Last updated: 2019-10-04
Background
Language Family: Language Isolate
- Yuracare is spoken in central Bolivia.
Phonology
Consonants
- All consonants can geminate (Van Gijn 2006, 21), represented by duplicate graphemes.
- Van Gijn (2006) explains that /dʲ/ is an affricate without fricativization (p. 23); however, this implies that it is merely a palatalized stop, which I have opted to treat as such in the inventory.
- Although /h/ is said to be in complementary distribution with /k/ most of the time, there are instances where the distribution is not predictable, thus I will treat /h/ as an independent phoneme, just as Van Gijn (2006) does (pp. 24-25).
- Consonants that appear in loanwords from other language inventories are often altered (Van Gijn 2006, 26–27):
- /f/ is realized as [p]
- /ʎ/ is realized as [l]
- /r/ is realized as [ɹ]
- /ɡ/ is realized as [h] or [k]
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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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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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t d dʲ
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k
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Affricates
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tʃ
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Fricatives
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s
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ʃ ɹ̝
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n
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ɲ
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Approximants
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w
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l
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j
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Note: The labial stops are ordered voiceless and voiced. The alveolar stops are ordered voiceless, voiced, and palatalized. The postalveolar fricatives are ordered voiceless and voiced, but the one on the right is a non-sibilant.
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Vowels
- Orthographically, duplicate vowels exist (Van Gijn 2006, 27–28); however, vowel length is not contrastive. Rather, they are realized as part of different syllables (p. 44).
- Vowel harmony is present during affixation among non-high vowels (Van Gijn 2006, 35).
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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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æ
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a
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Alphabet
- The Crúbadán corpus seems to follow the orthography of Ribera, Rivero, and Rocha (1991; as cited in Van Gijn 2006, 30) Therefore, I will base my transcription off that source.
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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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/æ/
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i
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/i/
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j
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/h/
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l
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/l/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n/
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ñ
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/ɲ/
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o
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/o/
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p
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/p/
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r
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/ɹ̝/
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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/; /w/
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/w/: syllable finally
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ü
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/ɨ/
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y
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/j/
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Digraph
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ch
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/tʃ/
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dy
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/dʲ/
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hu
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/w/
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syllable initially
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qu
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/k/
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preceding /i/ and /e/
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sh
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/ʃ/
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Lenition Rules
- /k/ often changes to [h] following a vowel (Van Gijn 2006, 24).
- Word-final vowels and syllables may be deleted (Van Gijn 2006, 37).
Misc. Rules
- Glottal stop epenthesis optionally occurs between duplicate vowels (Van Gijn 2006, 22); however, it is often unpronounced.
References
Ribera, Julio, Walter Rivero, and Ascencio Rocha. 1991. Vocabulario Yuracaré-Castellano, Castellano-Yuracaré. Équipo Pastoral; MISEREOR.
Van Gijn, Rik. 2006. “A Grammar of Yurakaré.” PhD thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen. doi:10.5167/UZH-84700.