Last Updated: 2020-07-02
Background
Language Family: Uto-Aztecan / Southern / Sonoran / Tarahumaran / Guarijio
- Also referred to as Guarijío, Huarijío is spoken in northwestern Mexico.
Phonology
Consonants
- Consonants do not geminate (Caballero 2007, 5).
- Glottal stops only appear word-medially (Armendáriz 2005, 11).
|
|
Place of Articulation
|
|
Manner of Articulation
|
Labial
|
Alveolar
|
Postalveolar
|
Palatal
|
Velar
|
Glottal
|
|
Stops
|
p
|
t
|
|
|
k
|
ʔ
|
|
Affricates
|
|
|
tʃ
|
|
|
|
|
Fricatives
|
|
s
|
|
|
h
|
|
|
Nasals
|
m
|
n
|
|
|
|
|
|
Flaps
|
|
ɾ
|
|
|
|
|
|
Approximants
|
w
|
|
|
j
|
|
|
Vowels
- Vowel length is not contrastive (Caballero 2007, 5). However, free variation among long and short vowels does occur (Armendáriz 2005, 15).
- When the repetition of vowels occurs, if the second one is stressed, they are realized as individual syllabic vowels rather than a long vowel (Armendáriz 2005, 15). Duplicate vowels will be transcribed as short if the second one does not have a stress marking. An acute accent (´) is put over vowels to indicate stress (Miller 1993, 25).
|
|
Front
|
Central
|
Back
|
|
High
|
i
|
|
u
|
|
Mid
|
e
|
|
o
|
|
Low
|
|
a
|
|
Alphabet
|
Grapheme
|
Phoneme
|
|
a
|
/a/
|
|
e
|
/e/
|
|
h
|
/h/
|
|
i
|
/i/
|
|
j
|
/h/
|
|
k
|
/k/
|
|
m
|
/m/
|
|
n
|
/n/
|
|
o
|
/o/
|
|
p
|
/p/
|
|
r
|
/ɾ/
|
|
s
|
/s/
|
|
t
|
/t/
|
|
u
|
/u/
|
|
w
|
/w/
|
|
y
|
/j/
|
|
’
|
/ʔ/
|
|
Digraph
|
|
|
ch
|
/tʃ/
|
Syllable Structure
- Syllables in Huarijío generally consist of CV or CVV (Armendáriz 2005, 19–20). Holistically, however, they are said to follow the form of (C)V(C) (Miller 1993, 23), the codas of which mainly consist of /h/, /ʔ/, /m/, and /n/. Word-final consonants are also prohibited.
- Consonant clusters are rare, appearing as a result of contractions (Miller 1993, 24) or syllable boundaries (Armendáriz 2005, 10).
Lenition Rules
- Voiceless stops /p/ and /k/ become voiced intervocalically if the following vowel is not accented (Miller 1993, 25).
- /t/ becomes /ɾ/ intervocalically in environments following a stressed syllable (Miller 1993, 25).
Misc. Rules
- Vowel disharmony plays a role in Huarijío when concerning the addition of suffixes (Armendáriz 2005, 26): If the vowel of the root is low, the vowel of the suffix will be high and vice versa.
- Reduplication of prefixes is abundant in Huarijío (Haugen 2014, 5).
- Word-initial vowels may be preceded by /h/ or a glottal stop (rare) (Miller 1993, 28).
- /w/ word-initially can be realized as [b] (Miller 1993, 27).
- /s/ palatalizes preceding /i/ (ibid.).
- Preceding /i/, /e/, and /u/, /ɾ/ may be realized as retroflex (ibid.).
References
Armendáriz, Rolando Gpe. Félix. 2005. “A Grammar of River Warihío.” PhD thesis, Rice University.
Caballero, Gabriela. 2007. “‘Templatic Backcopying’ in Guarijio Abbreviated Reduplication.” Morphology.
Haugen, Jason D. 2014. “Laryngeals in Guarijío (Uto-Aztecan): Synchrony.” In In Proceedings of the Workshop on the Sound Systems in Mexico and Central America.
Miller, Wick R. 1993. Guarijio de Arechuyvo, Chihuahua. EL COLEGIO ED MEXICO.