Shipibo language

Shipibo-Conibo
Native to	Peru
Region	Ucayali Region
Ethnicity	Shipibo-Conibo people
Native speakers	26,000 (2003)[1]
Language family	Panoan Mainline Panoan Nawa Chama Shipibo-Conibo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: shp – Shipibo-Conibo kaq – Tapiche Capanahua
Glottolog	ship1253[2]

Shipibo (also Shipibo-Conibo, Shipibo-Konibo) is a Panoan language spoken in Peru and Brazil by approximately 26,000 speakers. Shipibo is an official language of Peru.

Dialects

A Shipibo jar

Shipibo has three attested dialects:

• Shipibo and Konibo (Conibo), which have merged together
• Kapanawa of the Tapiche River, which is obsolescent

Extinct Xipináwa (Shipinawa) is thought to have been a dialect as well, but there is no linguistic data (Fleck 2013).

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs of Shipibo, from Valenzuela, Márquez Pinedo & Maddieson (2001:282)

Monophthong phonemes^[3]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ĩ		ɯ ɯ̃
Mid			o õ
Open		a ã

• /i/ is near-close front unrounded [i̞].^[3]
• /ɯ/ is close near-back unrounded [ɯ̟].^[3]
  • Before coronal consonants (especially /n, t, s/) it can be realized as close central unrounded [ɨ].^[4]
• /ɯ/ is mid near-back unrounded [o̽].^[3]
• /i, ɯ, o/ tend to be more central in closed syllables.^[4]
• /a/ is near-open central unrounded [ɐ].^[3]
• In connected speech, two adjacent vowels may be realized as a rising diphthong.^[4]

Nasal

• The oral vowels /i, ɯ, o, a/ are phonetically nasalized [ĩ, ɯ̃, õ, ã] after a nasal consonant, but the phonological behaviour of these allophones is different from the nasal vowel phonemes /ĩ, ɯ̃, õ, ã/.^[3]
• Oral vowels in syllables preceding syllables with nasal vowels are realized as nasal, but not when a consonant other than /w, j/ intervenes.^[4]

Unstressed

• The second one of the two adjacent unstressed vowels is often deleted.^[4]
• Unstressed vowels may be devoiced or even elided between two voiceless obstruents.^[4]

Consonants

Consonant phonemes^[5]

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless	p	t			k
Affricate	voiceless		ts		tʃ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʂ	ʃ		h
	voiced	β
Approximant		w		ɻ	j

• /m, p, β/ are bilabial, whereas /w/ is labialized velar.
  • /β/ is most typically a fricative [β], but other realizations (such as an approximant [β̞], a stop [b] and an affricate [bβ]) also appear. The stop realization is most likely to appear in word-initial stressed syllables, whereas the approximant realization appears most often as onsets to non-initial unstressed syllables.^[3]
• /n, ts, s/ are alveolar [n, ts, s], whereas /t/ is dental [t̪].^[5]
• The /ʂ–ʃ/ distinction can be described as an apical–laminal one.^[3]
• /tʃ, ʃ/ are palato-alveolar, whereas /j/ is palatal.^[5]
• Before nasal vowels, /w, j/ are nasalized [w̃, j̃] and may be even realized close to nasal stops [ŋʷ, ɲ].^[4]
• /w/ is realized as [w] before /a, ã/, as [ɥ] before /i, ĩ/ and as [ɰ] before /ɯ, ɯ̃/. It does not occur before /o, õ/.^[4]
• /ɻ/ is a very variable sound:
  • Intervocalically, it is realized either as an approximant [ɻ], or sometimes as a (weak) fricative [ʐ].^[3]
  • Sometimes (especially in the beginning of a stressed syllable) it can be realized as a postalveolar affricate [d̠͡z̠], or a stop-appproximant sequence [d̠ɹ̠].^[4]
  • It can also be realized as a postalveolar flap [ɾ̠].^[3]

References

1. Shipibo-Conibo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Tapiche Capanahua at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Shipibo-Konibo–Kapanawa". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Valenzuela, Márquez Pinedo & Maddieson (2001), p. 282.
4. Valenzuela, Márquez Pinedo & Maddieson (2001), p. 283.
5. Valenzuela, Márquez Pinedo & Maddieson (2001), p. 281.

External links

• Shipibo-Conibo at Ethnologue
• Lengua Shipibo at Proel

Bibliography

• Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509427-1.
• Elias-Ulloa, Jose (2000). El Acento en Shipibo (Stress in Shipibo). Thesis. Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima - Peru.
• Elias-Ulloa, Jose (2005). Theoretical Aspects of Panoan Metrical Phonology: Disyllabic Footing and Contextual Syllable Weight. Ph. D. Dissertation. Rutgers University. ROA 804 .
• Kaufman, Terrence. (1990). Language history in South America: What we know and how to know more. In D. L. Payne (Ed.), Amazonian linguistics: Studies in lowland South American languages (pp. 13–67). Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-70414-3.
• Kaufman, Terrence. (1994). The native languages of South America. In C. Mosley & R. E. Asher (Eds.), Atlas of the world's languages (pp. 46–76). London: Routledge.
• Loriot, James and Barbara E. Hollenbach. 1970. "Shipibo paragraph structure." Foundations of Language 6: 43-66. (This was the seminal Discourse Analysis paper taught at SIL in 1956-7.)
• Loriot, James, Erwin Lauriault, and Dwight Day, compilers. 1993. Diccionario shipibo - castellano. Serie Lingüística Peruana, 31. Lima: Ministerio de Educación and Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. 554 p. (Spanish zip-file available online http://www.sil.org/americas/peru/show_work.asp?id=928474530143&Lang=eng) This has a complete grammar published in English by SIL only available through SIL.
• Valenzuela, Pilar M.; Márquez Pinedo, Luis; Maddieson, Ian (2001), "Shipibo", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 31 (2): 281–285, doi:10.1017/S0025100301002109