Shipibo-Konibo

Last Updated: 2020-07-01

Background

Language Family: Panoan / Mainline Panoan / Nawa / Chama / Shipibo-Konibo

• The language is often simply referred to as Shipibo and is spoken in Brazil and Peru.

Phonology

Consonants

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p	t				k
Affricates		ts	tʃ
Fricatives	β	s	ʃ	ʂ			h
Nasals	m	n
Approximants	w			ɻ	j

Vowels

• Each vowel has both an oral and a nasal phoneme, according to Valenzuela, Pinedo, and Maddieson (2001) (p. 282); Valenzuela (2003), however, analyzes nasal vowels as /Vn/ sequences (p. 95). Because Elias Ulloa (2006) also finds nasal vowels to only exist through a nasalization process from consonants (p. 14), I have opted to prefer the analysis that excludes nasal vowels.
• Long vowels are realized in some words. Elias Ulloa (2006) describes vowel length as phonemic, but Valenzuela (2003) finds it never to be contrastive (p. 95).
• Valenzuela, Pinedo, and Maddieson (2001) argue for /ɯ/ rather than /ɨ/.
• Accented vowels denote stress; however, we do not account for stress, so accented vowels will be transcribed to their plain representations.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ
Mid			o
Low		a

Alphabet

• Apostrophes are used to represent the glottal stop, but because it is not phonemic, I will be omitting it from the ruleset (Valenzuela 2003, 138).
• Normally postvocalic ⟨n⟩ is used to indicate vowel nasalization, so ⟨nh⟩ is used to indicate when a nasal vowel is actually followed by /n/ (Wise 1993, 18). However, because my analysis does not treat vowel nasalization as contrastive, ⟨nh⟩ behaves like any other ⟨n⟩ in my ruleset.
• Note: /ʂ/ is not represented in the Crúbadán corpus.

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
b	/β/
c	/k/
e	/ɨ/
i	/i/
j	/h/
k	/k/
m	/m/
n	/n/
o	/o/
p	/p/
r	/ɻ/
s	/s/
t	/t/
w	/w/
x	/ʂ/	according to Valenzuela (2003)
y	/j/
Digraph
ch	/tʃ/
hu	/w/
nh	/n/
qu	/k/
sh	/ʃ/
s̈h	/ʂ/	according to Wise (1993)
ts	/ts/

Syllable Structure

• Shipibo has a (C)V(C) syllable structure (Valenzuela 2003, 104).
• No consonants are syllabic. Only sibilants and /n/ occur in codas (Valenzuela 2003, 105).

Lenition Rules

• /k/ lenites, either to [ɣ] or to [ɰ], in certain high-frequency morphemes (Valenzuela, Pinedo, and Maddieson 2001, 282; Valenzuela 2003, 103).
• The middle marker /-t/ often deletes before consonant-initial suffixes (Valenzuela 2003, 116–17).

Misc. Rules

• Epenthesis of [ʔ] occurs at the beginning of vowel-initial utterances and the end of vowel-final utterances, as well as at morpheme boundaries with vowels on both sides (Valenzuela, Pinedo, and Maddieson 2001, 282; Valenzuela 2003, 95–96).
• Vowels nasalize after nasal consonants; vowels nasalized in this way behave differently than contrastively nasalized vowels (ibid.).
• Word-initial /β/ despirantizes to [b] in stressed syllables (ibid.; Valenzuela 2003, 97).
• /ɻ/ tends to be variable: intervocalically it is sometimes pronounced [ɹ], and in other cases it is realized as [ʐ] or [ɾ]. In the onsets of stressed syllables, it tends to be pre-stopped, yielding [dz] or [dɹ] [Valenzuela, Pinedo, and Maddieson (2001), pp. 282-283].
• Approximants nasalize before nasal vowels (Valenzuela, Pinedo, and Maddieson 2001, 283).
• /w/ becomes the labiopalatal approximant [ɥ] before high front vowels, and unrounds to [ɰ] before high back vowels (ibid.).
• /ɯ/ fronts to [ɨ] after coronals (ibid.).
• Nasalized vowels spread their nasalization to preceding vowels, if the vowels are adjacent or only separated by approximants (ibid.).
• /o/ raises to [u] before /i/ (Valenzuela 2003, 94).
• Vowels centralize somewhat in closed syllables (Valenzuela, Pinedo, and Maddieson 2001, 283).
• Word-initial /h/ sometimes deletes before /a/ (Valenzuela 2003, 103).
• Between voiceless obstruents, vowels may devoice or delete (ibid.).

References

Elias Ulloa, Jose A. 2006. “Theoretical Aspects of Panoan Metrical Phonology: Disyllabic Footing and Contextual Syllable Weight.” PhD thesis, Rutgers University.

Valenzuela, Pilar M. 2003. “Transitivity in Shipibo-Konibo Grammar.” PhD thesis, University of Oregon.

Valenzuela, Pilar M., Luis Márquez Pinedo, and Ian Maddieson. 2001. “Shipibo.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 31 (2). Cambridge University Press (CUP): 281–85. doi:10.1017/s0025100301002109.

Wise, Mary Ruth, ed. 1993. Diccionario Shipibo-Castellano. Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.