Guahibo language
language
Guahibo, the native language of the Guahibo people, is a Guahiban language that is spoken by about 23,006 people in Colombia and additional 8,428 in Venezuela. There is a 40% rate of monolingualism, and a 45% literacy rate.
Phonology
A /w/ sound can also range to a [β] sound within words.
Sounds /a, e/ can have allophones of [ə, ɛ]. Vowels can also be nasalized as /ã, ĩ, ẽ, õ, ũ, ɨ̃/.
Writing system
Grammar
Stress
Guahibo has a unique and complex stress system with both primary and secondary stress. The stress system shows a sensitivity to syllable weight so that heavy syllables are always stressed. Both contrasting trochaic and iambic patterns are found on morphemes in nonfinal morphemes with more than two syllables:
The binary feet are parsed from left to right within each morpheme. Morphemes with an odd number of syllables leave the final syllable unstressed (and unparsed into feet):
Morphemes that consist of two syllables and are also word-final are an exception to the above and only have the trochaic pattern:
These morphemes alternate with an iambic pattern when placed in a nonfinal context. Thus náwa keeps its trochaic pattern with the addition of a single light syllable morpheme like -ta "in":
náwa + -ta → náwata ('LL)L
However, an iambic word show its underlying iamb when it is followed by -ta:
púca + -ta → pucáta (L'L)L
Affixation generally does not affect the stress pattern of each morpheme.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guahibo 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.