Last Updated: 2020-07-01
SLIGHTLY COMPROMISED: conflation among placeless /N/, /m/, and /n/
Background
Language Family: Arawakan / Maipuran / Southern Maipuran / Campa
- Nomatsiguenga is spoken in the Junin region in central Peru.
Phonology
Consonants
- There is mention of a placeless /N/ phoneme that occurs in word-medial codas, preceding stop consonants (Chen 2019, 3; Lawrence 2013, 8, 9). Both such sources also indicate /m/ and /n/ as phonemes of Nomatsiguenga, stating that the placeless /N/ behaves differently where it deletes preceding vowels (Chen 2019, 3). Orthographically, /N/ is represented “as an ⟨m⟩ before bilabials and ⟨n⟩ elsewhere” (Lawrence 2013, 8). Due to this conflation of /N/ with /n/ and /m/, the language is somewhat compromised. I have opted to use /m/ and /n/ in the ruleset, not accounting for the placeless nasal.
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Bilabial
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Dental
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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 b
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t̪
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k ɡ
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Affricates
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t̪s
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tʃ
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Fricatives
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s̪
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ʃ
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n̪
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ŋ
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Flaps
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ɾ
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Approximants
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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. Nomatsiguenga also has a placeless /N/ (described above the chart).
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Vowels
- Tone is contrastive in Nomatsiguenga (high tone vs. no tone). High tone is marked over the vowel with an acute accent (´), whereas no tone is unmarked (Chen 2019, 68; Lawrence 2013, 15).
- Length is phonemic in Nomatsiguenga. Long vowels are indicated by the duplication of vowels (either one is marked with a high tone) (ibid.).
- /ɨ/ does not have a long counterpart (Lawrence 2013, 8).
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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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High-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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Diphthongs
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/ai/, /ei/, /oi/
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Alphabet
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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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e
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/e/
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ë
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/ɨ/
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g
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/ɡ/
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i
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/i/
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j
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/h/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n̪/; /ŋ/
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/ŋ/: preceding ⟨c⟩ or ⟨qu⟩
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o
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/o/
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p
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/p/
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q
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/k/
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r
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/ɾ/
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s
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/s̪/
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t
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/t̪/
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y
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/j/
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Multigraph
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ch
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/tʃ/
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ng
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/ŋ/
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intervocalically
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sh
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/ʃ/
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ts
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/t̪s/
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gu
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/ɡ/
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preceding ⟨e⟩, ⟨ë⟩, and ⟨i⟩
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ngu
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/ŋ/
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preceding ⟨e⟩, ⟨ë⟩, and ⟨i⟩
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qu
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/k/
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preceding ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩
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Lenition Rules
- /h/ may delete preceding a vowel marked with high tone (Lawrence 2013, 20).
Misc. Rules
- /q/ is palatalized preceding front vowels (spelled by ⟨qu⟩) (Chen 2019, 13).
- Stops at morpheme boundaries are realized as [h] preceding /k/ as a suffix-onset (Lawrence 2013, 20, 21).
References
Chen, Eric. 2019. “Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Kampa Consonants.” Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics 2 (1): 57.
Lawrence, Aimee Lynn. 2013. “Inflectional Verbal Morphology in Nomatsigenga.” Master’s thesis, The University of Texas At Austin.