Piratapuyo language
Piratapuyo is a Tucanoan language of Brazil and Colombia, spoken by the Piratapuyo.
Phonology
Consonants
do not occur word-initially, and is rare in this position.All consonants but and have a nasal allophone before nasal vowels. For the voiced plosives, these are the nasal stops. The others include voiceless and voiced, and. An example is 'there's none', pronounced.
are labialized after a back vowel. In the sequence, where C is voiceless, is devoiced in careful enunciation; at normal conversational speed it is elided entirely, resulting in a sequence, where C is aspirated. If the elided is a back vowel and is not, C may be labialized as well, though in almost all cases the two vowels are the same.
has a tendency to become before front vowels ; it may also be lightly fricated elsewhere. likewise may be fricated, or even an affricated when not nasalized.
Non-nasal tends to when it occurs after a non-front vowel and before a front vowel, and to elsewhere: →.
Vowels
Instead of positing six oral vowels and six nasal, the language has been analyzed as having a suprasegmental feature of nasalization that applies to all vowels and to all susceptible consonants in the word.have a high-mid allophone that occurs before other vowels in hiatus and before velar consonants.
All vowels may be glottalized when followed by.
Devoicing of vowels is common. In the sequence, where is a non-glottal voiceless consonant (that is,, and the first syllable has low tone and the second high/accented, is preaspirated: that is, the voicing of ends before the consonant begins. If the first consonant is also the entire vowel may be devoiced in normal and especially in rapid speech.
Tones
There are two phonemic tones: high and non-high. Successive high tones are each higher than the preceding.Phonotactics
Syllables may be up to CCVC, where the only initial consonant cluster is and the only final consonant is.When syllable-final is followed by or, the two are sometimes separated by an epenthetic echo vowel.