A sketch of mapudungun phonology. F. Zuñiga

A sketch of Mapudungun phonology Fernando Zúñiga University of Zurich [email protected] 1. Vocalic phonemes The vowels of Mapudu ngun are the following: front central back high i ü u mid e o low a • Only u and o are rounded; the other four vowels (including ü) are unrounded. • The allophones of ü are [ɨ] and [ə]; the fomer tends to occur in stressed syllables and the latter in unstressed ones. • All six vowels can function as nuclei of syllables irrespective of stress. The segment ü is also typically found as (short) epenthetic vowel in order to avoid consonant clusters. The vowel o is sometimes pronounced [u] at the end of some polysyllabic words, e.g. wentro ~ wentru ‘man’ (but never in e.g. ko ‘water’). • In principle, sequences of vowels can be pronounced as though the latter belonged to different syllables –in particularly careful speech–, but in practice some of these sequences typically occur as diphthongs, e.g . ao > aw, eo > ew, ai > ay, ei > ey. 2. Semivowels Mapudu ngun has the following three glides or semivowels: labiovelar palatal velar w y g • The labiovelar w [w] and the palatal y [j] can occur in onset or coda position. The velar glide g [ɰ] does not occur in the onset as a contrastive phoneme. • The semivowels regularly occur as briefly articulated onsets word-initially before the homorganic vowels u, i and ü: w ule ‘tomorrow’, y iwiñ ‘fat’, g üñüm ‘bird’. They irregularly occur as briefly articulated codas word-finally after the homorganic vowels.

A sketch of mapudungun phonology. F. Zuñiga

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