Rikbaktsa

Last Updated: 2020-02-04

Background

Language Family: Macro-Ge / Rikbaktsa

• Rikbaktsa is spoken in Brazil.

Phonology

Consonants

• Both Tremaine (2007) and L. de J. Silva (2005; as cited in Lobato and Silva 2018, 7) make the distinction between a dental and an alveolar flap (p. viii). However, it is unclear how to mark this phoneme given that /ɾ/ can represent both. L. de J. Silva (2005; as cited in Lobato and Silva 2018, 7) represents it with the retroflex flap, but this doesn’t accurately reflect the place of articulation. I have chosen to represent this phoneme with the alveolar flap, with the dental diacritic below.
• Boswood (1978; as cited in Lobato and Silva 2018, 7) doesn’t include /tʃ/ in the phonemic inventory, based on the interpretation of the corresponding digraph ⟨ts⟩ as two separate consonants. I have chosen to follow the analysis of the more current source, including /tʃ/ below.

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b		t d			k
Affricates				tʃ
Fricatives				ʃ			h
Nasals	m		n
Flaps		ɾ̪	ɾ
Approximants	w				j
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced.

Vowels

• Nasal vowels are contrastive in Rikbaktsa (Tremaine 2007, viii). They are indicated with a tilde (◌̃) or with a following nasal consonant (the tilde is omitted in these cases).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Alphabet

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
y	/ɨ/
b	/b/
d	/d/
e	/e/
h	/h/
i	/i/
j	/j/
k	/k/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/ɾ/
s	/ʃ/
t	/t/
u	/u/
w	/w/
z	/ɾ̪/
Digraph
ts	/tʃ/
Orthographic Variation
g	/k/	preceding voiced consonants; intervocalically
c	/k/
qu	/k/

Lenition Rules

• Given that ⟨g⟩ represents /k/ preceding voiced consonants and intervocalically, it would support the lenition process where /k/ becomes voiced in these positions (Tremaine 2007, viii).

Misc. Rules

• Vowel epenthesis occurs preceding both the dental and alveolar flap when they occur word-initially or following /k/ (Tremaine 2007, viii).

References

Boswood, Joan. 1978. Quer Falar a Língua Dos Canoeiros? Rikbaktsa Em 26 Lições. Brasília: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Lobato, Elani dos Anjos, and Adailton Alves da Silva. 2018. “Aspectos Pedagógicos Do Povo Rikbakts: Saberes E Fazeres Que Marcam Identidade.”

Silva, Leia de Jesus. 2005. “Aspectos Da Fonologia E a Morfologia Da Língua Rikbaktsa.” Master’s thesis, Universidade de Brasília; Brasília.

Tremaine, Sheila. 2007. Dicionario Rikbaktsa-Portugues, Portugues-Rikbaktsa. Cuiabá: Assoc. Internacional de Lingüística- SIL Brasil. http://www.sil.org/americas/brasil/PUBLCNS/DICTGRAM/RKDic.pdf.