or preaspirated consonants; however, although this feature used to show contrast, it has become entirely predictable (Moore 1962 as cited in Curnow and Liddicoat (1998), p. 387; Moore 1966, 96).

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t d		k	ʔ
Affricates		ts
Fricatives	ɸ	s			h
Nasals	m	n
Trills		r
Approximants	w	l	j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

• Although Adelaar and Muysken (2007) see vowel nasalization as a phonetic feature, conditioned by syllable-final nasals (p. 143), most sources indicate that it is contrastive (Aikhenvald 2007, 194; Moore 1966 as cited in Curnow and Liddicoat (1998), p. 387; Aikhenvald 2011, 127).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Alphabet

• Contributing to the ambiguity centered around the phonemic status of /ʔ/, there is also uncertainty in terms of how it’s represented orthographically. Dickinson (2011) states that (non-intervocalic/supposedly phonemic) glottal stops are indicated by apostrophes (p. 311); however, Curnow and Liddicoat (1998) state that apostrophes mark the once contrastive aspiration and glottal stops aren’t marked (p. 387). In the rule set I have opted to transcribe apostrophes as glottal stops.
  
• Dickinson (2011) states that nasal vowels are indicated by a following, syllable-final ⟨n⟩ (p. 311). This is made clear through the syllable structure, given that syllables consist of V or CV (Walls, n.d., 15). ⟨VnC⟩ sequences are transcribed as /ṼC/, and ⟨VnhV⟩ sequences are transcribed as /ṼV/; the ⟨h⟩ following the ⟨n⟩ in intervocalic positions merely serves as an indicator for the nasalization of the preceding vowel (Moore 1966, 96). That is, ⟨VnV⟩ sequences (i.e. those without the ⟨h⟩) are transcribed as /VnV/.
• Stress is denoted by accented vowels; however, we do not account for stress, so accented vowels will be transcribed to their plain counterparts.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b	/b/
c	/k/
d	/d/
e	/e/
f	/ɸ/
i	/i/
k	/k/
j	/h/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/r/
s	/s/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w	/w/
y	/j/
’	/ʔ/
Digraph
ch	/ts/	phonetically [tʃ]: precedes /i/ or /u/
qu	/k/	precedes front vowels
sh	/s/	phonetically [ʃ]: precedes /i/ or /u/
ts	/ts/
hu	/w/

Lenition Rules

• /r/ is realized as a flap word-initially (Moore 1966, 96).
• /k/ is voiced intervocalically (Walls, n.d., 11).

Misc. Rules

• /w/ is realized as [ʋ] preceding /i/ (Moore 1966, 95).
• /b/ and /d/ are realized as implosives word-medially (ibid.).
• /ts/ and /s/ are realized as [tʃ] and [ʃ], respectively, preceding high vowels (ibid.).
  • /s/ is also realized as [ʃ] following /i/.
• Glottal stop epenthesis occurs intervocalically (Dickinson 2011, 311).

References

Adelaar, Willem F. H., and Pieter C. Muysken. 2007. The Languages of the Andes. Cambridge University Press.

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2007. “The Vanishing Languages of the Pacific Rim.” In, edited by Osahito Miyaoka, Osamu Sakiyama, and Michael E. Krauss, 183–205. Oxford University Press.

———. 2011. Languages of the Amazon. Oxford University Press.

Curnow, Timothy Jowan, and Anthony J. Liddicoat. 1998. “The Barbacoan Languages of Colombia and Ecuador.” Anthropological Linguistics.

Dickinson, Connie. 2011. “Reciprocals and Semantic Typology.” In, edited by Nicholas Evans, Alice Gaby, Stephen C. Levinson, and Asifa Majid, 277–314. John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Moore, Bruce R. 1962. “Studies in Ecuadorian Indian Languages.” In, edited by Benjamin F. Elson, 270–89. Summer Institute of Linguistics.

———. 1966. “Diccionario Castellano-Colorado, Colorado-Castellano.” Llacta 22. Quito: ILV: 95–221.

Walls, Taylor. n.d. “Linguistic Analysis of the Ecuadorian Language, Tsafiki.”