Guahibo language

Last updated
Guahibo
Jiwi
Native to Colombia, Venezuela
RegionCasanare, eastern Meta, Vichada, Guaviare, Guainia states (Colombia)
Orinoco River (Venezuela)
Native speakers
(34,000 cited 1998–2001) [1]
Guahiban
  • Guahibo
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
guh   Guahibo
gob   Playero (Pepojivi)
Glottolog guah1254
ELP Guajibo
  Playero [2]
Guahibo.png

Guahibo, the native language of the Guahibo people, is a Guahiban language that is spoken by about 23,006 people in Colombia and additional 8,428 in Venezuela. There is a 40% rate of monolingualism, and a 45% literacy rate.

Contents

Grammar

Stress

Guahibo has a unique and complex stress system with both primary and secondary stress. The stress system shows a sensitivity to syllable weight so that heavy syllables are always stressed. Both contrasting trochaic and iambic patterns are found on morphemes in nonfinal morphemes with more than two syllables:

TrochaicIambic
('LL)('LL)
mátacàbi "day"
(L'L)(L'L)
tulíquisì "bead necklace"

The binary feet are parsed from left to right within each morpheme. Morphemes with an odd number of syllables leave the final syllable unstressed (and unparsed into feet):

TrochaicIambic
('LL)L
wánali "crystal"
(L'L)L
wayáfo "savannah"
('LL)('LL)L
pàlupáluma "rabbit"
(L'L)(L'L)L
culèmayúwa "species of turtle"

Morphemes that consist of two syllables and are also word-final are an exception to the above and only have the trochaic pattern:

TrochaicIambic (with reversal)
('LL)
náwa "grass fire"
('LL)
púca "lake"

These morphemes alternate with an iambic pattern when placed in a nonfinal context. Thus náwa keeps its trochaic pattern with the addition of a single light syllable morpheme like -ta "in":

náwa + -tanáwata ('LL)L

However, an iambic word show its underlying iamb when it is followed by -ta:

púca + -tapucáta (L'L)L

Affixation generally does not affect the stress pattern of each morpheme.

Heavy syllables since they are required to be stressed disrupt perfect trochaic and iambic rhythms. However, morphemes with a sequence of at least two light syllables show contrasting stress patterns:

TrochaicIambic
('LL)('H)
nónojì "hot peppers"
(L'L)('H)
jútabài "motmot"

Primary Stress. Primary stress generally falls on the rightmost nonfinal foot. For example, the following word

(ˌLL)(ˈLL)L (pà.lu).(pá.lu).ma "rabbit"

has primary stress on the rightmost foot (pa.lu) which is not word-final. However, the rightmost foot (qui.si) in

(LˈL)(LˌL) (tu.lí).(qui.sì) "bead necklace"

is word-final and cannot receive primary stress; the primary stress then falls on the next rightmost foot (tu.li). Placing a light syllable suffix -ta "with" after a four syllable root shows shifting of primary stress:

(LˈL)(LˌL) tsapánilù "species of turtle"
(LˌL)(LˈL)L tsapànilúta "with the turtle"

With the addition of the suffix, the root-final foot (ni.lu) is no longer word-final and is subsequently permitted to accept primary stress.

Writing system

Guahibo alphabet (Kondo 1985) [3]
Uppercase A B C D E Ë F I J L M N O P Q R S T Th Ts U W X Y
Lowercaseabcdeëfijlmnopqrstthtsuwxy
Unified Guahibo alphabet (1986) [4]
abdefijj̈ (x)klmnoprsttjtsuüwy

Phonology

Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive plain p p t t k k
aspirated tj
voiced b b d d
Fricative ɸ f s s x j̈/x h j
Trill r r
Affricate t͡s ts
Nasal m m n n
Lateral l l
Approximant w ~ β w j y

A /w/ sound can also range to a [β] sound within words.

Vowels [5] [6]
Front Central Back
Close i i ɨ ü/ë u u
Mid e e o o
Open a a

Sounds / a , e / can have allophones of [ ə , ɛ ]. Vowels can also be nasalized as /ã, ĩ, ẽ, õ, ũ, ɨ̃/. [5]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. Guahibo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Playero (Pepojivi) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. Endangered Languages Project data for Playero.
  3. Kondo 1985, p. 7–9.
  4. Queixalós 1988.
  5. 1 2 Kondo, Victor, Riena (1967). Phonemic Systems of Colombian Languages.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. Kondo, Riena W. (1985). From Phonology to Discourse: Studies in six Colombian languages. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.