Wichita language: Encyclopedia II - Wichita language - Sounds

Wichita language - Sounds

Wichita has been claimed to be unusually asymmetrical at a phonemic level, though this is less apparent at a phonetic level.

Wichita language - Consonants

Wichita has 10 consonants. In the Americanist orthography generally used when describing Wichita, [ts] is spelled <c>, and [j] <y>.

• Labials are generally absent, occurring in only two roots: kammac to grind corn and camma:ci to hoe, to cultivate.
• Nasals are allophonic. The allophones r and n are in complementary distribution, and the bilabial nasal m occurs in the two verb roots mentioned above.

Wichita language - Vowels

Wichita has 4 clusters of vowel-quality allophones:

These are transcribed as i, e, a, o.

Word-final vowels are devoiced.

Rood argues that [o] is not phonemic, as it is often equivalent to any vowel + /w/ + any vowel. For example, [awa] is frequently contracted to [ó:] (the high tone is an effect of the elided consonant). There are relatively few cases where speakers will not accept a substitution of vowel + /w/ + vowel for [o]; one of them is [kó:s] 'eagle'.

Rood also proposes that, with three vowels that are arguably high, mid, and low, the front-back distinction is not phonemic, and that one may therefore speak of a 'vertical' vowel inventory (see below). This also has been claimed for relatively few languages, such as the Northwest Caucasian languages and the Ndu languages of Papua New Guinea.

There is clearly at least a two-way contrast in vowel length. Rood proposes that there is a three-way contrast, which is quite rare among the world's languages, although well attested for Template:Ll. However, in Wichita, for each of the three to four vowels qualities, one of the three lengths is rare, and in addition the extra-long vowels frequently involve either an extra morpheme, or suggest that prosody may be at work. For example,

(Note that it is common in many languages to use prosodic lengthening with demonstratives such as 'there' or 'that'.)

This contrasts with Mixe, where it is easy to find a three-way length contrast without the addition of morphemes.

Under Roods analysis, then, Wichita has 9 phonemic vowels:

Wichita language - Tone

There is also a contrastive high tone, indicated here by an acute accent.

Wichita language - Syllable and phonotactics

While vowel clusters are uncommon (unless the extra-long vowels are clusters), consonant clusters are ubiquitous in Wichita. Words may begin with clusters such as [kskh] (kskhaːrʔa) and [rh] (rhincʔa). The longest cluster noted in Wichita is five consonants long, counting [ts] as a single consonant /c/: nahiʔinckskih 'while sleeping'. However, Wichita syllables are more commonly CV or CVC.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Sounds", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki