A Preliminary Phonetic Analysis of Nasa Yuwe

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2014
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
This paper presents new field data and a phonetic analysis of Nasa Yuwe, also known as Paez, an indigenous language in Colombia, South America. Within the rich sphere of Colombian indigenous languages, Nasa Yuwe is estimated to have around 75 ,000 speakers, of which a significantly smaller portion is monolingual, making it the second largest endangered language in the country (Ethnologue). Despite acknowledgement of its endangered status for the last three centuries, there has been minimal work done on the language until recently, and a detailed phonetic analysis is missing from the current body of literature. This paper attempts to fill that gap with a detailed overview of the vowel and consonant systems, with data supplied by recent fieldwork on a speaker of the language. Special attention is devoted to vowels with analysis including formant measurements, short and long contrastive measurements, devoicing, and vowel frequency. Further attention is devoted to VOT analysis, stress in disyallbic words, and the loan phonology of the language. Nasa Yuwe borrows and transform a variety of Spanish lexical items. For example, the Spanish [sabado] "Saturday" undergoes transformation into <sapatu> [ sapatu]. This transformation illustrates devoicing of intervocalic consonants along with vowel raising. By analyzing the loan phonology in detail, the paper attempts to better understand the historical relations between Spanish and Nasa Yuwe as well as the current state of interaction between the two languages. This analysis, combined with the other phonetic and phonological studies in this paper, will add to the existing literature a first step in documenting and understanding in a scientific and quantitative context the overall consonant and vowel structure of the language. To better contextualize Nasa Yuwe, this paper also embeds sound files of the individual elicitations so as to help the reader gain a more intuitive understanding that could not be conveyed through written word alone. It is hoped that this study will be useful to indigenous efforts to preserve and propagate the language through social and cultural activities in Colombia as well as serve as a contribution to the greater linguistic community.
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