draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

2.1 Phonological Inventory
Old Omagua exhibited twelve phonemic consonants, given in Table 2.1.
Table 2.1: Old Omagua Consonants (Phonemic)
Bilabial Alveolar Alveo-Palatal Palatal Velar
Stop p t k k w
Nasal m n
Fricative s S
Affricate
(ts)
Flap
R
Glide w y
The phoneme ts is included parenthetically as it is not attested in the Jesuit texts. It occurs in
a single pronominal form tsII 1sg.fs in the female genderlect of modern Omagua (see Table 2.2), 15
and we assume it existed in Old Omagua, but attribute its absence in the ecclesiastical texts to
the fact that these texts were written in the masculine genderlect. The inventory in Table 2.1 is
identical to the consonant inventory of the modern language with the exception of the phoneme tS.
This phoneme is not attested in the Jesuit texts, and because all instances of this phoneme in the
modern language can be accounted for as the result of either a historical palatalization processes
(e.g., *ti > tS) or as borrowings from Quechua, Spanish or Kokama-Kokamilla, we do not grant it
phonemic status in Old Omagua. 16
Old Omagua exhibited five phonemic vowels, as given in Figure 2.1.
i
1
u
e
a
Figure 2.1: Old Omagua Vowels (Phonemic)
The vowel inventory given in Figure 2.1 is identical to that of the modern language, with the
exception that modern Omagua I corresponds to Old Omagua *e, the outcome of an unconditioned
sound change whereby Proto-Omagua-Kokama *e raised to I (see O’Hagan and Wauters (2012)).
We do not believe, however, that this change had yet occurred in Old Omagua, becuase reflexes of
Proto-Omagua-Kokama *e are consistently written as in the Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts.
It is possible, of course, that this change had already occurred by the time the Jesuit texts were
produced, and that the Jesuit authors simply did not have the orthographic means to represent
this phoneme. However, if that were the case, we would expect considerably more inconsistencies
in the texts in the Jesuits’ orthographic representation of forms with segments corresponding to
15 The 1sg.fs tsII forms a minimal pair with sII ‘be.sweet’.
16 The word tSinani ‘be quiet’, whose etymological origin we have been unable to determine, is the one exception to
this generalization.
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