Phonetic Structures of Banawa, an Endangered Language

As part of a larger project to document the phonetic structures of endangered languages, phonetic characteristics of vowels, consonants, syllable structure, & stress location are described for Banawa, an Arawan language of the Brazilian rainforest having approximately 75 speakers. Based on elicitations (N = 5 males) from a prepared wordlist, allophonic differences in the four vowels of Banawa are specified for coronal & bilabial environments in terms of formant frequencies. The place of articulation & voice onset times of 12 consonants are described & correlated. Syllable structure, which admits one or two moras, is characterized by 10 diphthongs & no consonant clusters or coda consonants; possible constraints responsible for the nonoccurrence of ea & ae are explored. A pattern of stress on alternate moras is verified in field tests (N = 3). Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document