Last Updated: 2020-08-05
Background
Language Family: Arawakan / Maipuran / Southern Maipuran / Bolivia-Parana / Moxo
- Ignaciano is one of two existing Moxo languages along with Trinitario. It spoken in the lowlands of Bolivia.
Phonology
Consonants
- W. Ott and Ott (1959) include /w/ in the phonemic inventory (p. 2). However, more recent sources (e.g. W. Ott and Ott 1967, 1) do not report it as a phoneme, instead treating it as an allophone of /v/.
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Labial
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Alveolar
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Postalveolar
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Palatal
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stops
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p
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t
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k
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ʔ
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Affricates
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ts
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tʃ
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Fricatives
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v
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s
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ʃ
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n
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ɲ
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Taps
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ɾ
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Approximants
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j
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Vowels
- Vowels with an acute accent (´) are stressed (W. Ott and Ott 1959, 9). Stress, however, is not accounted for in this project, and such vowels will be transcribed to their plain representations.
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Front
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Central
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Back
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High
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i
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u
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Mid
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e
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Low
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a
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Alphabet
- Ignaciano commonly uses graphemes from the Spanish alphabet, especially ⟨l⟩, in borrowings (W. Ott and Ott 1983, 5).
- W. Ott and Ott (1983) and Danielsen (2011) use slightly different orthographic conventions:
- W. Ott and Ott (1983) represent /k/ with ⟨c⟩ and /ʔ/ with ⟨h⟩ (p. 5).
- With reference to Baure, another Southern Arawaken language, Danielsen (2011) represents /k/ with ⟨k⟩ and /ʔ/ with an apostrophe (p. 497).
- Because the different orthographic conventions do not conflict and both are represented in the Crúbadán corpus, I have included both.
- Although no documentation indicates ⟨w⟩ as being a part of the Ignaciano alphabet, there is reason to believe that it represents /v/, given that nearly all occurrences of it in the Crúbadán corpus precede /a/ or /u/, which is where the phonological process from /v/ to [w] occurs (W. Ott and Ott 1967, 1). In the rules, I have restricted the transcription to only occur preceding /a/ and /u/.
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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Comment
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a
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/a/
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c
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/k/
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e
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/e/
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h
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/ʔ/
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i
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/i/
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j
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/h/
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k
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/k/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n/
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ñ
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/ɲ/
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p
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/p/
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r
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/ɾ/
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s
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/s/
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t
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/t/
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u
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/u/
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v
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/v/
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w
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/v/
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preceding /a/ and /u/; see comment above
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y
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/j/
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’
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/ʔ/
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Digraph
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ch
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/tʃ/
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qu
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/k/
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sh
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/ʃ/
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ts
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/ts/
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Lenition Rules
- /v/ approximantizes to [w] preceding non-front vowels (W. Ott and Ott 1983, 6).
- Word-initial stops in unstressed syllables tend to be lenis (W. Ott and Ott 1967, 56).
Misc. Rules
- For some speakers, /v/ is realized as [b] (W. Ott and Ott 1967, 56).
References
Ott, Willis, and Rebecca B. Ott. 1959. “Fonemas de La Lengua Ignaciana.” In Notas Lingüísticas de Bolivia. Vol. 1. La Paz: Instituto Linguistico de Verano.
———. 1967. “Phonemes of the Ignaciano Language.” Linguistics 5 (35): 56–60.
———. 1983. Diccionario Ignaciano Y Castellano, Con Apuntes Gramaticales. Cochabamba: Instituto Linguistico de Verano.