Chacon 2014

A Revised Proposal of Proto-Tukanoan Consonants and Tukanoan Family Classification
Author(s): Thiago Chacon

Source: International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 80, No. 3 (July 2014), pp. 275-322
Published by: University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/676393
Accessed: 31-12-2015 12:54 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Journal of
American Linguistics.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 129.82.28.144 on Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:54:47 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
A REVISED PROPOSAL OF PROTO-TUKANOAN CONSONANTS
AND TUKANOAN FAMILY CLASSIFICATION 1
Thiago Chacon
Universidade Católica de Brasília
This paper presents a reconstruction of Proto-Tukanoan consonants and the classifica-

tion of the family based on shared phonological innovations. The proposed reconstruction
contrasts with previous comparative studies of the family by proposing a series of laryn-
gealized stops (instead of voiced stops) and a different set of sounds for the alveolar and
palatal points of articulation. Methodologically, it considers lexicostatistical methods to
play a secondary role in the classification of languages in the Tukanoan family. It o ffers
a detailed discussion of contact vs. inherited linguistic traits in the Tukanoan family
and in the Vaupes region, well known for its multilingualism and system of linguistic
exogamy, and concludes with an interpretation of the evolution of the Tukanoan family
in historical terms.
[Keywords: Amazon, Tukanoan family, historical linguistics, language classification,
language contact]
1. Introduction. The Tukanoan family comprises some 29 languages, 2

of which eight are probably now extinct. A comprehensive list of Tukanoan
1 This article is the result of several years of comparative research on Tukanoan languages.
Special thanks go to Aryon Rodrigues, who provided me the opportunity to begin comparative
research on the Tukanoan family while I was still an undergraduate student at the University
of Brasilia; to Lyle Campbell, Bob Blust, Patience Epps, and several other professors and col-
leagues, who helped me with supervision and comments on earlier versions; and foremost to
Kristine Stenzel, Elsa Gomez-Imbert, and Denny Moore, who reviewed the paper for IJAL and
helped me with the organization and content of the final version.
2 There has never been any systematic attempt by researchers to distinguish between language
and dialect in Tukanoan languages, a task that is made especially difficult because of the tendency
to correlate language and ethnicity in the Tukanoan language-speaking groups. Some Eastern
Tukanoan languages might well be classified by an outsider as dialects of each other, given the
limited phonological and lexical distinctions between them (e.g., tan, ret, and yah, or bas and
edu). However, language is a very important marker of social identity of all groups in the region,
and speakers are highly aware of linguistic distinctions and pay attention to small details that
justify treating “dialects” as distinct languages. This paper focuses on genetic classification across
major subgroups in the Tukanoan family rather than on the specific relationships of dialects or
between very closely related languages. It cannot (due to space and data limitations) provide
data for each specific language/dialect listed in (1) above; however, throughout the preparation
of this paper, I have observed that dialects or very closely related languages share fundamental
phonological features that, on the one hand, support this reconstruction and classification of
languages in the family and, on the other, are sufficient to continue classifying them as distinct.
[IJAL, vol. 80, no. 3, July 2014, pp. 275–322]

© 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0020–7071/2014/8003–0001$10.00
275
276 international journal of american linguistics
languages and their ISO codes, as well as information about whether the
language is still spoken († = extinct), is given in (1). 3
(1) Languages of the Tukanoan family
Arapaso† (ara) (ISO code: arj); Bará (bar) (ISO code: bao);
Barasano (bas) (ISO code: bsn); Desano (des) (ISO code: des);
Eduria (edu) (ISO code: bsn); Karapana (kar) (ISO code: cbc);
Koreguahe (kor) (ISO code: coe); Kubeo (kub) (ISO code: cub);
Kueretu† (kue) (no current ISO code); Maihɨki (mai) (ISO code:
ore); Makaguahe† (mag) (ISO code: mcl); Makuna (mak) (ISO code:
myy); Miriti-Tapuya† (mir) (ISO code: mmv); Pirá-Tapuya (pir)
(ISO code: pir); Pisamira (pis) (no current ISO code); Retuarã (ret)
(ISO code: tnc); Sekoya (sek) (ISO code: sey); Siona (sio) (ISO
code: snn); Siriano (sir) (ISO code: sri); Tama† (tam) (ISO code:
ten); Tanimuka (tan) (ISO code: tnc); Tatuyo (tat) (ISO code: tav);
Tetéte† (tet) (ISO code: teb); Tukano (tuk) (ISO code: tuo); Tuyuka
(tuy) (ISO code: tue); Wanano (wan) (ISO code: gvc); Yahuna†
(yah) (ISO code: ynu); Yupua† (yup) (no current ISO code); Yuruti
(yur) (ISO code: yui)
Tukanoan languages are found in four different South American countries—
Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru—and are widely distributed throughout
the Northwest Amazon, from the Vaupes and Ayari Rivers (western affluents
of the Rio Negro), through the Apaporis, Caquetá/Japurá, Putumayo / Iça, and
Napo Rivers, all northern tributaries of the Solimões/Marañón River. They
are surrounded by Cariban, Nadahup (Makuan), Arawakan, Witotoan, Boran,
and Tupian languages, as represented in the map in figure 1.
The first attempted classification of Tukanoan languages was by Brinton
(1891; 1892), who grouped certain Tukanoan languages, along with Betoi
and Japu, into a single Betoya stock. This classification was challenged by
Beuchat and Rivet (1911), who identified Betoi as a Chibchan language. The
term “Tukano / Tucano” has been used to identify the languages presented in
(1) above since then.
The most widely accepted classification of Tukanoan languages was pro-
posed by Mason (1950), building on Beuchat and Rivet (1911) but incorpo-
rating additional linguistic, geographic, and ethnographic information. He
Thus, although I may use a token to represent a sound change shared by dialects or closely related
languages, I always acknowledge to which dialect/language the token belongs.
3 There are many alternate names of the languages listed in (1), especially given the com-
mon practice in South America for groups to be known by heteronyms, which are very often
derogatory, while still keeping their autonyms, which have gained recognition by outsiders over
the past few decades. The following are the most common and/or recent names found in the
literature: Bara ~ Waimaha, Southern Barasano; Eduria ~ Taiwano; Kubeo ~ Pamie; Pira-Tapuyo
~ Wa’ikhana; Pisamira ~ Pápiwa; Maihɨki ~ Koto, Orejón, Maihuna; Retuarã ~ Letuama; Tukano
~ Ye’pa Masa; Siona ~ Piojé, Zeona; Wanano (Guanano) ~ Kotiria; Yuruti ~ Wahiara.
tukanoan family classification 277
Fig. 1.—The Tukanoan family and neighboring languages.
divided the Tukanoan family into two major branches: Eastern Tukanoan (et),
comprising Tuyuka, Bará, Pirá-Tapuya, Wanano, Tukano, Yurutí, Karapana,
Tatuyo, Kubeo, Makuna, Barasano, Miriti-Tapuya, Desano, Siriano, Let-
uama, Tanimuka, Koretu, and Yauna—languages spoken in the Apaporis and
Vaupes River Basins of the Brazilian–Colombian border region; and Western
Tukanoan (wt), comprising Maihikɨ [Orehon], Koreguahe, Tama, Sekoya,
Siona, Makaguahe, and Teté—languages spoken in western Colombia, eastern
Ecuador, and southeastern Peru, on the Caquetá, Putumayo, and Napo Rivers.
Mason’s (1950) classification was challenged by Waltz and Wheeler (1972),
who proposed a third—Middle Tukanoan—branch that actually included just
one language, Kubeo, representing a “midpoint” between wt and et languages.
Waltz and Wheeler’s (1972) reformulation was based on comparison of 278
words from 16 Tukanoan languages, gathered in the early years of the Summer
Institute of Linguistics’ (SIL) missionary work in Colombia. Their classifica-
tion of the family utilized lexicostatistical methods, though they presented
some phonological correspondences and a few inconsistent proto-sound re-
constructions. Only one wt language, Siona, was represented.
Many SIL publications, catalogs of South American languages (e.g., Tovar
and Tovar 1984), and Ramirez (1997b) followed Waltz and Wheeler’s analysis.
However, the “Middle Tukanoan” branch has remained loosely defined. Barnes
(1999), for example, added Letuama/Retuarã and Tanimuka and changed

its name to “Central Tukanoan” following Malone’s (1986) classification.
These two languages, along with Kubeo, had been previously classified as et
by Mason (1950). Franchetto and Gomez-Imbert (2003) and Gomez-Imbert
(2011) suggest that the Barnes (1999) classification of Kubeo, Tanimuka, and
Letuama as “Central Tukanoan” is biased, due to the fact that these are the
Tukanoan languages mostly strongly influenced by contact with Arawakan
languages.
Other comparative Tukanoan studies have focused attention on sub-ar-
eas or subgroupings within the family and have not attempted to consider
systematically both wt and et languages (see Barnes 1980, Wheeler 1992,
Gomez-Imbert 1993, Ardila 1998, Ramirez 1997b, and Gomez-Imbert and
Hugh-Jones 2000).
It is worth mentioning here a few important differences between this study
and previous ones. The first is the greater quantity and overall quality of the
data considered for this study (see 2.1 below). Second, this study focuses on
correspondences across major subgroupings within the family, which allows
us to identify the wider diversity of reflexes crucial for a more precise and
detailed reconstruction of the phonetics and phonology of the proto-sounds
(moreover, this creates conditions for further detailed investigations of each
Tukanoan subgroup).
Third, the present classification more systematically takes the differences
between phonological retention and innovation in the diversification of
Tukanoan languages into account. It also calls attention to cases of potential
borrowings and important morphophonological facts not considered in previ-
ous studies, and provides a critical evaluation of lexical statistical analysis.
Section 2 provides a summary of methods and results, including the clas-
sification of the family, the proto-consonants, and general remarks on how
contact vs. genetic relations are treated. Section 3 presents the correspondences
and reconstructions of individual proto-sounds, along with arguments ques-
tioning previous reconstructions and classifications of the family. Section 4
discusses the diversification and the proposed subgroups within the Tukanoan
family and provides an interpretation of the prehistory of the family. Section 5
gives my conclusions.
2. Summary of methods and results.

2.1. Data. A significant sample of the data that supports the present
reconstruction and classification is given in Appendix A, published online
only. Sources include dictionaries (ranging from 800 to 3,500 words) avail-
able for most of the Tukanoan languages analyzed by members of SIL (see
the bibliography for a complete list), a robust dictionary of tuk (Ramirez
1997a), an excellent Colombian publication with basic phonological and
grammatical information on most Tukanoan languages and the 200-word

Swadesh list for each language (González de Pérez and Rodríguez de Mon-
tes 2000), a very good SIL publication with the complete Swadesh and
Rowe word list plus additional words for most indigenous languages in
Colombia (see Huber and Reed 1992), and Koch-Grünberg’s word lists
(1913; 1914), which are extremely valuable resources on extinct Tukanoan
languages and moreover provide information about the realization of stops
in these languages as they were produced in the early twentieth century.
The data in Appendix A are presented in a chart containing cognate sets
in the representative languages, followed by the gloss and reconstructed
Proto-Tukanoan form. wt languages are in shaded cells. Very closely related
languages are presented in a single column, and the word that occurs usually
represents the language listed first in the column head, always the one for
which better data were available. Subscripts identify words from the second
language in the column, as exemplified in (2) below, where the word for
‘tobacco’ refers to wan and the word for ‘excrement’ refers to pir:
(2) wan
pir
~bɨ’do ‘tobacco’
kɨ’tapir ‘excrement’
Whenever words from both languages are given, they are separated by
a virgule and their order corresponds to the order of the languages in the
column head. Virgules also separate variant forms of the same word in a
single language.
The approximately 150 cognates in Appendix A are those with correspon-
dences across major subgroups of the family and were selected from the total
data set of some 300 words. The basic criteria for identifying cognate forms
were systematic phonological correspondences coupled with like semantics,
although there are cognates with less obvious meaning and form correspon-
dences, such as tuk wese ‘garden’, kor we’se ‘outside’, and kue wese ‘village’.
The cognates in Appendix A are roots following a bimoraic template (C)
V(C)V, as well as a few grammatical morphemes, which are monomoraic CV
(see Gomez-Imbert 2011). Syllables in Tukanoan languages have the form
(C)V(V); some languages do not allow diphthongs (Barnes 1999) and there
are no triphthongs monomorphemically. Some roots are exceptional in that
they seem to present a glottal stop before the middle consonant—(C)VʔCV
(although some grammarians of Tukanoan languages prefer to treat this phe-
nomenon as laryngealization of the vowel because of a “glottal tone” or a
“glottal supra-segment” [see Ramirez 1997b and Stenzel 2007, respectively]).
Words are written phonemically, according to the sources of information for
each language. Tones and stress are not marked given that this information is
not available for most languages and is not under investigation in this study.
In many cases, it was necessary to “phonemicize” the practical orthography

used in the original source in order to provide the consistent phonetic repre-
sentation necessary for readers to follow the diachronic analysis.
Nasalization is marked in two different ways according to the pattern of
nasality in each language and/or word: (1) A tilde (~) before the first letter
of the root indicates that all vowels and voiced consonant segments are pho-
netically nasalized, e.g., kub /~ba/ [mã] ‘macaw’ (see Gomez-Imbert 2004).
This follows from the fact that in almost all Tukanoan languages, a voiced
segment will become nasalized in a nasal syllable or morpheme (thus: /b/ >
[m], /d/ > [n], /r/ > [r̃], /j/ > [ɲ], and /g/ > [ŋ]). 4 (2) In words that have one
nasal and one oral syllable, nasalization is marked on the nuclear vowel, e.g.,
sio /hẽ ka/ [hẽka] ‘firewood’. In this case as well, a voiced consonant in the
same syllable as a nasalized vowel is phonetically nasalized.
The Proto-Tukanoan forms also have nasalization marked for individual
segments: by proto-nasal stops—*m and *n—and by a proto-nasalized vowel.
In most Tukanoan languages, voiced and nasal stops partially merged and
nasalization became a feature of syllables or entire morphemes, rather than
of individual segments (vowels or stops). However, in mai, kor, sio, and sek
(with the exception of the d and n merger in sek), nasal and oral vowels and
stops contrast. Thus, these are the only languages in which nasal stops occur
in the phonemic representations of words (see more on nasality in 3.4 below).
The phoneme d is manifested as [ɾ] intervocalically in oral contexts in most
languages (in kub d → [d] after e and i, [ɾ] elsewhere) and varies between
[n] and [̃ɾ] in nasal contexts. In sio, d is realized as a retroflex stop [ɖ ] word-
initially and is not nasalized. There is a contrast between r and d in intervocalic
position in bas, edu, mak, tan, ret, and yah; intervocalic d is realized as [d],
while r is always realized as [ɾ]. Only kor has r retroflexed word-initially and
realized as [ɾ] intervocalically, neither of which is ever nasalized.
Post-aspiration is systematically written only in kor and wan, where it is
phonemic, although pre- and/or post-aspiration are phonetically pervasive
in voiceless stops in many Tukanoan languages. Glottal stops in synchronic
forms are indicated by an apostrophe (’) and by *ʔ in the reconstructed Proto-
Tukanoan forms. Laryngealized stops in sio and sek are represented here as p’,
s’, and k’ rather than <b>, <z>, and <g> (see Wheeler 1987a and Johnson and
Levinson 1990). Moreover, though Velie (1975) and Velie, Brend, and Pow-
lison (1976) state that mai has contrasting voiced simple and pre-glottalized
4 An exception to voiced segments having nasal allophones is found in Maihɨki /g/ accord-
ing to more recent descriptions of the language (Lev Michael, personal communication, 2012),
although Vellie, Brend, and Powlison (1976) describe /g/ having the allophone [ŋ] in nasal
environments. Likewise, /r/ in kor is also never nasalized (see Cook and Criswell 1993). /h/ is
the only voiceless segment reported to be nasalized, in wan (Stenzel 2013), while it is transparent
for nasal harmony in wt languages.
bilabial coronals velar glottal
alveolar alveo-palatal palatal
laryngealized stops p’ t’ tj’ k’ (k’w) ʔ

plain stops p t tj c k (kw)
geminate stops tt kk
fricatives s h
approximants w j
nasal stops m n
Fig. 2.—Proto-Tukanoan consonants.
stops, following these authors, pre-glottalization is not represented here (see

n. 11) (Velie and Velie 1981 and Michael et al. 2011). 5
2.2. Proto-Tukanoan consonants. Proto-Tukanoan consonants are pre-
sented in figure 2. The phonetic realization of each proto-sound is discussed
below in their respective sections. In general, it is possible to infer that
laryngealized stops were realized with creaky voicing; plain stops were
realized with some amount of aspiration; and approximants were realized
with a considerable amount of contact between the articulators. The alveo-
palatal stops and *c, the palatal stop, had overlapping realizations in certain
contexts; *c was also realized with some amount of affrication, i.e., as [tʃ].
Section 3 discusses each proto-sound and its sound change correspondences
individually. Waltz and Wheeler (1972) and Malone (1986) reconstruct *b,
*d, and *g instead of *p’, *t’, and *k’, 6 but 3.3.1 gives crucial reasons for
avoiding a series of voiced stops in Proto-Tukanoan, and important differences
between reconstructions of the coronal consonants in this and previous studies
are discussed in 3.4. It should be noted that the reconstruction in figure 2 is
the first proposal of geminated stops in Proto-Tukanoan (following a sugges-
tion in Gomez-Imbert 2011). Since this study does not focus on vowels, I
am not in a position to confirm Waltz and Wheeler’s (1972) reconstruction
5 The following references that have not been directly cited in this paper are important sources
of data on Tukanoan languages and cultural groups: Alemán M., Lopez H., and Miller (2000)
on Desanol; Cabalzar (2008) on Tuyuka; Hugh-Jones (1979) on Barasano; Jackson (1983) on
Bará; Metzger (2000) on Karapana; Morse, Salser, and Salser (1999) on Kubeo; Piaguaje et al.
(1992) on Sekoya; Smothermon and Smothermon (1993) on Makuna; and Waltz, Simmons de
Jones, and de Waltz (2007) on Wanano.
6 The data in Waltz and Wheeler (1972) was much more limited than the data available for the
present study and they did not consider independent historical sources such as Koch-Grünberg’s
word lists (1913;1914). Another shortcoming in their study, likely due to the lack of overall data
on the family at the time, was their use of correspondences from a limited number of languages
as the basis for their reconstruction of proto-sounds.
Fig. 3.—Classification of the Tukanoan family.
of labialized velar stops (cf. kw and k’w), but I did find some indications and
note in Appendix A that these are very likely reconstructions. Appendix B,
published online only, gives a full representation of all correspondences upon
which the reconstruction of proto-sounds is based.
2.3. Classification of the Tukanoan family. The classification in fig-
ure 3 revises earlier classifications and includes a number of Tukanoan
languages not included in more recent literature. It proposes a more precise
and inclusive classification of languages into subgroups, so that in addition
to the Western and Eastern division, it classifies the et languages into three
subgroups: Southern-et, Western-et, and Eastern-et (the latter further di-
vided into Branch-I and Branch-II). A map of the distribution of the major
branches is given in figure 4.
2.4. On contact and genetic relations within the Tukanoan fam-
ily. One of the greatest challenges in subgrouping closely related lan-
guages that have maintained close contact after their diversification is the
choice of criteria used to disentangle retentions from the common proto-
language, shared innovations, and contact-induced changes.
In this study, subgroup classification is primarily based on shared phono-
logical innovations. Cognate percentages are used only secondarily, for three
reasons: (i) shared lexical items can be retentions, which cannot be used
to propose genetic subgroupings (Campbell 2004); (ii) lexical borrowing
among et languages might be more common than we currently recognize,
based on comparative studies between Tukanoan and Arawakan languages
(see Sorensen 1967 and Aikhenvald 2002); (iii) speakers of closely related
et languages may be more attuned to phonological traits than lexical ones.
Fig. 4.—Distribution of major Tukanoan subgroups.
Point (i) above is perhaps the main issue behind the classification of kub as
Middle/Central Tukanoan in Waltz and Wheeler (1972). Waltz and Wheeler
gave priority to lexicostatistics, and the Kubeo lexicon shows partial simi-
larities to both Western and Eastern Tukanoan languages. Chacon (2013; see
also 2012) shows that Kubeo has retained several lexical archaisms from
Proto-Tukanoan as well as certain grammatical and phonological traits. This is
because Kubeo shares fewer of the areal features found in et languages from
the Papurí and Pirá-Paraná Rivers, a fact also directly related to point (ii).
Point (ii) refers to cases where languages (A) and (B) share fundamental
sound changes but are less alike with respect to vocabulary. 7 Whenever this
contradiction is found, it is possible to find a third language (C) that shares
fewer fundamental sound changes with (A) and (B) but shares more vocabu-
lary with (A), for instance. Normally we find that (C) and (A) have an intense
intermarrying relationship, and their lexical similarities can be attributed to
contact.
7 By “fundamental sound changes,” I mean changes that are both more characteristic of a
consistent sound change shared genetically by distinct languages and that can also be argued to
have occurred earlier than other, more contingent changes. “Non-fundamental sound changes”
are those that can easily occur independently in distinct languages or that represent sporadic but
shared changes based on chance or areal trends.
A few cases illustrating point (ii) are given below. In each case, language
(C) shares more basic vocabulary with language (A), based on the lexical fig-
ures in Ramirez (1997b:15) and those reported in Waltz and Wheeler (1972),
although languages (A) and (B) are more closely related to each other than to
(C), based on phonological innovations that are the basis for the classifica-
tion in figure 3.
bará (A), tukano (B), and tuyuka (C)
desano (A), makuna (B), and tukano (C)
pirá-tapuyo (A), tuyuka (B), and tukano (C)
This follows from the fact that long-term intermarriage practices between
speakers of different languages can engender several types of linguistic con-
vergence, from lexical borrowings to shared phonological and structural traits.
While the sharing of structural features is pervasive in the region and native
speakers are less attuned to it than they are to other types of phonological and
lexical diffusion (see Sorensen 1967 and Aikhenvald 2001a; 2002), we can
suppose that prolonged contact among closely related Tukanoan languages
might produce different results than contact between Tukanoan and non-
Tukanoan languages. This is due both to closer structural and phonological
similarities among Tukanoan languages and to more intense and long-term
multilateral, inter-community linguistic exogamy among et groups than with
groups speaking unrelated languages.
A related factor with a role similar to that of linguistic exogamy is the is-
sue of linguistic sub-areas in the region (i.e., smaller, denser linguistic areas
within a larger, more inclusive one). Linguistic exogamy is, in fact, one of the
social bounds defining local linguistic sub-areas in the Vaupes, but geography
is a more general factor, since marriage alliances and other social relations
not dependent on marriage are always stronger between neighboring groups
(see also Stenzel 2005). 8
In the three sets below, languages (B) and (C) are spoken by groups in
geographically contiguous areas and show greater lexical similarity than do
languages (A) and (B), which actually have a closer genetic relationship based
on phonological innovations.
wanano (A), tuyuka (B), and bará (C)
tukano (A), tatuyo (B), and tuyuka (C)
kubeo (A), barasano (B), and karapana (C)
8 The notion of “linguistic area” needs to be better defined for this region, which would allow
us to understand areal effects within more general geographic zones (e.g., the entire Northwest
Amazon) and those pertaining to particular sub-areas (e.g., the Pirá-Paraná, the Papuri-Vaupes,
the Pirá-Paraná and upper sections of the Papuri, the Tiquie and Vaupes, etc.)
Finally, point (iii) is more speculative but is ultimately related to two

important facts regarding the manipulation of phonological traits among et
languages: (a) subtle phonological differences can be used to differentiate
very similar languages, as Gomez-Imbert (1993; 1999) shows for edu and bas;
and (b) it is very common in the area for certain loans to become etymologi-
cally nativized, e.g., speakers tend to consciously use the correspondences of
phonological features in their own language with cognate loanwords in order
to make the loan sound more native-like.
A good example is the word for the hallucinogenic drink made from the
liana Banisteriopsis caapi, also known as ayawaska. The drink is called gapi
in des, kapi in tuk, and kahi in makuna. Yet we know that these words have
not derived from Proto-Tukanoan because the correspondences do not match
those in other sets of cognates. For example, in regular correspondences, where
des has word-initial g, mak also has g and tukano has ‘zero’. It is likely that
Desano speakers inserted the initial g in gapi to make the loan sound more
native, since other et languages in the area all have k in this position.
The combination of factors (i)–(iii) suggests that although sound changes
can also be borrowed or blocked due to linguistic contact, they should never-
theless be considered the most reliable methodological criteria for proposing a
genetic classification in Tukanoan—especially in cases where we know that the
languages have not been in close bilateral contact. Ultimately, I have attempted
to balance careful consideration of sound changes and contact relations when
explaining problematic cases. Indeed, there are instances, particularly within
the eastern-et branch, where it is extremely difficult to distinguish between
contact and genetic features, itself a sign of intense contact among the groups.
Although not definitive, the results of this study will, I hope, contribute to a
more refined picture of genetic inheritance and contact relations with respect
to Tukanoan languages.
3. The reconstruction of the proto-consonants.

3.1. Plain stops *C. In root-initial position, Proto-Tukanoan contrasted
plain voiceless stops with voiceless laryngealized stops, while in root-medial
position, there was a three-way contrast between plain voiceless stops, la-
ryngealized stops, and geminate stops. Figure 5 presents the reflexes of *p
in these positions.
The cognates in Appendix A that illustrate the correspondences above are,
for root-initial position: armadillo, big, (to) blow, (to) end, father, firewood,
hand/palm, palm weevil, thorn, and tocandira ant; and for root-medial posi-
tion: breast, cara, fishing net, hole, spider, and tooth. hole is exceptional
in des and kub, where *p assimilated to *k’, reflecting as *p’.
The most significant change is *p > h in bas, mak, edu, and all wt languages,
although Wheeler (1992) notes a ∅ reflex of h < *p that occurs exclusively
tan kub des bas tuk wan kar kue mai kor sek sio
p [ɸ] p p h p ph p h h h h h root-initial
p p p h p p p h h h h h root-medial
Fig. 5.—*p reflexes in root-initial and medial positions.
t t t t t th t t t th t t root-initial
t t
d/_ṽ d d t t t t n/_ṽ t th t t root-medial
Fig. 6.—*t reflexes in root-initial and medial positions. “v” stands for vowel.
in the Buenavista village dialect of sio. Gomez-Imbert (2011) states that in

tan p is pronounced as [ɸ] in root-initial position, possibly an intermediate
stage of a *p > h change (this is particularly interesting given the geographic
proximity of tan to bas, mak, and kue). We should note that although bas
and mak share the *p > h change with wt and kue, this fact is irrelevant for
proposing a closer genetic relationship between them, given that this change
is very common cross-linguistically and the languages in question do not
share other fundamental changes pertinent for subgrouping.
wan changed *p > ph root-initially, following a general pattern in which all
reflexes of *C (*p, *t, and *k) in wan became post-aspirated in this position
(see Waltz 2002 and Stenzel 2013). kor also has aspirated reflexes of *C and
*CC (including those where *C’ merged with *C), while in sek and sio, all
voiceless stops (reflexes of *C) are also phonetically aspirated (see Johnson
and Levinson 1990:14 and Wheeler 1987a:84). In many et languages, reflexes
of *C in root-medial position are also phonetically pre-aspirated (e.g., tuk,
des, tuy, wan, pir). These facts suggest that the phonetic realizations of plain
stops in Proto-Tukanoan may have involved aspiration in certain contexts.
Correspondences of *t are given in figure 6, and the Appendix A cognates
that illustrate them are, for root-initial position: fruit sp., grass, and stump/
stick/club; and for root-medial position: duck, hand/palm, mosquito, termite,
thorn, and tocandira ant.
All Tukanoan languages retained *t in root-initial position except for wan
and kor, in which *t > th. 9 In root-medial position, kor also changed *t >
th, while all other languages retained *t, except for kub, des, sir, and yup, in
which we find *t > d / V_V (realized as [ɾ] or [l] in des, sir, and yah, and as
[ɾ] or [d] in kub, the latter occurring after a front vowel). tan, ret, and yah
changed *t > d before a nasalized vowel.
9 The Kubeo exception /d/ in ‘grass’ seems to be conditioned by a sporadic change where
pre-Kubeo *taja [taða] dropped medial /j/ [ð] and voiced word-initial /t/.
k k k k k kh k k k kh k k root-initial
k k g k k k k k k kh k k root-medial
∅/_ṽ tʃ/e,i_ kj/e_
Fig. 7.—*k reflexes in root-initial and medial positions.
t t t t t t t t t t t t *tt
tʃ/_i
k k k k k k k k k k k k *kk
Fig. 8.—Reflexes of *tt and *kk.
The reconstruction of *k in root-initial and medial positions is shown in

figure 7, as evidenced by Appendix A cognates for *k in root-initial position:
capybara, elevated structures, manioc, to sleep, to bite, and woodpecker;
and in root-medial position: ant sp., back, elder, father, fire/firewood, 10
leg/knee/hip, and palm-weevil.
Most Tukanoan languages retained *k in root-initial position, though kor
and wan changed *k > kh. In root-medial position, many languages retained
*k, but des, sir, and yup consistently changed *k > g / V_V; kub retained
*k in most environments but deleted it before a nasalized vowel, suggesting
the cline **k > *g > ∅ (given the pattern of reflexes of *k’ discussed in 3.3
below). wan changed *k > tʃ after front vowels e and i (forms in which tʃ fol-
lows a are the result of a later e > a shift; see Waltz 2002); a similar process
is independently found in kue, where *k > kj after e.
3.2. Geminate stops *CC. Reflexes of root-medial *tt and *kk are
given in figure 8, and the relevant cognates from Appendix A are, for *tt:
charcoal, lake, spirit, to cut, and to plant; and for *kk: heavy, larva,
monkey, parrot, tapir, and water.
There are two major pieces of evidence that indicate that Proto-Tukanoan
had geminate stops. First, des, sir, and yup have t and k root-medially, in
contrast to the correspondences in figures 6 and 7 where they have d and g
respectively. Second, kub changed *tt to tʃ before i and to t elsewhere, whereas
*t changed to r between vowels. There is no evidence that Proto-Tukanoan
had a bilabial geminate.
Additionally, Gomez-Imbert (2011) states that languages in the Pirá-Paraná
sub-area (kar, bas, mak, tan, tat, bar) consistently have phonetic geminate
10 The phoneme /g/ tends to be elided both synchronically and diachronically in many Tu-
kanoan languages. This can explain the shape of pea ‘firewood’ in des. In this language, the
word for ‘father’ is pagɨ, but it is often pronounced as paɨ or simply pɨ, showing the tendency
for /g/ deletion. See 3.1.3 below for more on /g/ in Tukanoan languages.
stops (voiced or voiceless) in root-medial position, resulting in (C)VCCV

stems. Opposition of plain and geminate stops was neutralized in this posi-
tion because all medial consonants underwent gemination. There is no data
to suggest a voiced or laryngealized geminate stop in Proto-Tukanoan; thus,
if Pirá-Paraná languages have voiced geminate stops synchronically, this can
only be explained by a general process of gemination affecting all medial
stops, whether voiceless or voiced.
Languages of the Vaupes area (yur, tuy, tuk, wan, pir, sir, des—with the
exception of kub), as well as sio, have pre-aspiration of voiceless stops in
medial consonant position in (C)VCV stems, such as /peka/ [pehka] ‘fire-
wood’ in tuk. Given that a geminate consonant is composed of two timing
slots (e.g., CC), it is reasonable to postulate, following Gomez-Imbert (2011),
that the first timing slot of voiceless geminate stops was debuccalized: *CC
> hC. This process may have initially affected only geminate stops, and later
extended to all other voiceless stops (and fricatives). As a result, *C and *CC
merged as voiceless pre-aspirated stops in these languages. Interestingly, tuy,
yur, and bar also merged the reflexes of laryngealized stops *C’ to voiceless
pre-aspirated stops (see 3.3). In other languages, such as kub, kor, and mai,
geminates seem to have merged with plain stops with no further phonetic
consequences.
The various types of changes that geminate stops underwent correlate to
geographic sub-areas rather than to genetic subgroups. Languages with pre-
aspiration of *CC stops correspond to the Vaupes/Papurí sub-area, which
includes languages that genetically represent two of the major et branches.
Gemination of all medial stops is found in the Pirá-Paraná sub-area, which
also involves languages from the two major et branches. Interestingly, kub,
spoken on the fringes of both sub-areas, did not undergo either change.
3.3. Laryngealized stops *C’. Few of the Proto-Tukanoan laryngeal-
ized stops *C’ were retained, an understandable outcome given the articu-
latory complexity of *C’. I therefore first consider the reflexes of *C’,
demonstrating why a reconstruction of voiceless sounds with some degree
of glottal constriction is necessary. Section 3.3.1 summarizes the evidence
against the reconstruction of voiced stops (proposed by Waltz and Wheeler
1972 and Malone 1986). Finally, I consider the articulation of *C’—ana-
lyzed here as creaky voicing—in greater detail and discuss laryngealized
stops in areal context. The sound *tj’ is discussed in 3.4.
Consider the reflexes of *p’ in root-initial and medial positions in fig-
ure 9. The cognates in Appendix A that illustrate the reconstruction of *p’
in root-initial position are chili, duck, aracu, inga (fruit sp.), larva, uru-
cum, and white/whitewash; and for root-middle position: ear, foot, land/
territory / region , navel , and yam . The general pattern for the reflexes of
b b b b b b b b / p ʔb p p p’ root-initial
v’p v’p v’p
v’b/_ṽ b b b v’b/_ṽ v’b/_ṽ p h/∅ h h h h root-medial
Fig. 9.—*p’ reflexes in root-initial and medial positions.
r d d r d d r ? ʔd r d ɖ root-initial
t v’t v’t t/l
v’r/_ṽ d d d v’d/_ṽ v’d/_ṽ t n/_ṽ t th t t root-medial
Fig. 10.—*t’ reflexes in root-initial and medial positions.
*p’ in root-initial position are a *p’ > b change in et languages, *p’ > ʔb
(a pre-glottalized bilabial stop) 11 in mai, retention of *p’ in sio, and *p’ >
p in kor and sek.
kue displays a very interesting pattern of variation of <p> and <b> in Koch-
Grünberg’s (1914) orthography. It is reasonable to think that the actual seg-
ment represented by either orthographic symbol was “ambiguous” in terms of
voicing in Koch-Grünberg’s perception. In his transcriptions of et languages
that have true voiced stops, <b> is consistently used. This ambiguity in kue
is possibly linked to the phonetic realization of laryngealized stops in kue
more than a century ago, which may represent a stage in which a distinct
reflex of *p’ was retained.
In root-medial position, *p’ merged with *p in all wt languages (note
figures 5 and 9)—hence, the h reflexes (and those where h > ∅). Merger of
laryngealized and plain stops in root-medial position is recurrent in other
reflexes of *C’ for wt (see figures 10 and 11). There was an unconditional
*p’ > b change in kub, des, sir, yup, bas, mak, and edu; in tan, ret, yah, tuk,
wan, and pir, *p’ laryngealized the preceding vowel: *p’ > v’_, while in kar,
tat, bar, tuy, and yur, vowels did not become laryngealized. In the latter two
groups of et languages, *p’ > b [m] before a nasalized vowel.
11 Although no source of information about mai marks pre-glottalization systematically, it is
remarkable that every word analyzed as pre-glottalized by Velie (1975) and Velie, Brend, and
Powlison (1976) clearly matches the cognates I reconstruct as having *C’. On the other hand,
non-pre-glottalized voiced stops in these sources are reconstructed to different proto-sounds,
especially *w > b. More recently, Lev Michael (personal communication, 2011), who is conduct-
ing a detailed phonological investigation of the language, told me that some of the contrasts
analyzed by Velie (1975) and Velie, Brend, and Powlison (1976) no longer exist in the language.
Consider now the reflexes of *t’ (fig. 10), whose cognates in Appendix A
are traira fish, heavy, wife, and woman for root-initial position, and excre-
ment, aracu fish, three, tobacco, and wait for root-medial position.
All Tukanoan languages changed *t’ > d or r in root-initial position, though
in some, such as yah (Koch-Grünberg 1913) and sio (Wheeler 1987a), d has a
retroflex realization. r in kor is realized as a retroflex tap (Cook and Criswell
1993), and Metzger and Metzger (1973:116) state that kar has a retroflex
allophone of r. These realizations suggest that there were two stages in the
evolution of root-initial *t’: first, **t’ > *ɖ and, later, *ɖ changed to the sounds
currently represented in the correspondences above.
In root-medial position, wt languages merged *t’ with *t, except for kue,
whose reflexes present a number of inconsistencies. The pattern for et lan-
guages is an exact parallel to that of *p’: some languages changed *t’ > d
(kub, des, sir, yup, bas, edu, and mak); some retained t in oral contexts and
changed *t’ > d in nasal contexts, with accompanying laryngealization of
the preceding vowel (tuk, wan, pir, tan, ret, and yah); and others merged
*t’ with *t in oral contexts and changed *t’ > d in nasal contexts (kar, tat,
bar, tuy, and yur).
The phoneme r in kor has an interesting feature that can be explained by a
*t’ > r change. r is the only “sonorant” phoneme in the language that blocks
nasal harmony, while other sonorant phonemes are targets for nasal harmony
(see Cook and Criswell 1993). It seems reasonable to postulate that the reason
for the exceptional pattern of r is because this is the only sonorant segment
historically derived from a non-sonorant sound. Similar facts are found in des
as well (see discussion of examples in figure 12).
kar and tat are special with respect to the reflexes of *t’ because there
is evidence that they first underwent the change *t’ > d (with [d] surfacing
root-initially and [r] root-medially). Later, in non-nasal contexts only, d > r,
while d merged with *n in nasal contexts. The d > r change was possibly an
areal influence from bas and mak, both of which changed *t’ and *n to r. 12
Several examples support this hypothesis: in oral roots, kar r corresponds to
bas r, e.g., kar ria : bas ria ‘river’; whereas in most nasal roots, the initial
alveolar segments are distinct, such as in kar ~diti : bas ~riti ‘charcoal’.
Two objections could be raised for this reconstruction of *t’. First, given
the regular reflexes of *t’ in root-initial position, one could ask: why not
postulate *d or *r instead of *t’? The answer would be that not only does *t’
represent a sound that is consistent with the natural class of laryngealized stops
in Proto-Tukanoan, but reflexes of *t’ resemble those of *p’ in root-medial
12 There seems to be an /r/ isogloss, which is present in most Tukanoan languages of the
Pirá-Paraná and Apaporis Rivers in root-initial position, contrasting with /d/ in et in the Vaupes
sub-area.
∅ k g g ∅ k ∅ k g/∅ k k k’ root-initial
k ∅ g g v’k v’k k k k kh k k root-medial
Fig. 11.—Reflexes of *k’ in root-initial and medial positions.
position and there are no correspondences between wt and et languages of

any set of sounds reconstructible as *r or *d.
Another possible objection is the lack of *r as part of a three-way contrast
with *t and *t’. Such a contrast, however, looks improbable. Only bas, edu,
mak, and kor have a three-way contrast of alveolar stops in root-initial posi-
tion. However, in kor, while r and th are reflexes of *t’ and *t respectively,
t finds no correspondences with words in other Tukanoan languages. 13 Like-
wise, bas and mak contrast r, t, and d in root-initial position: the first two
are reflexes of *t’ and *t, respectively, while d finds no correspondence with
words in other Tukanoan languages (except for d in root-medial position).
I turn now to the reflexes of *k’ (fig. 11). The cognates in Appendix A
supporting these correspondences are, for root-initial position: ear, excre-
ment, flower, hole, stone, tooth, to urinate, and tortoise/turtle; and for
root-medial position: centipede, nose, root, to rub, and to stop. It should be
noted that all the data for the root-medial position are nasalized roots. hole
is exceptional in that tuk has k as a reflex, whereas the expected reflex would
be ∅. This word also presents exceptional behavior regarding reflexes of *p
in des and kub (see above).
In wt languages, root-initial *k’ was retained in sio, as occurred with *t’ and
*p’. kor changed *k’ > k, as did kue and sek, both of which later merged *k’
and *k, similarly to *p’ and *p. mai changed *k’ > g, though in some dialects
g > ∅ (see Velie 1975). In root-medial position, all wt languages merged *k’
with *k, as observed for other root-medial *C’s in these languages.
In et languages, des, sir, yup, bas, edu, and mak unconditionally changed
*k’ > g, similarly to other *C’ reflexes. tuk, tat, bar, kar, tan, ret, and yah
show the change *k’ > ∅ root-initially, while in this position kub, wan, pir,
tuy, yur, and pis changed *k’ > k.
In root-medial position, it is interesting that kub changed both *k’ and *k
> ∅ in nasal contexts, whereas reflexes of *kk are invariably k. This contrast
suggests that kub underwent the following changes: **k’ > *g > ∅ and **k
> *g > ∅ root-medially in nasal contexts. This would be similar to changes
observed in des, sir, and yup, where both *C and *C’ changed to voiced
stops, and in bas, edu, and mak, where *C’ > Cvoiced in root-medial position.
13 Indeed, Cook and Criswell (1993) mention that /t/ is very rare in Koreguaje, while Wheeler
(1992) claims that /t/ appears only in loans.
Similarly to the reflexes of *t’ and *p’, in tuk, wan, and pir, *k’ > v’k in
root-middle position, with laryngealization of the vowel preceding *C’. tan,
ret, yah, kar, and tat (which changed *k’ > ∅ root-initially) and yur, pis, and
tuy (which changed *k’ > k root-initially) merged *k’ with *k root-medially.
The observed similarities between reflexes of *k’ and other *C’ reflexes
support the present reconstruction, though what is actually more interesting
are the types of irregularities found in the reflexes of *k’. For instance, mai has
been analyzed as having pre-glottalized stops ʔb and ʔd (reflexes of *p’ and
*t’), while g is not reported to be pre-glottalized (see Velie 1975 and Velie,
Brend, and Powlison 1976). Also, among et languages there is a split between
those that voiced *k’ root-initially, those that dropped it in a possible **k’ >
*g > ∅ cline, and those that apparently merged *k’ with *k. These changes
involve languages that we have reason to classify as belonging to different
subgroups, indicating that not all languages of each genetic subgroup under-
went the same changes.
Considering what might have caused *k’ reflexes to deviate so strongly
from the more regular patterns observed for other types of *C’, I postulate
three factors that were separately or jointly involved:
(i) Longer retention of *k’: It is likely that *k’ was retained longer than
other *C’ in et languages; this could be responsible for the greater diversity
of reflexes, since each smaller genetic subgroup would have changed *k’
independently from the others. Maddieson (1984:40) states the implicational
hierarchy where if a language has g, then it is very likely to have d and b; thus
it seems that the *k’ > g change took place after those of *p’ > b and *t’ > d. 14
(ii) Structural patterns: Paradigmatic factors related to the structure of
segment inventories from different proto-languages in the evolution of the
Tukanoan family also framed the particular evolution of *k’. It is likely that
these factors were responsible for both the longer retention of *k’ and for its
different reflexes: *k’ > g, **k’ > *g > ∅, and *k’ > k. Maddieson (1984:40,
118) discusses how voicing is more favored in bilabial stops than in velar
stops, which explains why g is often absent from series of voiced plosives.
On the other hand, ejective stops (which, within the glottal class, share many
phonetic similarities with laryngealized stops) show the reverse tendency:
velar ejectives kʔ are more common than bilabial ejectives pʔ. 15
(iii) Contact: Contact could also have played a role in the evolution of *k’.
First, there is evidence for contact-induced changes related to *k’ reflexes
in languages from different Tukanoan subgroups (especially tat influencing
kar). Second, Northern Arawakan languages—which lack g—could have
14 There are only three counterexamples to this generalization in Maddieson’s (1984) data-
base of 317 languages.

15 I thank Elsa Gomez-Imbert for pointing out the importance of internal factors on the
evolution of *k’ in Tukanoan languages.
kub des bas tuk tat sek sio gloss

-wɨ -bɨ -bɨ -pɨ -wɨtat -wɨ -wɨ non-third animate persons
-p’i /
-bi -~bi -~bi -~bi -~witat -pi / -hi -ʔphi third-person masculine
Fig. 12.—*p’ reflexes in bound morphemes.
influenced the reflexes of *k’ in different ways: (a) inducing the dropping
of *g (as perhaps in tuk, bar, tat root-initially, kub root-medially, and as
Aikhenvald 2002 suggests for the influence of Yukuna [Arawakan] on Re
tuarã); (b) preventing the *k’ > g change from taking place or causing a further
**k’ > *g > k change root-initially (as in kub, wan, pir, tuy, yur, and pis). 16
It is unnecessary and quite likely impossible to make a more precise assess-
ment of the correlation of these factors: all three are sound explanations for
the challenging reflexes of *k’.
The evolution of *p’, *t’, and *k’ in bound morphemes is also very il-
luminating for the history of these sounds. Consider the correspondences
shown in figure 12.
While *p’ merged with *p (> h) root-medially in wt languages, it did not
undergo the same change in bound morphemes (alternations of these forms
are discussed in 3.3.3). Also, des -bɨ ‘non-third-person animate’ is opaque
to nasal spreading from a preceding nasal morpheme. This fact can only be
explained synchronically by underlying specifications, since almost all mor-
phemes with initial voiced stops can be nasalized in the language. If it is true
that this morpheme is derived from *-p’ɨ, then we may postulate that when
the initial consonant became voiced, the morpheme still remained opaque to
nasal spreading (since *p’ was opaque to nasal spreading in Proto-Tukanoan;
cf. the behavior of p’ [< *p’] in sio).
Another interesting pattern is the process whereby *p’ > b > w in most
bound forms, especially in et languages. It is nevertheless intriguing that
not all forms display this change. One hypothesis is that the change only af-
fected morphemes with a certain boundness status: i.e., suffixes, being more
closely bound than clitics, underwent the full change, while clitics retained
a more conservative realization of *p’. This could explain why the form for
third-person masculine in sio, which has clitic status, still retains the initial
laryngealized stop (see Wheeler 1987a). However, further investigation of
this hypothesis is still necessary.
I turn now to the reflexes of *t’ (fig. 13) and k’ (fig. 14) in bound morphemes.
16 Contact between Arawak and Tukanoan languages was particularly strong (at least in
historical times) in the cases of kub and wan with Baniwa-Curripaco; ret and tan with Yukuna;
and tuk with Tariana.
tan kub des bas tuk wan kar mai sek kor sio gloss
-de -re -de / case/oblique/
-re -de -de -re -de -de -re -de [-te] [-the] -ʔthe referential
-do -do /
— -dõ -do -ro -do -do -ro -do [-to] — -ʔtho part of a whole
Fig. 13.—*t’ reflexes in bound morphemes.
tan kub des bas tuk wan kar mai sek kor sio gloss
-k’o
-ko -ko -go -go -(g)o -ko -o -o -o -o [-ʔkho] feminine
Fig. 14.—*k’ reflexes in bound morphemes.
Reflexes of *t’ in bound morphemes resemble those observed for the same
sound in root-initial position. It is interestingly, though, that in languages such
as bas, which has a three-way alveolar contrast (d, t, and r), the bound mor-
phemes above have initial r rather than d. This shows a parallel change of *t’
in bound morphemes and in root-initial position, in contrast to its change in
root-medial position, which yielded d. In languages with a two-way alveolar
contrast, all bound morphemes have d.
et languages that changed *k’ > k root-initially, such as kub and wan, exhibit
the same reflex in bound morphemes; likewise, et languages displaying an
initial *k’ > g change in roots, such as bas and des, show the same change in
bound morphemes. In tuk, tat, bar, and kar, the *k’ > g > ∅ change postulated
for root-initial position is also attested in bound morphemes (although in tuk,
g in bound morphemes is still attested in formal speech styles; see Ramirez
1997b). The facts relating to wt languages are more complex, but it appears
that *k’ > ∅ in bound forms in most of these languages, with the exception
of sio, where it was retained.
3.3.1. Evidence against the reconstruction of voiced stops. Both Waltz
and Wheeler (1972) and Malone (1986) proposed the reconstruction of *b,
*d, and *g to account for the correspondences here reconstructed as a la-
ryngealized series. I turn now to evidence supporting non-reconstruction of
voiced stops.
First, in the previous section, we observed that laryngealization of the vowel
preceding *C’ is a recurrent pattern in certain et languages and that languages
lacking this laryngealization are also the ones in which glottal stop *ʔ merged
with ∅. There is no way to account for these systematic differences through
the reconstruction of voiced stops.
Additionally, nasalization triggered the root-medial changes of *p’ > b and
*t’ > d/r in et languages that did not undergo the same changes in non-nasal
contexts—in which they reflected a voiceless realization of *C’. wt languages,
on the other hand, retained voiceless stops in all contexts root-medially (in-
cluding in nasal contexts). Nasalization is cross-linguistically an environment
that can trigger lenition processes, especially those involving voicing, as im-
plied in the evolution of *C’. It thus seems unlikely that nasalization would
trigger devoicing of *b, *d, and *g in those languages.
The same reasoning can be applied to languages that changed *C’ > Cvoiced
root-initially but have voiceless stops in the correspondences of root-medial
*C’. Postulating a voiced series would require an ad hoc explanation for reten-
tion of voiced *b, *d, and *g root-initially and their devoicing root-medially.
Moreover, the retention of laryngealized stops in sio is totally unmotivated
if voiced stops are their assumed diachronic source.
We also observe some intricate assimilation and dissimilation processes
in words in which root-initial *C’ is followed by a plain stop *C with the
same point of articulation, as in the cognates fishing net, spider, to break, to
squeeze, and to swell. These words show diverse resolutions for the sequence
*p’VpV, and such irregularities are taken as evidence of a conflict of differ-
ent laryngeal settings in the articulation of these words, exacerbated by the
fact of both stops having the same point of articulation. Such processes are
common in languages in which stops contrast based on laryngeal features of
[constricted glottis] and [spread glottis] (see Fallon 2002).
Finally, it is worth entertaining the possibility that what I have been treat-
ing as a laryngeal feature associated with stops may actually come from
other sources, such as underlying laryngealized vowels or a low tone. Much
comparative investigation on tones still needs to be done, so it is a bit early
to reject or accept this possibility. Regarding laryngealized vowels, in Chacon
(forthcoming), I list several arguments against their reconstruction, especially
the following ones: (i) no Tukanoan languages currently have laryngealized
vowels phonemically; (ii) there is never a laryngeal trace in an environment
surrounding a proto-nasal stop *m and *n (only surrounding reflexes of *C’);
(iii) the evidence for laryngealized phonemic vowels is so weak that one
would have to assume that they existed in pre-Proto-Tukanoan, making such a
proposal even less concrete. In any case, at this point, I think we have several
reasons to treat laryngealization as a feature of segments when it comes to
the analysis of reflexes of *C’.
3.3.2. Phonetic and phonological basis of *C’ diachronic evolu-
tion. There is ample evidence that the *C’ series was composed of pre-
laryngealized stops presenting creaky voicing. Creaky voice involves vibration
of the vocal folds (in contrast to plain voiceless stops) and is a midpoint
between full closure of the glottis, as for ejectives, and full aperture of the
glottis, as for voiced stops (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996). This partial
closure can explain voiceless reflexes of *C’, while partial aperture can ex-
plain the voiced reflexes. Moreover, the laryngealized feature can elucidate
the presence of laryngealized stops in sio, while also providing an explanation

for why vowels became laryngealized (or have a glottal tone [Ramirez 1997b]
or glottal suprasegmental [Stenzel 2007]) before reflexes of *C’ in certain et
languages in the Vaupes sub-area.
Consider, for instance, the generalized root-initial and medial reflexes of
*C’ in tuk, wan, and pir:
(3a) *C’ > voiced stop / #_
(3b) *C’ > V’C / V_V ]root
These two reflexes can be explained if one holds that the creaky voice
feature of *C’ was realized as pre-laryngealization of the stop. As Ladefoged
and Maddieson (1996:53–54) observe, there is temporal variation between
the constriction of the glottis and the release of the stop with creaky voice:
the larynx can be constricted during the production of the stop, affecting the
production of the following vowel; delayed with respect to the release of the
stop; or constricted before the release of the stop, the assumed Proto-Tukanoan
(or at least Proto-Eastern-Tukanoan) pattern.
Hence, in root-medial position (3b), pre-laryngealization affected the vowel
preceding *C’. This was a synchronic process in the proto-language, but over
time, the vowel was reinterpreted as the true bearer of a creaky voice feature
(or “glottalic tone” [Ramirez 1997b] or “glottal suprasegmental” [Stenzel
2007]) and the stop reinterpreted as a plain, voiceless stop, merging with *C. 17
In contrast, in root-initial position, *C’ did not leave traces of laryngeal-
ization on the following vowel, a fact taken as additional evidence of the
pre-laryngealization effect of *C’. Without a preceding vowel in root-initial
position, the constriction of the glottis necessary to produce creaky voice
might have occurred throughout the production of the whole stop (and not only
before the release of the stop, as was the case root-medially), thus reducing
the phonetic clues for distinguishing creaky voice from modal voice 18 and
making *C’s gradually come to be perceived and produced as voiced stops.
17 tuk, wan, and pir changed *k’ > v’k in root-medial position, with accompanying laryn-
gealization of the vowel preceding *C’, as noted in the reflexes of *t’ and *p’. The fact that tuk
root-initial *k’ underwent a different change indicates that laryngealization of vowels preceding
*C’ is a retention from Proto-Eastern-Tukanoan, rather than a more recent innovation.
18 When creaky voice articulation overlaps with the full production of the stop, the acoustic
distinction between creaky voice and modal voice is reduced to different degrees of increas-
ing amplitude (as in creaky voice) or decreasing amplitude (as in modal voice) of vocal folds’
vibration pulses, and to the regularity of the pulses of vibration: in creaky voice, pulses are more
irregular in shape and there are possibly interleaving peaks of smaller duration in the vibration
pulses, whereas in modal voice, pulses are more regular in shape (see Ladefoged and Maddieson’s
1996:54 discussion of creaky voice vs. modal voice in Fula).
There is evidence to suggest that *C’ reflexes are the result of two (or more)
distinct changes, possibly occurring at separate points in time. For example,
while all wt languages merged *C’ with *C in root-medial position, in root-
initial position the reflexes of *C’ are distinct in each language. On the other
hand, while all et languages have voiced reflexes of *C’ root-initially, reflexes
of *C’ root-medially tend to be more diverse.
It is interesting that in languages where *C’ > Cvoiced both root-medially
and root-initially (bas, mak, yup, des, sir, and kub), the change also resulted
in loss of the creaky voice effect on the preceding vowel. Indeed, bas, mak,
and kub also completely dropped *ʔ (see 3.5 for an analysis of *ʔ), while
there is substantial variation within des and sir regarding retentions of *ʔ
(for des, see Kaye 1970 and Miller 1999; for sir, see Criswell and Bandrup
2000). It is moreover curious that Gomez-Imbert (personal communication,
2009) and Kristine Stenzel (personal communication, 2012) report that voiced
stops (reflexes of *C’) in bas and wan respectively are frequently realized
as implosives.
In ret, tan, and yah, *C’ reflexes root-initially are consistent with the et
pattern but vary root-medially: vowels preceding *p’ are always laryngeal-
ized; vowels are only laryngealized preceding *t’ in a nasal environment; and
preceding *k’ vowels are never laryngealized. Also *p’ and *t’ changed to b
and d respectively in nasal contexts.
In mai, *C’ may have changed to a voiced pre-glottalized stop in root-initial
position (see Velie 1976; but also see n. 11) but merged with plain voice-
less stops root-internally following the pattern in other wt languages. In the
process, the laryngeal trace on the preceding vowel was also lost, completing
the merger where there had once been a contrast. Reflexes of root-initial *p’
and *t’ are voiced (and pre-glottalized, thus contrasting with d and b from
different diachronic origins). Pre-glottalization is also attested in words that
historically had *C’ and later became nasalized but still retained the glottal
feature as [ʔm] and [ʔn]. In mai, reflexes of *m and *n are not glottalized,
further suggesting retention of a contrast between *C’ and other C’s. In wt
sio, *C’ was retained in root-initial position, where it laryngealizes the sur-
rounding vowels, which are realized with “little strength and voicing [that]
is minimally perceptible” (Wheeler 1987a:85).
Finally, changes in bound morphemes also seem to have different phono-
logical conditioning from changes occurring in root-initial position at the
stem level, even though in both cases, the C is preceded by a vowel. For
instance, in tuk, des, and wan, there is pre-aspiration of plain voiceless stops
root-internally, while no pre-aspiration occurs before a suffix beginning with
a voiceless stop. This suggests that root-medial changes and those affecting
bound morphemes were conditioned at two distinct phonological levels. Still,
more research on bound morphemes needs to be done, especially given the
fact that Proto-Tukanoan appears to have been less agglutinating and had
fewer inflectional forms than its daughter languages.
3.3.3. Morphophonemic alternations involving *C’ reflexes. Through-
out the Tukanoan family there are morphophonemic alternations that shed
some light on the grammatical past of Proto-Tukanoan and on the early con-
trast of *C’ and *C. In general, such morphophonemic processes involve the
alternation of a lenis form, such as g, with a fortis form, such as k or kh, which
can be reconstructed as alternations of *C’ and *C. These alternations involve
rules that are on the frontier between synchrony and diachrony.
In wt languages, suffixes beginning with a stop that is a reflex of *C’ ap-
pear to undergo morphophonemic alternations triggered by the presence vs.
absence of stress. In sio, Wheeler (1987a) states that in unstressed position,
affixes such as -k’o ‘copula’ or -b’ɨ ‘rounded classifier’ surface as [go] and
[bɨ] respectively, while in stressed position they undergo fortition, surfacing
as [kho] and [phɨ], as in (4a) and (4b) respectively. Also, before these stressed
affixes, a glottal stop is epenthesized (adapted from Wheeler 1987a): 19
(4a) saí-maʔì-k’o-k’ò > [saímaʔìgoʔkho]
go-neg-nmz.fem-cop
‘the one that is not going’
(4b) s’iá-t’a-b̀ -t’ɨ > [s’iáraʔph̀ rɨ]
egg-dim-cl.round-dim
‘small egg’
Stressed syllables are a typical environment in which consonantal strength-
ening occurs. Plain stops or aspirated stops can be considered more fortis
than laryngealized or voiced stops (see Fallon 2002 and Lavoie 2001). The
epenthetic glottal stop in sio, according to Wheeler, occurs only in these
alternations before a stop. From a diachronic perspective, one may think of
the glottal as a residual feature of *C’, which is now manifested in the coda
position of the preceding syllable, while the stop is strengthened by aspiration.
In 3.3, we saw that while *C’ merged with *C root-medially in wt lan-
guages, it was retained root-initially and in grammatical morphemes in sio.
In light of these alternations, and considering that stress falls on the second
syllable of roots (assigned left to right) in sio and sek, it is possible that the
merger of *C’ with *C in C2 position in (C1)VC2V roots was triggered by
regular stress placement on the second syllable.
kor has an alternation similar to that observed in sio , even though kor
does not have similar laryngealized stops (see Cook and Criswell 1993). For
instance, -pi ‘agent’ alternates with [hi], while -re ‘complement’ alternates
with [-ʔthe], the glottal ʔ in the latter form also being epenthetic. Its absence
19 An acute accent marks primary stress and a grave accent marks secondary stress.
Point of Non-alternating (underlying

articulation form) of the morpheme Alternate form
wadí-~kóá-bá wadí-bé-há
Bilabial come-enf-perm come-neg-perm
‘yes you may come!’ ‘no, you may not come’
wadí-~kóá-ró-~bi wadí-bé-tó-~bi
come-enf-n.vis-3m come-neg-n.vis-3m
Alveolar ‘he is definitely coming (I hear)’ ‘he is not coming (I can hear)’
wadí-~kóá-gó-~bo wadí-bé-kó-~bo
come-enf-cl.f-3f come-neg-cl.f-3f
Velar ‘she definitely was coming’ ‘she was not coming’
Fig. 15.—Morphophonemic alternations of *C’ and *C reflexes in bas.
in the form [hi] ‘agent’ may be due to the incompatibility of co-articulation

of [h] and [ʔ].
Similar phenomena are attested in some et languages. As Gomez-Imbert
(2004:59) states, in bas there is alternation between b and h, r and t, g and
k in bound morphemes after a “latent consonant” in a preceding morpheme.
Consider the bas examples in figure 15 (adapted from Gomez-Imbert 2004:60),
in which basic, non-alternating forms occur after -~koa ‘emphatic’ while
alternate forms occur after be(ti) ‘negation’. 20
Gomez-Imbert (2004:60–63) explains that these alternations are synchronic
in the sense that the alternate forms of the morphemes surface by a process in-
volving delinking of the manner of articulation features of the initial consonant
of the morpheme (albeit retaining its point of articulation) and assimilation
to the manner of articulation of the preceding latent segment (for a detailed
feature geometric analysis, see Gomez-Imbert 2004). For instance, alterna-
tions such as -go /-ko cl.feminine are triggered by a latent voiceless t, whose
manner of articulation, once linked to the basic form -go, produces alternation
to [-ko]. In cases where the latent stop is voiced, no alternation takes place.
Nevertheless, Gomez-Imbert (2004:63) acknowledges that these alterna-
tions must also be explained diachronically, since in bas, b alternates with
[h] (and not with [p], which occurs only in ideophones and borrowings).
Moreover, in tat, w alternates with [p] (and not with b) and -o alternates with
-ko (where there was an early *g that merged with ∅).
The diachronic explanation for these facts follows the rationale given for
wt languages: basic forms represent late reflexes of *C’ and alternate forms
represent reflexes of *C, mirroring a process of fortition in Proto-Tukanoan.
Thus, in bas, b, r, and g are the respective reflexes of *p’, *t’, and *k’, while
20 The morpheme be(ti) ‘negation’ can surface alternately as [be] or [beti]; see Gomez-
Imbert (2004:60).
the alternate forms h, t, and k are reflexes of *p, *t, and *k. In tat, w (in most
affixes), r, and ∅ are reflexes of *p’, *t’, and *k’ respectively, while p, t, and
k are the alternate reflexes of *p, *t, and *k.
Ramirez (1997b) describes processes in tuk that are very similar to the
alternation in tat. There are some interesting differences, however, such as
the aspiration of all alternate (fortis) forms: w (< *p’) alternates with [ph]; g
or ∅ (< *k’) alternates with [kh]; d [ɾ] (< *t’) alternates with [th].
The reconstruction of *C’ and *C systems in Proto-Tukanoan provides an
elegant explanation for all these alternations in et and wt languages. More-
over, given the similarity of processes observed in both wt and et languages,
these systems constitute a valuable piece of information about the morpho-
phonemics of Proto-Tukanoan.
3.3.4. Regional consideration with respect to *C’. We should note
that languages with glottalized stops often present themselves in clusters
correlating to a specific linguistic area. It is hard to know if this was the case
for Proto-Tukanoan, since there is still much to learn about the history of the
Northwest Amazon.
It is much more common to find full series of glottalized stops in languages
of the Andes than in those of the Amazon, though throughout Amazonia there
are numerous languages with some kind of glottal stop, such as implosives
(in Karajá [Rodrigues 1999], Proto-Arawan [Dixon 1999], Koaia [Aihken-
vald and Dixon 1999], Sabané, Nambikwaran [Araújo 2004]); ejectives (in
Cahuapanan [Wise 1999], Trumai, Wari’, Itonama, Movima [Aikhenvald and
Dixon 1999]); and laryngealized stops (in Wapishana (Cariban) [Ladefoged
and Maddieson 1996], Hup [Epps 2008]).
Rodrigues (2007) reconstructs a full series of glottalized stops in Proto-Tupí.
It is interesting that the correspondences he finds to support his reconstructions
are very similar to the ones presented here for Proto-Tukanoan laryngealized
stops. For instance, *p’ in Proto-Tupí is based on correspondences of p’ : p
: w : b : ∅; *t’ is based on correspondences of t : l : d : s : h : ∅; *k’ is based
on correspondences of k : ʔ : ∅ (Rodrigues 2007:172, 198).
Hup, a Nadahup (also referred to as Makuan) language of the Vaupes, is
described by Epps (2008) as having a complex series of laryngealized conso-
nants. The phonetic properties of these stops make the “following vowel . . .
consistently laryngealized; in other words, pronounced with ‘creaky voice’”
(Epps 2008:89). This post-laryngealization represents the crucial difference
between Hup and Proto-Tukanoan laryngealized stops. It is possible that Hup
laryngealized consonants are historically derived from a cluster of voiceless
stop plus a glottal stop, as Epps (2008:107) indicates. This might explain why
Hup has a full series of laryngealized consonants, including laryngealized
palatal glides, which are rare cross-linguistically.
One could wonder whether Proto-Tukanoan laryngealized stops might also
be derived from a similar cluster. Unfortunately, the data does not provide clear
evidence to support the hypothesis. For instance, there are no correspondences

similar to the Hup case, illustrated by Hup words with the form CʔV that are
cognates of Yuhup words with CVʔV form. There is no evidence suggesting
that a vowel was deleted between a voiceless stop and a glottal stop, trigger-
ing the formation of a consonant cluster in Tukanoan languages. Finally, we
have reason to believe that in Proto-Tukanoan there was pre-laryngealization
of glottalized stops, which would be even more difficult to derive from a
voiceless stop–glottal stop cluster (note 3.3.2). Hence, *C’ in Proto-Tukanoan
appears to be distinct from Hup laryngealized consonants, strengthening the
argument for an original series of *C’ segments.
3.4. Coronal consonants. This section presents the reconstruction of
all coronal sounds with the exception of *t and *t’, which were presented
in 3.3 above. Changes involving *s, *tj, *tj’, *c, and *j are so complex and
implicated in one another that they must all be discussed together. They
constitute the hardest reconstruction enterprise in this study. 21
Several mergers occurred at alveolar, alveopalatal, and palatal points of
articulation throughout Tukanoan linguistic history. The most extreme case
of merger is kub, where all sounds—except the glide *j—changed to h. 22 The
typical situation is found in languages such as tuk, bas, and kor, where all
sounds merged with j and either an alveolar or alveopalatal consonant, such
as s or c. The most conservative language with respect to the early contrast
in Proto-Tukanoan is sio, which is also the most conservative language with
respect to *C’. In sio, there is still a contrast of s, s’, tʃ, and j, where the only
changes that happened were the merger of *tj with *s, and the change *tj’
> s’. It is important to bear in mind that while there are many overlapping
changes in different languages, not all of them are shared innovations; rather,
many are independent or contact-induced changes.
Figure 16 illustrates the most representative reflexes of Proto-Tukanoan
coronal sounds in a variety of contexts. The following cognates illustrate the
correspondences above:
(i) *j root-initially: kapok, deer, grandfather, heron, i, jaguar, land/
territory/region. *j root-medially: bat, cheek, dance/ritualized
songs, elevated structure, grape, snake, to smoke meat.
(ii) *s root-initially: back, coati/monkey sp., red, to smoke meat. *s
root-medially: cold, peccary, to know, toucan, urucum.
21 In the preparation for this paper and in different publications, I have hesitated about the
exact reconstruction of *tj, *tj’, and *c sounds. Sometimes I have thought them to be alveo-
palatal affricates: *ts, *ts’, and *tʃ. However, *tj, *tj’, and *c sounds were chosen because they
do more justice to the range of existing reflexes and the assimilation processes in the history of
Tukanoan languages.
22 Kubeo currently has a phoneme /tʃ/, though it is a late development (Chacon 2012).
Context tan kub des yup bas tuk bar tat wan kar pis kue mai kor sek sio
*j #_ j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j
V_V]STEM j j j j j s h h s s tʃ j j j j j
~V_V]STEM j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j
Vlow_Vlow c
*s #_ h h s s c s h h s h h s s s s s
V_V h h s s c s h h s s tʃ s s s s s
tʃ/_i
*tj #_ h h j ts j j j j j j j t s s s s
s/_e s/_e tʃ/ _ i
V_V]stem h h s ts c s h h s s tʃ t s s s s
*c #_ h h s tʃ c s h h s h h t s s s tʃ
*tj’ #_ j h j j j j j j j j j j d j s’ s’
/ #_ i r h d d r d d r d r d r [l] j j s’ s’
Fig. 16.—Reflexes of *s, *tj, *tj’, *c, and *j.
(iii) *tj root-initially: cold, insect sp., peccary, tree. *tj root-medially:
capybara, hot, people, you all.
(iv) *c root-initially: dove, navel, to gather/collect. (No
correspondences root-medially.)
(v) *tj’ root-initially: black, blood, to chew, distant, egg, face, poison,
river, tongue/liver, to chew.
The sound with the most regular reflexes is *j, which, nevertheless, merged
with *tj, *s, and *c in root-internal position and non-nasal contexts in tuk,
bar, tat, wan, pir, kar, pis, tuy, and yur.
*s, *tj, and *c have very similar reflexes in many Tukanoan languages. The
data supporting the reconstruction of *tj are the correspondences of s in sio,
sek, kor, mai : t in kue : ts in yup : and j in des, bas, tuk, bar, tat, wan, pir,
kar, pis, tuy, and yur. In most cases, *tj merged with *s and *c in root-medial
position. The stop *c, on the other hand, was retained in sio, bas, pis, and
yup, and in kue *c has the reflex t (the same as for *tj, indicating a merger
of *c and *tj with *t). Otherwise, *c seems to have merged with *s in most
languages. For its part, *s was retained or changed to h in most languages
and merged with another *c in pis, bas, and in mai preceding i.
The key reflexes of *tj’ are an alveolar stop d or tap r, palatal glide j, the
unique s’ (~ <z>) sound in sio and sek, and kub h, the invariable reflex of Proto-
Tukanoan coronal stops and fricatives in this language. In sio and sek, the
contrast of *tj and *tj’ was retained (though indirectly as s vs. s’ respectively).
tan kub des bas/edu/ tuk wan kar kue mai kor sek sio gloss
mak
{ru’pa} {doba} {doa} ruhiedu duhi duhi ruí — (jũi) (jũ’i) (jũi) (jũ’i) to sit
~dahe hoewe ~dasi race dase dasa rase — jãse jãse jãse ~dahe toucan
riho hihe disi rice ɨ’se dɨse rise / risepu (jo) (ji’obo) (jɨ’o) (ji’obo) mouth
di(t)siyup jise
rupú hipo dipu riho dɨpo dapu rɨpo — ~tʃio ~siho ~sio ~s’iho head
— hita dita itahumak dita — — rita tʃita — — s’itada lake

titayup
Fig. 17.—Murky cases of coronal reflexes.
In mai, *tj’ > d and kor *tj’ merged with *j. This merger also occurred in
most et languages, which also changed *tj > j. Still, *tj’ has different reflexes
before i in non-nasal environments, likely linked to its alveopalatal articula-
tion. The most curious fact is that it inverts the correspondences between
most et languages and mai. While mai had d and most et languages had j as
reflexes of *tj’ in the “elsewhere” environment, *tj’ preceding i in mai has j
where most et languages have d.
Before I analyze in greater detail the phonetics and phonology of this
class of sounds in Proto-Tukanoan, it is important to consider a few more
problematic cases. First, figure 17 shows words that present problematic corre-
spondences or possible suggestions for the reconstruction of different sounds.
head and lake are the only words in figure 17 with cognates across major
branches of the family; nevertheless, while sio and et present correspondences
similar to *tj’ reflexes, mai, kor, and sek have correspondences based on *tj,
*c, or *s. This may be an indication of areal convergence of these three wt
languages. The remaining words in figure 17 do not constitute a correspon-
dence set across the major subgroups of the family. 23
There are two other correspondence sets that are very intriguing because
they show subtle differences from what has been shown so far and could foster
an alternate explanation for how coronal consonants evolved. Consider the
words in figures 18 and 19.
23 The problem with the other correspondence sets is that some words are not cognates and
others are borrowings. For instance, ‘to sit’ is clearly a case of different cognates among et and
wt languages, given that there are no correspondences between wt /j/ and et /d/ or /r/, while the
correspondence between the medial /h/ in some et and /ʔ/ in wt is also not attested. One could
force an interpretation of the root for ‘to sit’ patterning with ‘toucan’. However, ‘toucan’ is very
likely a borrowing from an Arawakan language, e.g., yásene in Tariana, tʃaase in Piapoco, and
yase in Yukuna (see Huber and Reed 1992 and Aikhenvald 2001b). The word for ‘mouth’ is
clearly composed of two cognate sets.
kub des yup bas tuk wan kar mai kor gloss
— pája sasa haya pa’sa pa’sa pasa — — float
wája — waya wa’sa — fish with net

wa’sa strain
wayo beyo wayo remove something away
Fig. 18.—Deviant reflexes of *j.
tan kub des yup bas tuk wan kar sek kor gloss
~haha ~haha ~sada ~sasa ~yaca ~sada ~sada ~yasa sã’sa sã’sa kingfisher
Fig. 19.—Possible case of *tj’ reflex in word-medial position.
The correspondence set in figure 18 is different from the most regular cases
of *j in word-medial position given in figure 16, because bas has j rather than
c between two low vowels. These are the only two examples found for this
pattern. One could account for this set by proposing a distinct proto-sound,
such as a laryngealized *j’ 24 or a combination of glottal stop plus *j. The
latter seems preferable because the stress pattern in the des form conforms to
reflexes of glottal stops in this language (see Miller 1999). 25
Finally, the data in figure 19 could be interpreted as reflexes of *tj’ in
root-medial position. This reconstruction is favored in particular for the d
([ɾ] ~ [n]) reflexes, along with s and h. However, caution is advised: first, it
is likely that some sort of assimilation and metathesis between the two stops
happened in the history of this word; second, the word could also have been
subject to borrowing and/or some sort of sound symbolism. These facts should
be kept in mind for future studies, when additional information can be taken
into consideration.
3.4.1. Phonetics and phonology of the diachronic evolution of coronal
consonants. In this section, I assess allophonic realizations of sibilants,
alveopalatal, and palatal sounds in Tukanoan languages, further supporting
the idea that Tukanoan languages retained a contrast of coronal consonants
until very recently.
The sounds *s, *c, and *tj present several cases of merger in different
Tukanoan languages. The phoneme c in bas (Gomez-Imbert 2004) is the
reflex of *s, *c, and instances of *tj in root-medial position. The Barasana
and Eduria dictionary (Barasana Literacy Committee 2009) acknowledges
24 Although laryngealized glides are not very common, there are some cases in different areas
of the world. Indeed, Hup, a neighboring Nadahup (also known by the derogatory “Makuan”
name) language, also has a laryngealized glide (Epps 2008).
25 This is evidence that the reconstruction of glottal stop (see 3.7) is still only partial, because
it takes into account only glottal stops occurring between two vowels, while the words in figure
18 indicate that the glottal stop can also occur before a glide.
that in bas c can be realized either as [s], in general, or [tʃ] before u: ~cuka
‘baby’ is pronounced [tʃũkã]. The phoneme s also has a [ts] allophone in sek
(Johnson and Peeke 1962:89), which merged *tj with *s, and also in kar
(Metzger and Metzger 1973:128), which merged *s and *c. For pis, which
merged *s with *c, Gonzales de Pérez (2000) analyzes tʃ as a phoneme with
different realizations, the most common being [tʃ], [ts], and [s], depending
on still unclear phonological contexts and also depending on the speaker and
sociolinguistic variation (Gonzales de Pérez 2000). 26 For mai, which merged
*c and *tj with *s, Velie, Brend, and Powlison (1976:15) state that s is in free
variation with the voiceless dental fricative [θ], the latter being more restricted
to speakers with less contact with Spanish speakers, and that s has either [tʃ]
or [ʃ] allophones before i.
Interestingly, Koch-Grünberg’s (1914) transcriptions show that des, wan,
pir, pis, tuy, and the languages of the Pirá-Paraná River systematically had
[ts] and [tʃ] (<ts>, <tx>, and <tš> in Koch-Grünberg’s orthography) as the
equivalents for what has been analyzed as s more recently for most of these
languages. From his data, it is unclear whether these sounds were phonemes
or allophones of a single sound. Since Koch-Grünberg was a speaker of
German—which has contrasts of s, z, ts, and tʃ—it is very likely that his
transcriptions are phonetically accurate.
As an areal consideration on variation in the realization of alveolar and
palatal stops, it is also worth mentioning the realization of c in Hup. Epps
(2008) shows that Hup has a complex set of allophonic realization for c, such
as [ʃ], [tj], and [tʃ], and also presents debuccalization of fricatives, such as the
realization of ç as [jh] in syllable-final position. Debuccalization of fricatives
and affricates also occurred in the history of kub, ret, tan, yah, bar, tat, kar,
and pis in the Tukanoan family.
Reflexes of *j show that this sound also had overlapping realizations with
*s, *c, *tj, and *tj’. Most recent analyses of Tukanoan languages describe j
with very complex allophonic realizations, ranging from a palatalized alveolar
[dj], to the palatal affricate [ʤ], the glide [j], and the post-alveolar approximant
[ð̞] (see also Gonzales de Pérez and Rodrigues de Montes 2000). In tan, the
contrast of [ts] (as the allophone of s) with j is neutralized in word-initial posi-
tion in the speech of elders (Eraso 1999). If we assume that Proto-Tukanoan
*j also had a set of complex allophonic realizations, it is likely that the more
frontal and alveolar allophones of *j would inevitably overlap with *tj and *tj’
and the more posterior realization would overlap with *c and allophones of *s.
26 Recently, Katherine Bolaños (personal communication, 2009), after conducting fieldwork
with the lone Pisamira family that still uses the language on a daily basis, reported their more
frequent use of [s] rather than [tʃ], while among people who do not speak the language on a
regular basis, [tʃ] has been preserved. This is an interesting sociolinguistic situation, showing
that in Pisamira, /s/ is the more recent variant displacing [tʃ].
It is notable that in bas and mak, *j > c only between low vowels, while kub
has an allophonic realization of j as [ð̞] between low vowels (Chacon 2012).
It moreover appears that a dental or alveolar realization of j occurs over an
extensive linguistic area, from the Orinoco Basin to the Caquetá/Japurá River
and all northern tributaries of the Amazon in the same region. Ramirez (2001)
indicates that in Arawakan languages from the Japurá–Colombia divison, *j
has several different alveolar and palatal reflexes, such as j : dz : ts : tʃ : d :
ʤ . These are also attested in several Cariban languages, such as Taulepang,
Makushi (Migliazza 1967), and possibly Dekuana (or Ye’kwana/Ye’kuana),
and in the Yanomaman family, where *j in root-initial position was retained
in Yanomam and Yanomamɨ but changed to tʃ in Yanam (Ninam) and to ts
in Sanɨma (Migliazza 1972).
At some point in the history of different Tukanoan languages, the realiza-
tions of *tj and *tj’ overlapped with *s, *c, *j, *t’, and *t. The sound *tj has
reflexes realized with frication in all Tukanoan languages, which shows that
it probably had ts as one of its allophones before subsequent independent
changes. In wt languages, kue changed intermediate ts independently to s
before e and to t elsewhere and the remaining languages merged ts with *s.
*tj’ was retained until a late period and changed independently in all wt
languages. sio and sek changed *tj’ > s’ in a change sort of parallel to *tj > s.
In et languages, the pattern is much more complex, suggesting late re-
tentions of *tj word-initially and *tj’ elsewhere. In many languages, there
seems to have existed a late merger between *tj’ and *tj with *j. Exceptions
to this late merger are tan, ret, and yah where *tj > h, yup where *tj > ts
(and s before e), and kub where *tj and *tj’ > h. Because these languages are
geographic outliers with respect to the et language that merged *tj and *tj’
with *j, and because we know that yup (which did not undergo that merger)
is very closely related to des and sir (which have undergone the merger), 27
we have independent evidence to believe that the late changes involving *tj
and *tj’ in et are partially a result of areal diffusion.
Although the data are still too complex to allow more solid conclusions, it
seems likely that in et *tj > ts and *tj’ > dz. In a more recent period, *j merged
with ts in word-medial position in eastern-et languages. In word-initial po-
sition, contrast of ts, dz, and j was problematic, as well as that between dz
and reflexes of *t’ before i, which ended up causing several distinct types of
shared, independent, or contact-induced changes.
3.4.2. Morphophonemic alternations involving coronals. There are
synchronic morphophonological processes involving s or c and j in et lan-
guages that also support the complex relations between *j and *tj and *c
and *s.
27 By the time of Koch-Grünberg’s travels in the region, yup was being spoken in an entirely
different geographic area from its most closely related languages, des and sir.
The rationale for these morphophonemic alternations follows that of the

allophonic variation found in reflexes of *C’: j alternates with s, c, or h in
different et languages, alternations that are not fully predictable synchronic-
ally. The process becomes clearer in diachronic perspective if one assumes
that in Proto-Tukanoan, *j alternated with *c (or *tj) in a fortition process
similar to the alternation of *C’ and *C. *c and *tj then merged with *s in
word-medial position and in some languages *s > h.
Examples of this sort of alternation are found in tuk (see Ramirez 1997b).
In (5a), the suffix -ye ‘mass’ occurs on the proximal demonstrative, surfacing
with its basic form. In verbs, the nominalizer suffix for mass/abstract entities
is -sehe [she], as in (5b), which Ramirez analyzes as diachronically derived
from the morpheme -ye preceded by a “nominalizer suffix” -ri (Ramirez
1997b). This suffix behaves almost like the latent segments in bas and tat
(see Gomez-Imbert 2004), triggering the alternations.
(5a) a’ti-ye [a’te]
this-mass
‘this mass thing’
(5b) basa-sehe [bahsashe]
dance-mass.nmz
‘dances/to dance’
A similar alternation is found in bas with voiceless and voiced palatal stops,
while in tat, h is the alternative form, since *s and *c > h in this language
(Gomez-Imbert 2004:60).
3.4.3. Reviewing alternative reconstructions for coronals. To con-
clude this section, I briefly return to Waltz and Wheeler’s (1972) and Malone’s
(1986) accounts of the coronal reflexes. Waltz and Wheeler (1972:131) pro-
posed six consonants in the alveolar and palatal regions: *s, *z, *S, *Y, *c,
and *ʤ (capital letters represent sounds without a precise point of articulation).
The cognates they propose as containing reflexes of *ʤ are the “murky”
ones in figure 17 (all except for ‘mouth’, for which they reconstruct *z). For
*z they reconstruct ‘mouth’ and words that are reconstructed here as *tj’. The
problem in reconstructing *z is the same for the other cases of *C’, where they
reconstructed voiced stops. In addition, the correspondences for ‘kingfisher’
(for which I reconstruct *tj’ root-medially) show reflexes of laryngealized
vowels, similar to *C’. One could alternatively propose *s’ rather than *tj’;
however, *s’ would not be a good proto-sound for explaining the develop-
ment of alveolar plosives in mai, kue, and et languages. Typologically, it is
also more common to find glottalized affricates and plain fricatives, rather
than the reverse (see Maddieson 1984).
Cognate words that contain reflexes of Waltz and Wheeler’s *Y can be re-
constructed to the *tj’ sound proposed here. Also, Waltz and Wheeler (1972)
w w > ∅ /_ṽ w W w w w w/u b/u w w w root-initial
Fig. 20.—*w reflexes.
reconstruct ‘tree’ with *Y, although it clearly belongs to a different correspon-

dence set and must be reconstructed with *tj. Cognate words in figure 17 with
reflexes of *S are all accounted for by reflexes of *j.
Malone (1986) proposed only *s and *j to account for all the correspon-
dences examined in this section, although it seems clear that additional sounds,
besides *s, must be proposed to account for the complexity of the data. Malone
also seems to assume that *j is reflected as alveolar sounds, a point on which
our proposals agree.
3.5. The *w labial glide. *w reflexes are shown in figure 20.
The cognates in Appendix A (online) that illustrate the reconstruction of *w
are the following: fish, house, garden/outside, parrot, spirit, and tapir. All
Tukanoan languages retained *w, except for mai, which in most cases has b
(which should be considered distinct from ʔb, a reflex of *p’, in Velie, Brend,
and Powlison 1976). In the mai word for ‘house’, we find u, an irregular change
from *wɨ’ɨ, probably due to the loss of *ʔ and merger of *w and *ɨ. There is a
tendency to pronounce reflexes of *w with greater friction of the lips in most
Tukanoan languages in root-initial position in non-nasal contexts: in kor, it is
pronounced as [β]; in sio and sek, it is a voiceless bilabial approximant; and
in et languages, it varies from [β] to [ʋ] and [w].
Appendix A has examples of some sporadic changes involving *w that
can be attributed to co-articulatory processes. One such sporadic change oc-
curred when *w preceded a nasalized vowel, changing to b in et and m in wt
languages. This can be seen in the bas and des words for ‘wind’, in the word
for ‘thunder’ in tuk, des, bas, and wt languages (with subsequent denasaliza-
tion in most et languages) and in the word for ‘name’ in wt languages. kub
seems to have dropped *w in all cases of *w preceding a nasal vowel. Another
instance of sporadic change involving *w is in the word for ‘agouti’ in all et
languages, possibly caused by the co-articulation in the proto-sequence *wu.
Notably, co-articulatory processes, as described here, are also relevant for the
reflexes of *p’ discussed in 3.3 above.
3.6. Nasal stops. Nasal stops *m and *n were retained in all Tukanoan
languages both root-initially and medially. Although [ɲ] and [ŋ] also present
systematic correspondences, they are allophones of *j in Proto-Tukanoan
and of g (< *k’) in et languages.
The reflexes of *m are found in the following cognates in Appendix A:
ant, armadillo, hummingbird, macaw, man, mosquito, and path. Reflexes
demonstrating the retention of *n in all Tukanoan languages can be seen in

the cognates: charcoal/grease, inga (fruit sp.), buriti palm, penis, pupunha
palm, root, to stop, to urinate, and woodpecker.
All Tukanoan languages retained an alveolar realization of *n, though in
root-initial position it changed into a tap [ɾ] in bas, mak, ret, tan, and yah. In
these languages, *t’ > r [ɾ] as well, so a merger of *t’ and *n occurred either
before or concomitantly with rhoticization of *t’. This change is fundamentally
different from that of kor, which changed *t’ > r but retained *n, and that of
kar and tat (see 3.3 above).
3.6.1. Nasalization and the emergence of the contrastive feature
“voice.” I now turn to the relationship between nasalization and the evolu-
tion of the feature of voicing in Tukanoan stops. The main historical sources
of nasality in Tukanoan languages are the nasal stops *m, *n and nasal vowels
(Chacon 2009). The correspondences that support the reconstruction of nasal
vowels can be seen in the following cognates in Appendix A: for *ã: cen-
tipede, ear, kingfisher, people, snake, to chew, to sleep, yam; for *̃: leg/
hip/knee, nose, root, stone, wife; for *ĩ: black, palm weevil, wind; for *e ̃ :
grandfather, pecarry; for *õ: back, navel, red, tooth, urucum, woman; and
for *ũ: to bite, tree. 28
In et languages, voiced stops and glides have nasal allophones with the
same place of articulation (/b/ > [m], /d/ > [n], /g/ > [ŋ]—reflexes of *C’) and
are targets for nasal spreading. In most et languages, morphemes are either
all oral or all nasal, though kub and ret can have a mixture of nasal and oral
syllables within the same morpheme. In sio and kor only sonorants—glides
(w and j) and the glottal sounds (ʔ and h)—have nasal allophones and allow
nasal spreading (see Dupont 1988 and Wheeler 2000). mai and sek are two
wt languages that have voiced stops with nasal allophones, but it is possible
to identify phonemic nasal vowels/syllables in all wt languages.
There are two types of rules of nasal spreading in Tukanoan languages.
Their distinctive property has to do with a feature (phonological) change af-
fecting only et languages, mai and sek—the development of a natural class
of voiced stops contrasting with voiceless stops. In sio and kor this did not
occur, despite the fact that sio has a retroflex voiced ɖ. This indicates that
voicing is not a true feature of the phonemic inventories of sio and kor, as it
is for the rest of the family.
Counterintuitively, kor and sio represent the most conservative pattern (keep
in mind that sio is the most conservative language for the reconstruction of *C’
and coronals). The voicing feature is a late innovation in Tukanoan languages
that took place independently in mai, sek, and et languages. When *C’ stops
became voiced, they then merged as a natural class with sonorant segments,
28 It is likely that Proto-Tukanoan had nasalization as a feature of the entire syllable, as is
currently found in wt and kub.
such as *n, *m, *w, and *j (creating the natural class of voiced stops). Hence,
nasalization could assimilate and spread to any voiced segment, merging **m
with *b < **p’, **n with *d < **t’. In sio and kor, however, this merger never
happened (in sek only d (< *t’) merged with *n).
Because Proto-Tukanoan had a consonantal system lacking a natural class
of voiced stops, it is likely that nasal spreading in the proto-language was
similar to the pattern found synchronically in sio and kor. Nasality was trig-
gered by nasal vowels and nasal stops. Syllables with nasal vowels would be
partially nasalized with a non-sonorant stop (*p’ã > [p’ã]) and completely
nasalized with a sonorant consonant (*/jã/ > [ɲã]). Nasal spreading was al-
lowed through sonorant segments and blocked by *C’ and *C.
3.7. Glottal sounds. The two glottal sounds reconstructed for Proto-
Tukanoan, *h and *ʔ, show systematic reflexes only in root-medial position.
The cognates that support the reconstruction of *h are big, pacu fish, heron,
and macaw, while black ink, bone, fish, i, buriti palm, and path support the
reconstruction of *ʔ.
Cross-linguistically, we find that h is often an unstable segment, a tendency
that holds true in Tukanoan languages. wt languages, as well as kub, tan, ret,
kar, tat, yur, tuy, bar, and pis, merged h with ∅. This may have caused a pull
chain in the long term, since in most of these languages *p and/or coronal
fricatives and affricates later changed to h.
We find similar variation in the reflexes of *ʔ, which was dropped in kub,
bas, mak, kue, kar, tat, bar, tuy, yur, pis, and mai (the only wt language
to drop this sound). Among these, kub, kar, tat, bar, tuy, yur, pis, and mai
also dropped *h.
3.7.1. Different sources of ʔ in Tukanoan. The cognates illustrating
the retention of *ʔ represent the instances of ʔ having the widest distribution
across the Tukanoan family. These are considered reflexes of the true Proto-
Tukanoan glottal stop, occurring in words that all had the invariable structure
*(C)VʔV. In descriptions of Tukanoan languages, we nevertheless find other
cases of ʔ that cannot be reconstructed to the proto-language.
The first case is that of words in certain et languages with the template
(C1)VʔC2V, reflexes of *C’ in root-medial position that left a laryngealized
trace on the preceding vowel (see 3.3 above). This laryngeal trace cannot be
reconstructed to wt languages except as reflexes of *C’. Conversely, there
are instances of ʔ in (C1)VʔC2V words in wt that cannot be reconstructed to
Proto-Tukanoan, such as the correspondences bas wese ‘garden’ : tuk wese
‘garden’ : sek we’se ‘outside’ : kor we’se ‘outside’.
Thus, sounds analyzed as ʔ in present Tukanoan languages have a hetero-
geneous history; tone and morphophonological boundaries are likely to be
additional sources of ʔ. It also has distinct phonetic properties: in kor it is
associated with high pitch, in sio and sek it is sometimes associated with stress,
and in some et languages it is associated with low tone and creaky voice on
the vowel. In languages that merged it with ∅, such as mai (see Wheeler 1992)
and bas, it is realized as low tone, while in kub and des it is realized as stress
on the preceding syllable. 29
Gomez-Imbert (2011) proposes the glottal stop in et languages as a default
consonant which appears in sequences of vowels (VV) to restore the canonical
CV syllable template. This is an interesting proposal, which seems to be the
case for the glottal stop *ʔ reconstructed for Proto-Tukanoan. Stenzel (2007)
analyzes a “glottal suprasegment” for wan, which is a nice synchronic solution
for the analytical problems imposed by (C)VʔCV words. The glottal supra-
segmental is restricted to the first mora (vowel) of words and is manifested at
least in some realizations as a low tone and creaky voice (additional acoustic
information can be found in Stenzel and Demolin [forthcoming]). Ramirez
(1997b) refers to a “glottal tone” for tuk and states that an epenthetic glottal
stop [ʔ] can occur at the beginning of words that start with a vowel, another
recognized “default” function of ʔ. In kue, there are some interesting cases
of h epenthesized at the beginning of words, such as wasp, snake, and pacu.
Finally, the role of *ʔ as a default consonant for defining syllable boundar-
ies can be indirectly observed in kar and tat words, where *ʔ > ∅ but other
types of sounds developed as default consonants, usually homorganic with
the articulation of the preceding vowel, as in the words tat õwa : tuk õ’a
‘bone’, tat pɨga : tuk pɨ’a ‘two’. 30
4. Classification and prehistory of the Tukanoan languages.

4.1. The Western and Eastern Tukanoan split. The two changes
shared by all Tukanoan languages are the nasalization of sonorant sounds
in nasal syllables and the change of **t’ in root-initial position to some
intermediate form, not yet voiced, that later would evolve into the present
forms. This change seems to have triggered a group of related changes
involving *C’ stops that highlights the separation of et and wt languages.
The split of Proto-Tukanoan into two branches is attested in reflexes of
*C’ in root-initial position, where all et languages have voiced reflexes,
and wt languages have multiple reflexes, suggesting a late retention of *C’.
Substantially supporting this interpretation, we find that sio (and to some
extent sek as well) retained *C’ in root-initial position; mai seems to have
had pre-glottalized stops, and kue *C’ are given inconsistent transcription
by Koch-Grünberg (1914), i.e., reflexes of *C’ are alternately written with
29 Although this study does not deal with prosody in Proto-Tukanoan, a comparative list of
tones and stress is being prepared and preliminary comparison corroborates the above observations.
30 Thus, cases of bas ∅ : tat g after /ɨ/ do not constitute a dropping of /g/ in bas but an
epenthesis of /g/ in tat.
voiced stops or voiceless stops. A related change that occurred in all wt

languages was the merger of *C’ and *C stops in root-medial position. In
the et branch, *C’ was retained root-medially and different sub-branches
changed it independently.
Another change that seems to have occurred in all wt languages is *tj > s,
whereas et languages have either j, s, or h as reflexes of *tj. kue presents a
unique t reflex, possibly reflecting the fact that it had already separated from
other wt languages. However, changes involving the coronal consonants seem
to have occurred at a later time in most Tukanoan languages, which is evident
in the diversity of reflexes (see 3.4).
The *p > h change is shared by all wt languages, bas, and mak, and perhaps
partially in tan, which has [ɸ]. Among these languages, kor and kue (wt),
bas, mak, and tan (et) also have r (or [l]) as reflexes of *t’. Because changes
such as p > h and d > r are common cross-linguistically, the co-occurrence
of these changes in these languages can be explained either by independent
changes in wt and et or most likely by contact before there was actual geo-
graphic separation (although the languages were already genetically separate
as et and wt; see Wheeler 1992). In this case, a *p > h change in wt might
have diffused to a few et languages. 31
In 3.3, we saw that r as a reflex of *t’ in kor and kue is essentially different
from bas, mak, and tan/ret. kor *n was retained, but in bas, mak, and tan/
ret *n > r in root-initial position; moreover, r in kor is opaque to nasality.
This shows that there was a later change in bas, mak and tan/ret in which
all morpheme-initial alveolar stops changed to r. Another way to view this
situation is to propose that the reflex of *t’ as r in kor comes indirectly from
a *ɖ stage, also present in sio, whereas in et languages, r must have come
from the merger of *d (< **t’) and **n.
4.2. Diversification of wt languages. The Proto-wt consonant inven-
tory was the following:
(6) Proto-wt consonant inventory
p t ts c k
p’ ɖ tj’ k’ ʔ
s
w j
31 It is also worth investigating whether a third language—perhaps Karihona (Cariban)—
might have been in contact with these languages and influenced a p > h change in Tukanoan
languages. (p > h or ɸ occurred in several languages of the Guiana branch of the Cariban family,
of which Karihona is a member. Also, the Karihona ethnonym suggests a debucalization of a
bilabial stop: *karipona > karihona.) For this paper, the evidence is inconclusive.
The earliest split within the wt group was the separation of kue. In fact,
Koch-Grünberg and Tastevin encountered this group on the lower Apaporis
River, evidence that there was also a large geographic separation between
kue and the other wt languages.
kue has unique sound changes in comparison to all other Tukanoan lan-
guages, such as t reflexes of both *tj and *c, and h in word-initial position
corresponding to ∅ in other Tukanoan languages. kue shares some changes
with et languages, notably the reflexes of *tj’, and nasal reflexes of *t’ and
*t in root-medial position. All the changes common to kue and et languages
are additionally shared with ret, tan, and yah, while other fundamental et
sound changes that are absent in ret, tan, and yah are not found in kue.
Koch-Grünberg (2005 [1909]) clearly points out the close contact between
kue and the et languages spoken along the Apaporis and Pirá-Parana Rivers,
especially tan, ret, and yah, so this is another likely case of diffusion of
changes between et and wt languages.
A second split in wt was the separation of mai. Independent changes in mai
include reflexes of *C’ > Cvoiced (and pre-glottalized) stops, *s > tʃ / _i, *tj’
> j or d, *w > b, and *ʔ > low tone (see Wheeler 1992).
The third split was the divergence of kor from sek and sio, which is evident
in the different reflexes of *tj’ and *C’, the development of an aspirated series
as reflexes of *C in kor, and a retroflex r as a reflex of *t’.
4.3. Diversification within et languages. Before the et languages
split into two major sub-branches, they all shared the following fundamen-
tal sound changes: *C’ > Cvoiced root-initially, *p’ and *t’ > b and d root-
medially in nasal contexts. *k’ was likely retained until more recently. Nasal
stops *m and *n had already merged with b and d, and at this point it is
likely that in all et languages, vowels preceding *C’ were laryngealized. In
addition, it is likely that *s, *c, *h, and *ʔ were still present, and *tj’ and
*tj might have evolved into *ts and *dz, giving the following phonological
inventory for Proto-et:
(7) Proto-et consonant inventory
p t ts c k h
b d dz k’ ʔ
s
w j
There are two major sound changes that mark the separation of the two
sub-branches of et: in eastern-et languages *j > s / V_V in all languages. On
the other hand, western-et languages share the fundamental unconditioned
change of *p’,*t’, and *k’ > b, d, and g root-medially. The fact that tan, ret,
and yah do not share any of these specific changes implies that they compose
a different sub-branch of et languages, here referred to as southern-et.
4.3.1. Diversification within the western-et branch. Understanding

the ramifications of western-et languages is very problematic. On the one
hand, a change from *t > d V_V seems to have affected only des, sir, yup,
and kub, a subgrouping in which we also find bas and mak independently
changing *j > c root-medially between low vowels.
On the other hand, kub displays independent changes involving *k’ and *s,
*c, and the alveopalatal sounds, which sheds some doubt on whether bas and
mak, rather than kub, should be classified as more closely related to des, yup,
and sir. However, neither change represents a felicitous cue for classifica-
tion. *s, *c, and the alveopalatal sounds underwent changes and mergers in
languages from all subgroups in the family, some occurring very recently (see
3.4.1). The same rationale is true for *k’, since we saw that there is substantial
evidence across major subgroups in the family that this change also occurred
very recently and has been subject to contact and/or phonotactic pressures
(see 3.3). It therefore seems that the sound changes that support grouping kub,
des, sir, and yup together are better founded. Also, des, sir, and yup changed
*k > g / V_V, which did not occur in other Tukanoan languages.
After the split of bas and mak from the other languages, kub was the next
language to separate. This can be observed in a series of independent changes
in this language, among others, the change of the *s, *c, *tj, and *tj’ to h.
4.3.2. Diversification within the eastern-et branch. There is still
a lot of work to be done among the eastern-et languages, especially with
respect to the languages that occupy the headwaters of the Tiquié, Papurí,
Pirá-paraná, and upper Vaupes Rivers, namely, bar, tat, tuy, kar, pis, and yur.
While it is clear in terms of sound changes that some of these languages are
more similar to tuk (bar and tat) and some are more similar to wan and pir
(tuy and yur), others, such as kar and pis, are extremely hard to classify. To
make things more complicated still, these languages share a complex network
of linguistic similarities, diffusion of linguistic traits, and intense social rela-
tions. Therefore, what follows is a tentative explanation of the diversification
within this et branch.
The first split within the eastern-et branch established two subgroups: (1)
tuk, bar, and tat and (2) pis, kar, yur, tuy, wan, and pir. The change that
suggests this split is *k’ > g > ∅ root-initially in tuk, tat, and bar, while in
the other subgroup *k’ > k. More recently, bar and tat merged *h with ∅ and
further changed *s, *tj, and *c to h, which represents their further split from
tuk. tat additionally changed d > r, possibly due to areal influence from bas
and mak.
In the other subgroup, pis, kar, tuy, and yur merged *ʔ with ∅, while wan
and pir retained it. pis and kar changed *s, *c, and *tj to h in root-initial
position only, while no such change occurred in tuy and yur. From this last
subgroup, wan seems to be the most differentiated language, with several
independent sound changes that can be partially attributed to intense contact

with Arawakan languages (see Waltz 2002, Stenzel 2013, and Stenzel and
Gomez-Imbert 2009).
Many eastern-et languages are very similar in their lexicon and phonologi-
cal and grammatical features. This is due to both a more recent diversification
and intense contact relations through intermarriage. There are clear cases
of phonological and lexical convergence, such as bar and tuy (which are
lexically very similar but display different sound changes) and kar and tat
(which are similar lexically, grammatically, and phonologically). Regarding
this latter pair, I assume that the change of *k’ > ∅ in kar was due to contact
with tat, and that the d > r change in these two languages is due to areal
influence from bas and mak.
An interesting sound change spread throughout languages of the two
eastern-et sub-branches. This was the loss of *h (which must have occurred
before the change *s > h), which occurred in kar, tat, bar, yur, tuy, and
pis. It is possible that this change originated in one branch and diffused to
languages from a different branch. In the western-et branch, kub, tan, and
ret seem to have undergone the same change independently, and subse-
quently changed *s, *tj, and *c to h. If we assume that a similar gap in the
phonological inventory is the main trigger for a change of *s to h, we may
say that the merger of *h and ∅ in the eastern-et branch started in bar and
tat and spread to kar, pis, yur, and tuy. This is evident because bar and
tat completely changed *s to h, which I assume followed a gap left by an
earlier merger of *h with ∅, just as happened in kub, tan, and ret. In con-
trast, kar and pis changed *s > h only root-initially. tuy and yur merged *h
with ∅ but still retained *s, suggesting that the first change occurred more
recently than in bar and tat, recently enough that a pull chain has not yet
developed as it did in other languages.
4.4. Linguistic prehistory of the Tukanoan family. Tukanoan lan-
guages seem to have begun their major split on the Apaporis and Caquetá/
Japurá River hinterlands. While not denying the possibility that Proto-
Tukanoan speakers migrated from a different location (possibly more
downriver), 32 we can infer that the center of dispersion of Tukanoan lan-
guages took place in the region between the Apaporis and the Japurá Rivers.
This hypothesis is based on two assumptions: first, the center of dispersion
of linguistic families is usually where one finds more genetic diversity in
the sister languages; second, this region can explain subsequent migrations
with fewer moves (see Campbell 2004 and Ehret 1976).
32 The creation myths of many (but not all) et groups involve migration from a place in
the Southeast.
The Caquetá/Japurá River is the main route taken by wt languages to

populate the Caquetá/Japurá, the Putumayo / Iça, and the Napo Rivers. There
is evidence that wt groups have been in this vast era since the seventeenth
century (see Bellier 1994). On the Apaporis River, Koch-Grünberg (2005
[1909]) found a single wt language, kue, alongside different languages from
the western- and southern-et branches, mainly tan, ret, yup, yah, and mak.
From the Apaporis, et groups seem to have migrated north and eastward.
These proposed routes of migration take into consideration the presence
of southern-et languages on the Apaporis, the occupation by western-et
languages of the region northward through the Pirá-Paraná, upper Vaupes
(and perhaps a more recent presence of des on the Papurí), and the more
eastern presence of eastern-et languages along the Vaupes, Papurí, and
Tiquié Rivers. Originally, these migrations could have fostered the emer-
gence of dialect continuums, such as bas-mak-kub-des-sir-yup, tuk-bar-tat,
and pis-kar-yur-tuy-pir-wan. 33
While the Vaupes–Apaporis may be considered a broad linguistic area,
the zone between the Pirá-Paraná, Papurí, Tiquié, and small rivers in the up-
per Vaupes above Mitú (Colombia) constitutes a more distinct and intense
linguistic sub-area. It is difficult to assess how long this sub-area has had its
present composition, but based on the linguistic features shared by most of
the languages of this area and not shared with other et languages, we can
reasonably suppose that it has existed since after the split of southern-et
languages and kub from western-et languages.
It is interesting that western-et languages spoken in this area have con-
verged in many structural respects with eastern-et languages. While des,
bas, and mak have marital ties with other neighboring eastern-et groups,
kub, tan, and ret have a more restricted presence in this area, due to both
their relative geographic distance and to distinct marriage alliances, especially
with Arawakan groups. This caused kub, tan, and ret to diverge even more
from other et languages such as des, sir bas, and mak, which share features
from areal diffusion in the Pirá-Paraná/Vaupes linguistic area and gradually
became more alike. In this regard, closer scrutiny of available yup data could
be promising to highlight contact-induced changes into des and sir.
33 The continua proposed here are to be understood as related more to the history of the
languages involved than to the history of the people that speak those languages. It is important
to keep in mind that ethnohistory is distinct from linguistic history; languages and ethnicity
do not necessarily correlate. What is more significant for the Tukanoan case is that an ethnic
group “A” might nowadays speak a language very similar to the language of another group “B.”
Nevertheless, the ethnohistories of groups “A” and “B” might indicate that they have distinct
descent lines, not supporting the linguistic evidence that their language are closely related.
What the ethonohistories may not tell us about are the linguistic processes of convergence and
language shift that lead two ethnically distinct groups to speak the same or similar languages.
In contrast, the divergence of des/sir and bas/mak could have been strength-
ened because of their positioning in distinct linguistic sub-areas. While des and
sir have closer bonds to the Vaupes groups, bas and mak are deeply embedded
in the Pirá-Paraná sub-area. Consequently, they have incorporated different
areal features. For instance, des has pre-aspiration of voiceless stops as reflexes
of geminate-stop simplification, while bas and mak geminated all medial stops.
bas and mak have the isogloss r, which was diffused to tat and kar—two
of the other eastern-et languages in the Pirá-Paraná sub-area—while des
and sir lack it altogether. To explain why tan, ret, and yah also share the r
isogloss, along with kue, we certainly need a more adequate areal investiga-
tion, incorporating the idea of networks, beyond the idea of linguistic areas.
Lack of contact also led to cases of linguistic divergence, manifested by
retention of Proto-Tukanoan features and relatively independent evolution in
several phonological and grammatical respects. This is the case for kub and
tan and ret and yah, for instance, but it can be observed in wan as well. This
language has many changes independent from other eastern-et languages
that can be accounted for by independent evolution as well as contact with
Arawakan-speaking groups (see Waltz 2002, Stenzel 2013, and Stenzel and
Gomez-Imbert 2009). As a result, wan is the most distinct language in the
eastern-et sub-branch.
A final point of discussion of the prehistory of et languages involves con-
tact with other linguistic families. The Vaupes area has at least three major
linguistic families: Tukanoan, Nadahup (or Makuan), and Arawakan. The
study of contact between Nadahup and Tukanoan languages is just begin-
ning, but so far it has mostly focused on Tukanoan influence on Nadahup
languages (see Epps 2005; 2007). Regarding Tukanoan–Arawakan contact,
Aikhenvald (2002) outlines two types of contact relations—one leading to
indirect, multilateral diffusion of linguistic traits and the other to unilateral
diffusion of linguistic traits from tuk to Tariana (Arawakan).
It is likely that there was a period of contact between Tukanoan and Ar-
awakan languages before the arrival of the Tariana in the Vaupes area. A
case in point is kub, which has an older substratum of Arawakan influence
(see Goldman 2004 and Chacon 2013). The exact impact of this substratum
still needs to be assessed in kub and other Tukanoan languages, but it was
perhaps this period of influence that led to the emergence of relative cultural
homogeneity between Arawakan and Tukanoan language groups. During this
period of contact, the two linguistic families coexisted in the same area, but
the Arawakan groups dominated most of the Vaupes River and the Tukanoan
groups lived in a smaller area than they presently inhabit (see Wright 2005).
This period coincided with the arrival of the Tariana (Arawakan) and their
gradual domination of locations along the Vaupes River after warfare with
Tukanoan groups.
Cariban–Tukanoan contact in the Apaporis and Vaupes area can also be

hypothesized, given that the Cariban Karihona used to occupy a larger sec-
tion near the Upper Vaupes, Apaporis, and Japurá Rivers. It is estimated that
they must have arrived in the Vaupes region no earlier than 500 years ago, as
their language is genetically more closely related to Cariban languages in the
Guianas (Koch-Grünberg 2005 [1909]). The possible influence of Karihona
on Tukanoan languages still needs to be investigated.
5. Conclusions. The reconstruction of Proto-Tukanoan stops presented

in this article departs from the assumption of a voiced series of stops found
in previous comparative studies of the family (Waltz and Wheeler 1972
and Malone 1986). The correspondence sets, discussion of directionality
of sound changes, and phonetics of the reflexes in languages from differ-
ent branches of the family all indicate that reconstruction of a series of
laryngealized stops seems clearly justified and fosters new perspectives for
a better understanding of the genetic relationships among the Tukanoan
languages.
The subgrouping proposed in this paper supports the traditional division
between Eastern and Western Tukanoan languages but refutes the proposal
of a Central Tukanoan branch (see Waltz and Wheeler 1972, Malone 1986,
Barnes 1999, and Franchetto and Gomez-Imbert 2003). It also suggests that,
before the first major split, Western and Eastern languages may have influ-
enced each other with respect to some borrowed phonological changes (see
also Wheeler 1992, who first noticed this possibility), and suggests that these
languages were even in contact with a third language, such as Karihona, after
the first split into wt and et languages.
The comparative method and mapping of phonological innovations have
been the guiding criteria for this reconstruction and classification of the Tu-
kanoan family. I have consequently had to deal with certain contradictions
between the results of these criteria and those of previous lexicostatistical
methods. By carefully analyzing possible forms of contact relationships among
these languages, we can better explain how contact has played a major role
in the convergence of less genetically related languages on the one hand,
and the divergence of more genetically related, albeit geographically distant
ones on the other.
Finally, this article has contributed to the comparative studies on Tukanoan
by including and assessing available historical information on extinct Tu-
kanoan languages, such as kue, yah, and yup. This effort has proved fruitful
in finding unique reflexes that shed new light on the reconstruction of Proto-
Tukanoan stops and also tells us more about the prehistory of the family.
While these extinct languages have only been considered marginally in this
study, more research on them should provide a valuable contribution to the
historical linguistics of the Tukanoan family.
REFERENCES
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2001a. Language awareness and correct speech among the Tariana
of Northwestern Amazonia. Anthropological Linguistics 43, no. 4:411–30.
. 2001b. DicionárioTariana–Portuguêse–Português–Tariana. Boletim do Museu Paraense
Emílio Goeldi: Série Antropológica, vol. 17, no. 1. Belém do Pará: Museu Paraense Emílio
Goeldi.
. 2002. Language Contact in Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y., and R. M. W. Dixon. 1999. Other small families and isolates. The
Amazonian Languages, ed. R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, pp. 341–68. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Alemán M., Tulio; Reinaldo López H.; and Marion Miller. 2000. Wirã ya, peamasa ya wereri-
turi: Desano–Español, diccionario bilingüe de 896 palabras. Bogotá: Editorial Alberto Lleras
Camargo.
Araújo, Gabriel Anutes de. 2004. A Grammar of Sabanê, a Nambikwaran Language. Utrecht:
LOT.
Ardila, Olga. 1998. Aspectos fonológicos de las lenguas tucano-orientales: Una visión compara-
tiva. Forma y Función, vol. 11. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Barasana Literacy Committee. 2009. Diccionario bilingüe: Eduria and Barasana–Español, Es-
pañol–Eduria and Barasana, comp. Paula S. Jones and Wendell H. Jones. Bogotá: Editorial
Fundación para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Marginados.
Barnes, Janet. 1980. La reconstrucción de algunas formas del proto tucano-barasano-tuyuca.
Artículos en Lingüística y Campos Afines 8:37–66.
. 1999. Tucano. The Amazonian Languages, ed. R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y.
Aikhenvald, pp. 207–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bellier, Iréne. 1994. Los Maihuna: Tucano Occidentales. Guia Etnográfico del Alto-Amazonas,
vol. 1, ed. Fernando Santos and Frederica Barclay. Quito: Ulpiano Páez.
Beuchat, Henri, and Paul Rivet. 1911. La famille Betoya ou tucano. Memoir de la Societé
Linguistique de Paris 17:117–36, 162–90.
Brinton, Daniel G. 1891. The American Race: A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic
Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America. New York.
. 1892. Studies in South American Native Languages. Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society, vol. 30. Philadelphia.
Campbell, Lyle. 2004. Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass.: The
M.I.T. Press.
Cabalzar, Aloisio. 2008. Filhos da Cobra de Pedra: Organização Social e Tarjetórioas Tuyukas
no rio Tiquié. São Paulo: Fundação Editora da Unesp.
Chacon, Thiago. 2009. Nasality in Tukanoan: Synchrony and diachrony. Paper presented at the
Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas,
San Francisco.
. 2012. The phonology and morphology of Kubeo: The documentation, theory and de-
scription of an Amazonian language. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Hawai’i.
.  2013. Kubeo: Linguistic and cultural interactions in the Upper Rio Negro. Upper Rio
Negro: Cultural and Linguistic Interaction in Northwestern Amazonia, ed. Patience Epps and
Kristine Stenzel, pp. 403–40. Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional and Museu do Índio Funai.
. Forthcoming. The reconstruction of laryngealization in Proto-Tukanoan. Laryngeal
Features in the Americas, ed. Leo Wetzels. Leiden: Brill.
Cook, Dorothy M., and Linda L. Criswell. 1993. El idioma koreguaje (Tucano occidental).
Bogotá: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
Criswell, Linda, and Beverly Brandrup. 2000. Un bosquejo fonológico y gramatical del si-
riano. Lenguas indígenas de Colombia: Una visión descriptiva, ed. María Stella González de
Pérez and María Luisa Rodríguez de Montes, pp. 395–417. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
Dixon, R. M. W. 1999. Arawá. The Amazonian Languages, ed. R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra
Y. Aikhenvald, pp. 292–306. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dupont, Carlos M. 1988. Armonía nasal en la lengua koreguaje. Cuadernos de lingüística his-
pánica, pp. 105–25. Tunja: Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia.
Ehret, Christopher. 1976. Linguistic evidence and its correlation with archaelogy. World
Archaelogy 8:5–18.
Epps, Patience. 2005. Areal diffusion and the development of evidentiality: Evidence from Hup.
Studies in Language 29:617–50.
. 2007. Birth of a noun classification system: The case of Hup. Language Endangerment
and Endangered Languages: Linguistic and Anthropological Studies with Special Emphasis
on the Languages and Cultures of the Andean–Amazonian Border Area, ed. Leo Wetzels,
pp. 107–28. Leiden: Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies (CNWS),
Leiden University.
. 2008. A Grammar of Hup. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Eraso, N. 1999. Cambios tonales en la palabra verbal. Congreso de lingüistica amerindia y cri
olla, vol. 6, no. 1, ed. J. Landaburu and T. Rojas Curieux, pp. 72–95. Bogotá: Editorial Artes.
Fallon, Paul D. 2002. The Synchronic and Diachronic Phonology of Ejectives. New York:
Routledge.
Franchetto, Bruna, and Elsa Gomez-Imbert. 2003. Review of The Amazonian Languages e dited
by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. IJAL 69:232–38.
Goldman, Irving. 2004. Cubeo Hehenawa Religious Thought: Metaphysics of a Northwestern
Amazonian People. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gomez-Imbert, Elsa. 1993. Problemas en torno a la comparación de las lenguas tucano-
orientales. Estado actual de la clasificación de las lenguas indígenas de Colombia, ed. Maria
Luisa R odríguez de Montes, pp. 235–67. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
. 1999. Variétés tonales sur fond d’exogamie linguistique. Cahiers de Grammaire,
vol. 24, pp. 67–94. Toulouse: ERSS, Université Toulouse–Le Mirail.
. 2004. Fonología de dos idiomas Tukano orientales. Amerindia, vol. 29. Paris: CELIA.
. 2011. La famille tukano. Dictionnaire des langues du monde, pp. 1454–60. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France.
Gomez-Imbert, Elsa, and Stephen Hugh-Jones. 2000. Introducción al estudio de las lenguas del
Piraparaná (Vaupes). Lenguas indígenas de Colombia: Una visión descriptiva, ed. Maria
Stella González de Pérez and Maria Luisa Rodríguez de Montes, pp. 321–56. Bogotá: Insti-
tuto Caro y Cuervo.
Gonzalez de Pérez, María Stella. 2000. Bases para el estudio de la lengua pisamira. Lenguas
indígenas de Colombia: Una visíon descriptiva, ed. Maria Stella González de Pérez and Maria
Luisa Rodríguez de Montes, pp. 373–94. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
González de Pérez, Maria Stella, and Maria Luisa Rodríguez de Montes, eds. 2000. Lenguas
indígenas de Colombia: Una visión descriptiva. Bogotá: Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
Huber, Randal Q., and Robert B. Reed, comps. 1992. Vocabulario comparativo: Palabras selec-
tas de lenguas indígenas de Colombia. Bogotá: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
Hugh-Jones, Christine. 1979. From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal Processes in the North-
west Amazon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, Jean. 1983. The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest
Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, Orville, and Stephen Levinson. 1990. Gramática secoya. Cuadernos Etnolinguísticos,
vol. 11. Quito: Instituto Linguístico de Verano.
Johnson, Orville, and Catherine Peeke. 1962. Phonemic units in the Sekoya word. Studies in
Ecuadorian Indian Languages, ed. Catherine Peeke and Benjamin Elson, pp. 78–95. Norman,
Okla.: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Kaye, Jonathan. 1970. The Desano verb: Problems in semantics, syntax and phonology. Ph.D.
dissertation, Columbia University.
Koch-Grünberg, Theodor. 1913. Betoya-Sprachen Nordwestbrasiliens und der angrenzenden
Gebiete. Anthropos 8.
. 1914. Betoya-Sprachen Nordwestbrasiliens und der angrenzenden Gebiete. Anthropos 9.
. 2005 [1909]. Dois Anos entre os Indígenas: Viagens no noroeste do Brasil [Two years
among the Indians: Travels in the Brazilian Northwest] (1903/1905). Manaus: EDUA and
FSDB.
Ladefoged, Peter, and Ian Maddieson. 1996. The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Lavoie, Lisa M. 2001. Consonant Strength: Phonological Patterns and Phonetic Manifestations.
New York: Garland.
Maddieson, Ian. 1984. Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Malone, T. 1986. Proto-Tucanoan and Tucanoan genetic relationship. Ms., Instituto Linguístico
de Verano, Colombia.
Mason, J. A. 1950. The languages of South American Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology
Bulletin 143:157–317.
Metzger, Lois, and Ronald G. Metzger. 1973. Fonología del Carapana. Sistemas fonológicos de
idiomas colombianos, vol. 2. Bogotá: Ministerio de Gobierno. <http://www.sil.org/americas/
colombia/pubs/abstract.asp?id=11733>.
Metzger, Ronald G., comp. 2000. Marĩ yaye mena Carapana, yaia yaye mena Español macãrĩcã
tuti = Carapana–Español, diccionario de 1000 palabras. Bogotá: Editorial Alberta Lleras
Camargo.
Michael, Lev; Christine Beier; Stephanie Farmer; Gregory Finley; and John Sylak. 2011.
Diccionario Bilingüe Máíjɨ́ki–Castellano y Castellano–Máíjɨ́ki (versión agosto 2011).
Ms., Máíhɨ́ki Project.
Migliazza, Ernesto. 1967. Grupos lingüísticos do território federal de Roraima. Atas do simpósio
sobre a biota Amazônica, vol. 2, Antropologia, pp.153–73. Belém do Pará : Museu Paraense
Emilio Goeldi.
. 1972. Yanomama grammar and intelligibility. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University,
Bloomington.
Miller, Marion. 1999. Desano Grammar: Studies in the Languages of Colombia. Dallas: Sum-
mer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington.
Morse, Nancy L.; Jay K. Salser; and Neva Salser, comps. 1999. Diccionario ilustrado bilingüe:
Cubeo–Español, Español–Cubeo. Bogotá: Editorial Alberto Lleras Camargo.
Piaguaje, Ramón; Elías Piaguaje; Orville E. Johnson; and Mary Johnson, comps. 1992. Vocabu-
lario Secoya. Quito: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
Ramirez, Henri. 1997a. A fala Tukano dos Ye’pâ-Masa: Vol. 2: Dicionário. Manaus: Inspetoria
Salesiana Missionaria da Amazônia, CEDEM.
. 1997b. A fala Tukano dos Ye’pâ-Masa. Vol. 1: Gramática. Manaus: Inspetoria Salesi-
ana Missionaria da Amazônia, CEDEM.
. 2001. Línguas Arawak da Amazônia Setentrional: Comparação e descrição. Manaus:
Editora da Universidade do Amazonas.
Rodrigues, Aryon D. 1999. Macro-Jê. The Amazonian Languages, ed. R. M. W. Dixon and Al-
exandra Y. Aikhenvald, pp. 165–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2007. Proto-Tupí. Línguas e Culturas Tupí, ed. Ana Cabral, Suelly Arruda Câmara,
and Aryon Dall’Igna Rodrigues, vol. 1, pp. 167–203. Campinas: Editora Curt Nimuendajú.
Smothermon, Jeffrey R., and Josephine H. Smothermon, comps. 1993. Masa ye, gawa ye rãca
ãmara tuti: Macuna–Español, diccionario de 850 palabras. Bogotá: Editorial Alberto Lleras
Camargo.
Sorensen, Arthur Peter, Jr. 1967. Multilingualism in the Northwest Amazon. American An-
thropologist 69:670–84.
Stenzel, Kristine 2005. Multilingualism: Northwest Amazonia revisited. Paper presented at
the Second Congress on Indigenous Languages of Latin America (CILLA), Austin, Texas.
. 2007. Glottalization and other suprasegmental features in Wanano. IJAL 73:331–66.
. 2013. A Reference Grammar of Kotiria (Wanano). Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press.
Stenzel, Kristine, and Didier Demolin. Forthcoming. Traços Laringais em Kotiria e Wa’ikhana
(Tukano Oriental). Fonologia: Teorias e perspectivas. Porto Alegre: EdiPUCRS.
Stenzel, Kristine, and Elsa Gomez-Imbert. 2009. Contato Lingüístico e Mudança Lingüística no
Noroeste Amazônico: O caso do Kotiria (Wanano). Revista da ABRALIN 8:71–100.
Tovar, Antonio, and Consuelo Larrueca de Tovar. 1984. Catálogo de las lenguas de la América
del Sur. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.
Velie, Daniel. 1975. Bosquejo de la fonología y gramática del idioma Orejón (coto). Datos Etno-
Lingüísticos, no. 10. Lima: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
Velie, Daniel, and Virginia Velie. 1981. Vocabulario Orejón. Lima: Ministerio de Educación
and Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.
Velie, Daniel; Ruth Brend; and Esther Powlison. 1976. Fonología del Orejón. Datos Etno-
linguísticos: Colección de los Archivos del ILV 2008. Lima, Peru: Instituto Linguistico de
Verano. < http://www.sil.org/americas/peru/ show_work.asp?id= 52278>.
Waltz, Nathan E. 2002. Innovations in Wanano (Eastern Tucanoan) when compared to Pirata-
puyo. IJAL 68:157–215.
Waltz, Nathan E., and Alva Wheeler. 1972. Proto-Tucanoan. Comparative Studies in Amerin-
dian Languages, ed. Esther Matteson, pp. 19–49. The Hague: Mouton.
Waltz, Nathan E.; Paula Simmons de Jones; and Carolyn de Waltz, eds. 2007. Diccionario
bilingüe: Wanano o Guanano–Español, Español–Wanano o Guanano. Bogotá: Editorial Fun-
dación para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Marginados.
Wheeler, Alva. 1987a. El pueblo siona del río Putumayo, Colombia. Vol. 1: Etnología,
gramática, textos. Bogotá: Instituto Linguistico de Verano.
. 1987b. El pueblo siona del río Putumayo, Colombia. Vol. 2: Diccionario. Bogotá:
Instituto Linguístico de Verano.
. 1992. Comparaciones lingüisticas en el grupo Tucano Occidental. Estudios Compara-
tivos Proto Tucano, ed. Stephen H. Levinsohn, pp. 17–53. Bogotá: Alberto Lleras Camargo.
. 2000. La lengua Siona. Lenguas indígenas de Colombia: Una visión descriptiva, ed.
María Stella González de Pérez and María Luisa Rodríguez de Montes, pp. 181–98. Bogotá:
Instituto Caro y Cuervo.
Wise, Mary Ruth. Small language families and isolates in Peru. The Amazonian Languages,
ed. R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, pp. 307–40. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Wright, Robin. 2005. História Indígena e do Indigenismo no Alto Rio Negro. Campinas, São
Paulo: Mercado de Letras/Instituto Socioambiental.

Chacon 2014

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Chacon 2014

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

A Revised Proposal of Proto-Tukanoan Consonants and Tukanoan Family Classification

Author(s): Thiago Chacon

This paper presents a reconstruction of Proto-Tukanoan consonants and the classifica-

1. Introduction. The Tukanoan family comprises some 29 languages, 2

[IJAL, vol. 80, no. 3, July 2014, pp. 275–322]

Fig. 1.—The Tukanoan family and neighboring languages.

(1999), for example, added Letuama/Retuarã and Tanimuka and changed

2. Summary of methods and results.

grammatical information on most Tukanoan languages and the 200-word

In many cases, it was necessary to “phonemicize” the practical orthography

bilabial coronals velar glottal

alveolar alveo-palatal palatal

laryngealized stops p’ t’ tj’ k’ (k’w) ʔ

Fig. 2.—Proto-Tukanoan consonants.

stops, following these authors, pre-glottalization is not represented here (see

Fig. 3.—Classification of the Tukanoan family.

Fig. 4.—Distribution of major Tukanoan subgroups.

Finally, point (iii) is more speculative but is ultimately related to two

3. The reconstruction of the proto-consonants.

Fig. 5.—*p reflexes in root-initial and medial positions.

in the Buenavista village dialect of sio. Gomez-Imbert (2011) states that in

Fig. 7.—*k reflexes in root-initial and medial positions.

Fig. 8.—Reflexes of *tt and *kk.

The reconstruction of *k in root-initial and medial positions is shown in

stops (voiced or voiceless) in root-medial position, resulting in (C)VCCV

Fig. 9.—*p’ reflexes in root-initial and medial positions.

Fig. 10.—*t’ reflexes in root-initial and medial positions.

11 Although no source of information about mai marks pre-glottalization systematically, it is

Fig. 11.—Reflexes of *k’ in root-initial and medial positions.

position and there are no correspondences between wt and et languages of

(1992) claims that /t/ appears only in loans.

base of 317 languages.

evolution of *k’ in Tukanoan languages.

kub des bas tuk tat sek sio gloss

Fig. 12.—*p’ reflexes in bound morphemes.

Fig. 13.—*t’ reflexes in bound morphemes.

Fig. 14.—*k’ reflexes in bound morphemes.

the presence of laryngealized stops in sio, while also providing an explanation

Point of Non-alternating (underlying

Fig. 15.—Morphophonemic alternations of *C’ and *C reflexes in bas.

in the form [hi] ‘agent’ may be due to the incompatibility of co-articulation

evidence to support the hypothesis. For instance, there are no correspondences

Fig. 16.—Reflexes of *s, *tj, *tj’, *c, and *j.

— hita dita itahumak dita — — rita tʃita — — s’itada lake

Fig. 17.—Murky cases of coronal reflexes.

wája — waya wa’sa — fish with net

Fig. 18.—Deviant reflexes of *j.

Fig. 19.—Possible case of *tj’ reflex in word-medial position.

The rationale for these morphophonemic alternations follows that of the

Fig. 20.—*w reflexes.

reconstruct ‘tree’ with *Y, although it clearly belongs to a different correspon-

demonstrating the retention of *n in all Tukanoan languages can be seen in

currently found in wt and kub.

4. Classification and prehistory of the Tukanoan languages.

epenthesis of /g/ in tat.

voiced stops or voiceless stops. A related change that occurred in all wt

31 It is also worth investigating whether a third language—perhaps Karihona (Cariban)—

4.3.1. Diversification within the western-et branch. Understanding

independent sound changes that can be partially attributed to intense contact

The Caquetá/Japurá River is the main route taken by wt languages to

Cariban–Tukanoan contact in the Apaporis and Vaupes area can also be

5. Conclusions. The reconstruction of Proto-Tukanoan stops presented

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen

Fig. 8.—Reflexes of tt and kk.

Fig. 15.—Morphophonemic alternations of C’ and C reflexes in bas.

Fig. 16.—Reflexes of s, tj, tj’, c, and *j.