Tuyuca language
language
Tuyuca (also Dochkafuara, Tejuca, Tuyuka, Dojkapuara, Doxká-Poárá, Doka-Poara, or Tuiuca) is an Eastern Tucanoan language (similar to Tucano). Tuyuca is spoken by the Tuyuca, an indigenous ethnic group of some 500–1000 people, who inhabit the watershed of the Papuri River, the Inambú River, and the Tiquié River in Vaupés Department, Colombia, and Amazonas State, Brazil. Studies from the 1980s to 1990s noted that Tuyuca was spoken by fewer than 300 people in Colombia and 590 people in Brazil.
Phonology
Tuyuca's consonants are /p t k b d ɡ s r w j h/, and its vowels are /i ɨ u e a o/, with syllable nasalization and pitch accent occurring as well.
Vowels
Consonants
Minimal pairs
The following words show some of the consonant contrasts.
Bilabial contrasts
/pakó/ 'mom'
/bapá/ 'plate'
/wapá/ 'payment'
Alveolar contrasts
/botéa/ 'a fish'
/bodé/ 'dragonfly'
/bosé/ 'party'
/boré/ 'whitening'
Velar and palatal contrasts
/bɨkó/ 'ant-eater'
/bɨɡó/ 'aunt'
/hoó/ 'plantain'
/joó/ 'thread'
Variation
Voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ have aspirated variants that tend to occur before high vowels but not near voiceless vowels. There are a few degrees of the amount of aspiration.
Preglottalized variants of /b, d/ occur together at the onset.
Preglottalized forms of [m, w, w̃, j, j̃, ɲ, dʒ] occur in the onset and are in free variation with their plain counterparts.
Prenasal variants of /b, d, ɡ/ occur after nasal vowels and before oral vowels: /kĩĩbai/ [kʰĩĩmbaii̥].
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This entry incorporates text from “Tuyuca language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.