A Phonemic Analysis of the Apurinã Language

a. Consonants:/t/ [t y ] - vl. alveolar palatalized stop. Occurs only after a close high front vowel andbefore /ε/.[t] - vl. alveolar stop. Occurs elsewhere and fluctuates freely with [t y ] in itsenvironment.[d] - vd. alveolar stop. Fluctuates with [t] but occurs so rarely as to give littlebasis for a statement of conditioning. By analogy with [b] and [g] it maybe assumed that its occurrence is not conditioned by environment./k/ [k y ] - vl. velar palatalized stop. Occurs only before /ε/.[g y ] - vd. velar palatalized stop. Fluctuates with [k y ] but is rarely heard.[k] - vl. velar stop. Occurs elsewhere. On rare occasions it fluctuates with [k y ]before /ε/.[g] - vd. velar stop. Fluctuates freely with [k] in all environments, although insome words one or the other of the allophones may be consistentlypreferred. The voiceless allophone is probably more frequently used thanthe other./ȼ/ [ts] - vl. alveolar affricate. There is no voiced allophone for this phoneme. Thedistaste noted for the voiced allophone of /t/ is here carried to the point ofexclusion./č/ [tš] -[dž] -vl. alveopalatal affricate.vd. alveopalatal affricate. Fluctuates with [tš] but is rarely heard. It has onlybeen observed in stressed syllables and the voicing is light./r/ [ř] - vd. alveolar flap.[ľ] - vd. alveolar lateral flap. Fluctuates with [ř] but is rarely heard./s/ [s] - vl. alveolar grooved fricative.[z] - vd. alveolar grooved fricative. Fluctuates with [s] but is of rare occurrence. Ithas only been observed in stressed syllables and the voicing is light./š/ [š] - vl. alveopalatal grooved fricative.[ž] - vd. alveopalatal grooved fricative. Fluctuates with [š] but rarely occurs. Ithas only been observed in stressed syllables and the voicing is light./m/ [m] - vd. bilabial nasal./n/ [ñ] - vd. alveopalatal nasal. Occurs only after /i/ and when followed by a low orback vowel.[n] - vd. alveolar nasal. Occurs elsewhere./w/ [w̃] - vd. high close back rounded nasalized non-syllabic vocoid. Occurs onlybetween nasalized vowels.[w] - vd. high close back rounded non-syllabic vocoid. Occurs elsewhere.31