Nambikwara phonology

Nambikwara phonology is complex: it distinguishes aspirated, glottalized and plain consonants, and also has two different phonation types of vowels, nasal vowels and three tones.

Vowels
Kroeker (2001) distinguishes 19 different vowel sounds for Kitãulhu, based on six vowel qualities:

Apart from, these have creaky counterparts, , and apart also from , nasal and creaky nasal counterparts, ,.

Lowe (1999), on the other hand, does not recognize. He describes as varying as  in unstressed syllables, and unstressed  as.

Tone
Each syllable is marked for either falling, rising, or level tone; the three tones are marked with superscript numbers: 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

Consonants
In Kroeker's analysis, Southern Nambikwara distinguishes 29 different consonant phonemes. The language contains an additional implosive alveolar stop which is only used by elderly people and is becoming obsolete.

Lowe (1999), however, analyzes many of these are sequences. For example, analyzing the aspirates as stop + /h/ simplifies the morphophonemic description of the language.

(f) and (m) are in parentheses as they only occur in loanwords.

Lowe describes aspiration on the voiceless stops p, t, k, and on n, l, but not on w. Because he breaks up Kroeker's complex consonants into clusters, he posits a more complex syllable structure, with up to four initial consonants and up to a single coda consonant, which can only be t, k, x, h, n. The initial clusters can consist of any consonant at onset, but subsequent slots can only be w, h, x. A maximal CCCCVC syllable is seen in kwhxax3kax3li3su2 (sp. deer).

Allophones
The plosives p, t, k are freely voiced in all positions:, ,. A syllable-final n within a word when preceded by a nasal vowel assimilates to the following consonant as, , , and when preceded by an oral vowel it is also prestopped. L is a lateral before the back vowels, , and a flap  before the non-back vowels , ,.