Last updated: 2019-10-04
COMPROMISED: Crúbadán doesn’t distinguish orthographically between retroflex and alveolar consonants; conflation between /u/ and /w/ and between /u/ and /o/
Background
Language Family: Panoan / Northern
- Also referred to as Mayoruna, Matsés is spoken along the border of Brazil and Peru.
Phonology
Consonants
- Alveolar and retroflex phonemes don’t contrast when in the environment of /e/ and /i/ (they are realized as alveolar in such cases) (Fleck 2006, 62).
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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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Retroflex
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Palatal
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Velar
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Stops
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p b
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t d
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k
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Affricates
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ts
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tʃ
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tʂ
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Fricatives
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s
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ʃ
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ʂ
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Nasals
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m
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n
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Approximants
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w
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j
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Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.
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Vowels
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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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ɨ
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u
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Mid
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e
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o
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Low
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a
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Alphabet
- There may be some conflation among the retroflex and alveolar consonants, given that some orthographies don’t make a distinction between them (Fleck 2003, 84). The Crúbadán corpus does not represent the retroflex consonants.
- There may also be some conflation between /u/ and /w/ and between /o/ and /u/ given that in some documentation, both pairs are represented by ⟨u⟩ and ⟨o⟩, respectively (Fleck 2003, 64 91).
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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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b
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/b/
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c
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/k/
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d
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/d/
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e
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/e/
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ë
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/ɨ/
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i
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/i/
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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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o
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/o/
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p
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/p/
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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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w
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/w/
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not represented in the Crúbadán corpus
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y
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/j/
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Digraph
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sh
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/ʃ/
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şh
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/ʂ/
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ts
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/ts/
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ch
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/tʃ/
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çh
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/tʂ/
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qu
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/k/
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preceding /e/, /i/, and /ɨ/
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Lenition Rules
- /k/ is realized as a glottal stop word finally (Fleck 2003, 62).
- /d/ is realized as a flap intervocalically [ibid.].
- /b/ is said to spirantize (Fleck 2010, 34); however, Fleck (2003) states that the frication of /b/ is very minimal and is more often realized as /w/ (intervocalically) (p. 74).
Misc. Rules
- /k/ is the only stop that can geminate, realized phonetically as a glottal stop followed by /k/ (Fleck 2003, 76).
- /n/ assimilates to the place of articulation of following velar and bilabial stops (Fleck 2003, 78).
- /n/ can geminate, while /m/ does not (Fleck 2003, 79).
- Fricatives can geminate, whereas affricates and approximants don’t (Fleck 2003, 84, 87, 88).
- /i/ and /u/ are realized as [j] and [w] respectively preceding or following vowels (not intervocalically) (Fleck 2003, 95).
- /o/ and /e/ are often realized as /u/ and /i/, respectively, when adjacent to each other or /a/ (Fleck 2003, 96).
References
Fleck, David W. 2003. “A Grammar of Matses.” PhD thesis, Rice University.
———. 2006. “Body-Part Prefixes in Matses: Derivation or Noun Incorporation?” International Journal of American Linguistics 72 (1). University of Chicago Press: 59–96. doi:10.1086/505279.