Region Brazil ISO 639-3 myu | Native speakers 7,500 (2006) Glottolog mund1330 | |
Ethnicity 10,100 Munduruku (2002) Language family Tupian
Munduruku
Munduruku | ||
Mundurukú is a Tupi language spoken by 10,000 people in the Tapajós River basin in north central Brazil, of which most of the women and children are monolingual.
Contents
Consonants
Vowels
Syllable structure
The syllable in Munduruku is made up of an obligatory vocalic nucleus and one of four phonemic accents (three of pitch and one of laryngealization). It may also have an onset or coda. No consonant clusters are permitted. Thus, the permissible syllables are CV, CVC, V, and VC (with V being the most rare).
Onset
The onset in this language may be any one of the 16 consonant phonemes which contrast as to the manner and point of articulation: (1) voiceless stops /p, t, k, tʃ, k, ʔ/; (2) Voiced stops /b, dʒ/; (3) Fricatives /s, ʃ, h/, (4) nasals /m, n, ŋ/, (5) Sonorants /w, y, r/
Coda
The only segment not allowed in the coda is /tʃ/. Observe that CVj and CVw are considered CVC syllables, and not CV.V ones for a variety of reasons. Most notably, perhaps, is that it would require positing a new syllable pattern limited to CVu and CVi with no other vowels occurring in coda position. There is also phonetic contrast between /i, u/ as vowel nuclei and /y, w/ as codas. The former being distinctly vocalic and the latter consonantal.
Nucleus
The syllabic nucleus is limited to only one vowel.
Accent
Accent is considered a feature of the entire syllable rather than of the nucleus only. One accent occurs with each syllable. Note that the functional load of accent is light—only some 40 lexical pairs with contrastive accents have been found and few grammatical contrasts are marked by accent alone.
Syntax
Munduruku is an OV language.