Shipibo (also Shipibo-Conibo, Shipibo-Konibo) is a Panoan language spoken in Peru and Brazil by approximately 26,000 speakers. Shipibo is a recognized indigenous language of Peru.
Dialects
Shipibo has three attested dialects:
- Shipibo and Konibo (Conibo), which have merged
- Kapanawa of the Tapiche River, which is obsolescent
Extinct Xipináwa (Shipinawa) is thought to have been a dialect as well, but there is no linguistic data.
Phonology
Vowels
- and are lower than their cardinal counterparts (in addition to being more front in the latter case): , , is more front than cardinal : , whereas is more close and more central than cardinal . The first three vowels tend to be somewhat more central in closed syllables, whereas before coronal consonants (especially ) can be as central as .
- In connected speech, two adjacent vowels may be realized as a rising diphthong.
Nasal
- The oral vowels are phonetically nasalized after a nasal consonant, but the phonological behaviour of these allophones is different from the nasal vowel phonemes .
- Oral vowels in syllables preceding syllables with nasal vowels are realized as nasal, but not when a consonant other than intervenes.
Unstressed
- The second one of the two adjacent unstressed vowels is often deleted.
- Unstressed vowels may be devoiced or even elided between two voiceless obstruents.
Consonants
- are bilabial, whereas is labialâÂÂvelar.
- is most typically a fricative , but other realizations (such as an approximant , a stop and an affricate ) also appear. The stop realization is most likely to appear in word-initial stressed syllables, whereas the approximant realization appears most often as onsets to non-initial unstressed syllables.
- are alveolar , whereas is dental .
- The distinction can be described as an apicalâÂÂlaminal one.
- is velar, whereas is palatal.
- Before nasal vowels, are nasalized and may be even realized close to nasal stops .
- is realized as before , as before and as before . It does not occur before .
- is a very variable sound:
- Intervocalically, it is realized either as continuant, with or without weak frication ( or ).
- Sometimes (especially in the beginning of a stressed syllable) it can be realized as a postalveolar affricate , or a stop-approximant sequence .
- It can also be realized as a postalveolar flap .
References
Bibliography
- Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. .
- Elias-Ulloa, Jose (2000). El Acento en Shipibo (Stress in Shipibo). Thesis. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima - Peru.
- Elias-Ulloa, Jose (2005). Theoretical Aspects of Panoan Metrical Phonology: Disyllabic Footing and Contextual Syllable Weight. Ph.D. Dissertation. Rutgers University. ROA 804 https://web.archive.org/web/20060219075222/http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?id=1107.
- Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages (pp. 13âÂÂ67). Austin: University of Texas Press. .
- Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp. 46âÂÂ76). London: Routledge.
- Loriot, James and Barbara E. Hollenbach. 1970. "Shipibo paragraph structure." Foundations of Language 6: 43âÂÂ66. (This was the seminal Discourse Analysis paper taught at SIL in 1956âÂÂ7.)
- Loriot, James, Erwin Lauriault, and Dwight Day, compilers. 1993. Diccionario shipibo - castellano. Serie LingüÃÂstica Peruana, 31. Lima: Ministerio de Educación and Instituto LingüÃÂstico de Verano. 554 p. (Spanish zip-file available online http://www.sil.org/americas/peru/show_work.asp?id=928474530143&Lang=eng) This has a complete grammar published in English by SIL only available through SIL.
External links