Nukak language
Encyclopedia
The Nukak language is a tone language, perhaps part of the small Nadahup (Makú) language family. It is mutually intelligible with Kakwa.
The vowel [u] becomes the labial semivowel [w] in several environments: in postnuclear position (when it appears immediately after the nuclear vowel of a morpheme), before another vowel, and at the beginning of the word or syllable. The semivowel [w] is devoiced (IPA symbol [ʍ]) if the tone
rises and the following vowel is [i], [ĩ], [ɨ].
The vowel [i] becomes the palatal semivowel [j] in postnuclear position.
The following table of consonant phonemes shows each phoneme followed by the corresponding letter in the Nukak alphabet, where different.
/ɺ/ is pronounced [t] when followed by /t/, and [d] when preceded by a voiced consonant. If /ɟ/ is preceded by [t] or [ʔ] it is pronounced voiceless [t͡ʃ]. With some infixes or prefixes, /ʔ/ is replaced by /n/ when it is followed by any vowel or by /h/ or in nasal [n] suffixes.
The voiced palatal allophones [ɟ] ~ [ɲ] can be considered variants of the vowel [i] when they precede a vowel in the initial position of a root or of an affix, or when they lie between two vowels.
s, verb
s, and adjective
s bear tone. Nukak has two tonemes (minimal pairs exist between them): high and rising. In the surface phonology there are also a low tone and a falling tone. The rising and falling tones are accompanied by lengthening of the vowel. However, the falling tone has been analyzed as actually being the allomorph of the high tone in closed syllables ending in an occlusive consonant or [h], or in morpheme final open syllables. Unaccented syllables always bear the low tone.
The high and rising tones occur only in monosyllabic, monomorphemic lexeme
s. Multisyllabic morphemes are stressed on the first syllable.
. The grammatical and lexical meanings expressed by prepositions in the Indo-European languages are expressed by suffixes in Nukak. Adjectives, which are not inflected for grammatical gender, usually follow their head noun.
s. The plural of animate nouns is indicated with the suffix -wɨn. Case markers include the following:
Depending on the noun lexeme, the vocative case is expressed by a tone change; by the suffix -a; or by duplicating the nuclear vowel after the root final consonant.
Nouns can take tense suffixes, e.g., -hîpî' , "that [masculine] which came before", and a question suffix, -má' . The connective formative -tɨ expresses either coordination with another noun, i.e., "also", or the clause conjunction, "and".
Noun classifying suffixes are common: -na' (long and slender), -da' "small and round", -dub "small, slender, and pointed", -nɨi "flat and thin", -ne "longhaired", -yi "abundant, profuse".
Possessive pronouns are free forms: wî' "mine", mí' "yours singular", aî' "his", mi'î' "hers", wîi' "our", ñí' "yours plural, i'î' "theirs". The relations "my, your, her", etc. are expressed with prefixes on the possessed noun: wa "my", ma "your singular", a, "his", mi "her", hi "our", ñi "your plural", i "their". In conjugation, the same prefixes are agent (subject) markers. They occur either with or without personal pronouns.
de'e hin "with whom?", the genitive de'e î' "whose?". Interrogatives combine with tense markers as in jáu' ra' ("due to what?" + recent past).
(past, present, future) and mood
(imperative, desiderative, interrogative). For example:Future
- nátu'
Conditional -'náno'
Present
Interrogative
Desiderative -iná- ("perhaps")
Planeative -ɨí' - ("to plan" an action)
Repetitive -pî- ("repeatedly")
Agentive -rít ("because", "due to")
The imperative mood
is formed by duplicating the last vowel of the verb stem, after the root final consonant or semivowel. The vowels [u] and [i] are pronounced as semivowels [w], [j] when duplicated after the final consonant.
The past imperfect is formed by suffixing to the stem the duplicate of the last vowel in the stem plus [p]: (-VC-Vp). The combination of the past imperfect suffix with the marker -tí´ marks a past subjunctive. jɨm "to be"; jɨmɨ "may have been",; past imperfect jɨmɨp "was"; subjunctive preterite jɨmɨptí´ "if it were".
Verbal negation is expressed in different ways: with the suffix -ka, which comes between the verb root and the tense, mood, and aspect markers; with certain prefixes to the verb stem; with the words yab´ , "no", dɨi´ , "refuse", îí´ , "without effect" . Negative commands have a specific marker, -kê´ .
There are many compound verbs. The elements may be two or more verb roots or they may be a verb root plus a noun, adjective, or adverb. The marker -a converts an intransitive verb root into a transitive verb.
Verbs are nominalized with the suffixes -hát, either el objeto para actuar or the abstract idea of the action, -pe' , the affected object, participle [sic]. The agent of the action is indicated with the agentive ("actance") prefix and a suffix expressing person and number. The agentive suffixes are -ni' for the first persons, second persons, and third person singular feminine; -ni for the third person singular masculine; and -nit for the third person plural. To these may be added the marker for imminence, currently in progress, or emphasis, -yé' .
All verb roots end in a consonant or semivowel. The meaning "to be" can be expressed in two ways: explicitly with the verb jɨm or tacitly through the various interrogative markers along with the personal pronouns, and occasionally with another verb, yit, which has the emphatic form yittí' , "I am".
Vowels
There are six oral and six nasal vowels.| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i ĩ | ɨ ɨ̃ | u ũ |
| Middle Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
ɛ ɛ̃ | ʌ ʌ̃ | |
| Low Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
a ã |
The vowel [u] becomes the labial semivowel [w] in several environments: in postnuclear position (when it appears immediately after the nuclear vowel of a morpheme), before another vowel, and at the beginning of the word or syllable. The semivowel [w] is devoiced (IPA symbol [ʍ]) if the tone
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
rises and the following vowel is [i], [ĩ], [ɨ].
The vowel [i] becomes the palatal semivowel [j] in postnuclear position.
Consonants
There are eleven consonant phonemes: /p/; /b/ (realized as [m] with a nasal vowel, otherwise as [mb] at the start of a word, and as [bm] at the end of a word); /t/; /d/ (realized as [n] with a nasal vowel, otherwise as [nd] at the start of a word, and as [dn] at the end of a word); /tʃ/ (realized as [ts] or [tʃ] in free variation); /ɟ/ (realized as [ɲ] in a nasal environment); /k/; /ɡ/ (realized as [ŋ] in a nasal environment); /ɺ/ (lateral sonorant, alternating with the approximant [ɹ], the tap [ɾ], and the lateral approximant [l]); /h/; /ʔ/ (the glottal stop).The following table of consonant phonemes shows each phoneme followed by the corresponding letter in the Nukak alphabet, where different.
| labial Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| occlusive voiceless | p | t | tʃ (c) | k | ʔ (') |
| occlusive voiced | b ~ m | d ~ n | (ɟ ~ ɲ) | ɡ ~ ŋ | |
| fricative voiceless | h | ||||
| lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... vibrant Vibrant In phonetics, a vibrant is a rhotic consonant which is either a tap or a trill. The term is sometimes used when it is not clear whether the r-sound in a language is a tap or a trill. Spanish has two vibrants, and , while English outside Scotland and Ireland has none.... |
ɺ (r) |
/ɺ/ is pronounced [t] when followed by /t/, and [d] when preceded by a voiced consonant. If /ɟ/ is preceded by [t] or [ʔ] it is pronounced voiceless [t͡ʃ]. With some infixes or prefixes, /ʔ/ is replaced by /n/ when it is followed by any vowel or by /h/ or in nasal [n] suffixes.
The voiced palatal allophones [ɟ] ~ [ɲ] can be considered variants of the vowel [i] when they precede a vowel in the initial position of a root or of an affix, or when they lie between two vowels.
Tones
The nuclear vowels of nounNoun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s, verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s, and adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s bear tone. Nukak has two tonemes (minimal pairs exist between them): high and rising. In the surface phonology there are also a low tone and a falling tone. The rising and falling tones are accompanied by lengthening of the vowel. However, the falling tone has been analyzed as actually being the allomorph of the high tone in closed syllables ending in an occlusive consonant or [h], or in morpheme final open syllables. Unaccented syllables always bear the low tone.
The high and rising tones occur only in monosyllabic, monomorphemic lexeme
Lexeme
A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word. For example, in the English language, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN...
s. Multisyllabic morphemes are stressed on the first syllable.
Typology
The default word order in sentences is subject–object–verb (SOV). In any case, the subject always precedes the object. Verbs are conjugated for person. The language is agglutinativeAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
. The grammatical and lexical meanings expressed by prepositions in the Indo-European languages are expressed by suffixes in Nukak. Adjectives, which are not inflected for grammatical gender, usually follow their head noun.
Noun
The Nukak nouns are marked for gender, number, and case. There are two grammatical genderGrammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
s. The plural of animate nouns is indicated with the suffix -wɨn. Case markers include the following:
- accusative -na
- dativ -ré' ("to")
- instrumentalInstrumental caseThe instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
-hî ("with") - locative -rí' ("in", "by")
- genitive -î ' ("of", "belongs to")
Depending on the noun lexeme, the vocative case is expressed by a tone change; by the suffix -a; or by duplicating the nuclear vowel after the root final consonant.
Nouns can take tense suffixes, e.g., -hîpî' , "that [masculine] which came before", and a question suffix, -má' . The connective formative -tɨ expresses either coordination with another noun, i.e., "also", or the clause conjunction, "and".
Noun classifying suffixes are common: -na' (long and slender), -da' "small and round", -dub "small, slender, and pointed", -nɨi "flat and thin", -ne "longhaired", -yi "abundant, profuse".
Pronouns
| Singular, subject | Singular, object | Plural, subject | Plural, object | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First (I, we) | wéem | wéna | wíit | wítta |
| Second (you sg., you pl.) | méem | ména | yéeb | yebmna |
| Third masculine, close to speaker | nin | ninna | kéet | kéeta |
| Third masculine, less close to speaker but visible | kan | kanna | kéet | kéeta |
| Third masculine, far from speaker, not visible | kun | kunna | kéet | kéeta |
| Third feminine, close to speaker | nin' | nin'na | kéet | kéeta |
| Third feminine, less close to speaker but visible | kan' | kan'na | kéet | kéeta |
| Third feminine, far from speaker, not visible | kun' | kun'na | kéet | kéeta |
Possessive pronouns are free forms: wî' "mine", mí' "yours singular", aî' "his", mi'î' "hers", wîi' "our", ñí' "yours plural, i'î' "theirs". The relations "my, your, her", etc. are expressed with prefixes on the possessed noun: wa "my", ma "your singular", a, "his", mi "her", hi "our", ñi "your plural", i "their". In conjugation, the same prefixes are agent (subject) markers. They occur either with or without personal pronouns.
Interrogative words
déi ("what?" "which" referring to things), de pán "what?" referring to actions, háu'ka, de'e "who?", déimɨnɨ "when?", ded "where?", jáu' why?". They combine with various other markers, e.g., case suffixes: the allative de' yúkú "towards where?", the instrumentalInstrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
de'e hin "with whom?", the genitive de'e î' "whose?". Interrogatives combine with tense markers as in jáu' ra' ("due to what?" + recent past).
Verbs
Verbs are conjugated with a subject prefix and with suffixes and infixes expressing aspect (continuous, immediate); tenseGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
(past, present, future) and mood
Grammatical mood
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
(imperative, desiderative, interrogative). For example:
- PastPast tenseThe past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
-
Future tense
In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,...
-
- dubitative -
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
- imperfect -náka
- negative -kaná
- continuing -né'
- past -yáa
- future -pî'
- conditional -no'pî'
- present -ráa'
- negative -
The imperative mood
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
is formed by duplicating the last vowel of the verb stem, after the root final consonant or semivowel. The vowels [u] and [i] are pronounced as semivowels [w], [j] when duplicated after the final consonant.
The past imperfect is formed by suffixing to the stem the duplicate of the last vowel in the stem plus [p]: (-VC-Vp). The combination of the past imperfect suffix with the marker -tí´ marks a past subjunctive. jɨm "to be"; jɨmɨ "may have been",; past imperfect jɨmɨp "was"; subjunctive preterite jɨmɨptí´ "if it were".
Verbal negation is expressed in different ways: with the suffix -ka, which comes between the verb root and the tense, mood, and aspect markers; with certain prefixes to the verb stem; with the words yab´ , "no", dɨi´ , "refuse", îí´ , "without effect" . Negative commands have a specific marker, -kê´ .
There are many compound verbs. The elements may be two or more verb roots or they may be a verb root plus a noun, adjective, or adverb. The marker -a converts an intransitive verb root into a transitive verb.
Verbs are nominalized with the suffixes -hát, either el objeto para actuar or the abstract idea of the action, -pe' , the affected object, participle [sic]. The agent of the action is indicated with the agentive ("actance") prefix and a suffix expressing person and number. The agentive suffixes are -ni' for the first persons, second persons, and third person singular feminine; -ni for the third person singular masculine; and -nit for the third person plural. To these may be added the marker for imminence, currently in progress, or emphasis, -yé' .
All verb roots end in a consonant or semivowel. The meaning "to be" can be expressed in two ways: explicitly with the verb jɨm or tacitly through the various interrogative markers along with the personal pronouns, and occasionally with another verb, yit, which has the emphatic form yittí' , "I am".