Dâw is a
Nadahup language spoken by about one hundred
Dâw people in the northwestern part of
Amazonas,
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
, in an area commonly known as
Alto Rio Negro. Most Dâw also speak
Nheengatu
The Nheengatu language (Tupi: , nheengatu rionegrino: ''yẽgatu'', nheengatu tradicional: ''nhẽẽgatú'' e nheengatu tapajoawara: ''nheẽgatu''), often written Nhengatu, is an indigenous language of the Tupi-Guarani family, being then der ...
and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
.
An extinct variety, ''Kurikuria(r)í'', named after the
Curicuriari River, was a distinct language sociolinguistically, but at least partially intelligible with Dâw.
Phonology
Vowels
Dâw has 15
vowels
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (len ...
:
Vowels are
laryngealized
In linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, vocal fry, or glottal fry) refers to a low, scratchy sound that occupies the vocal range below the common vocal register. It is a special kind of phonation in which ...
when occurring beside a
glottal stop, as seen in the examples below.
: ''"large mouth"''
: ''"to lack"''
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, mea ...
in Dâw is seen primarily in two situations: in
compounding
In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for me ...
and with the focus marker , where ''V'' indicates a vowel. When combining two words with the first word having the syllable structure CVC, vowel harmony is not seen, e.g. ''"high"'' + ''"boat"'' = ''"airplane"''. However, when combining two words with the first word having the syllable structure CV, vowel harmony is seen, e.g. ''"canoe"'' + ''"eye"'' = ''"sun"''. The vowel of the focus marker is the same as the vowel of the syllable it is appended to, e.g. ''"blood"'' + = .
Consonants
Dâw has 25
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
s:
Glottalized consonants are also
laryngealized
In linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, vocal fry, or glottal fry) refers to a low, scratchy sound that occupies the vocal range below the common vocal register. It is a special kind of phonation in which ...
, as seen in the examples below.
: ''"oar"''
: ''"banana"''
The
plosive consonants have
no audible release
A stop with no audible release, also known as an unreleased stop or an applosive, is a stop consonant with no release burst: no audible indication of the end of its occlusion (hold). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, lack of an audible rele ...
as
codas, e.g. ''"to kick"'' is realized as , and ''"to scratch with the nail"'' as . As onsets, and are realized as
ejective consonants, i.e. and , unlike the other plosive consonants, which are realized simply as plain consonants, e.g. ''"without hair"'', ''"to hook"''.
Stress
Stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
is fixed in Dâw, occurring on the last syllable of a word. A few
suffixes in Dâw do not take the stress, however. The suffixes are divided into two groups, metric suffixes and extrametric suffixes. The former follows the general rule of stress on the last syllable, while the latter does not. See the examples below, where is a metric suffix, and an extrametric suffix.
: ''"to return"''
: ''"return!"''
: ''"is returning"''
Tone
In Dâw there are either three or four
tones, depending on analysis. There are a low tone, a high tone, a rising tone and a falling tone, marked by a
grave accent, an
acute accent, a
caron
A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark (� ...
and
circumflex, respectively, but only the two latter are lexical. The low tone only occurs on syllables without stress, while the high tone only occurs on syllables with stress, and the rising and falling tones may occur on all syllables. As the low and high tones are not lexical, they are often left unmarked, as in ''"tooth"'', which really is realized as .
Besides the lexical function of tone, tone may also function
morphologically and
syntactically. Consider the examples below, the first being morphological and the second being syntactical, showing how tone is used in a
derivative manner and how tone is used to differentiate
intransitive
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs ar ...
from
transitive verb
A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''.
Transiti ...
s.
: ''"to eat"''
: ''"food"''
: ''"to bathe (oneself)"''
: ''"to bathe (someone)"''
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
is predictable and present in Dâw, yet not distinctive lexically. All vowels with a rising or falling tone are long, while all vowels without a tone are short.
Orthography
The orthography used by the Dâw community is based on the Latin alphabet, with some correspondences coming from the
Tukano language.
[ ] Note that glottalized consonants are marked with the apostrophe before the consonant when the phoneme appears at the beginning of a word, and after the consonant when it appears anywhere else. Long vowels (i.e., those with tone) are written with two of the same vowel (e.g. , "rat"). When the
circumflex or
tilde
The tilde () or , is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish, which in turn came from the Latin '' titulus'', meaning "title" or "superscription". Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) i ...
are used with long vowels, only the first of the two is marked with the diacritic (e.g. ).
External links
Dâw basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database* ELAR archive o
Documentation of Dâw
Notes
General
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Daw Language
Languages of Brazil
Nadahup languages