Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay or Wiznay is a Wichí language. Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay had an estimated 15,000 speakers in 1999 in Argentina. The language is centered in the Pilcomayo River region. Other names for the language include Güisnay, Mataco, Mataco Güisnay, Mataco Pilcomayo, and Wichí Lhamtés. A grammar book has been written for the language.[1]
| Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay | |
|---|---|
| Wiznay | |
| Native to | Argentina |
| Ethnicity | Wichí |
Native speakers | 26,500 (2021)[1] |
Matacoan
| |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mzh |
| Glottolog | wich1264 |
| ELP | Wichí (shared) |
The Wichí languages are predominantly suffixing and polysynthetic; verbal words have between 2 and 15 morphemes. Alienable and inalienable possession is distinguished. The phonological inventory is large, with simple, glottalized and aspirated stops and sonorants. The number of vowels varies with the language (five or six).
Phonology
edit| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | sibilant | lateral | plain | labial | pal. | plain | labial | ||||
| Plosive/ Affricate | plain | p | t | ts | k | kʷ | kʲ | ʔ | |||
| ejective | pʼ | tʼ | tsʼ | kʼ | kʲʼ | ||||||
| Fricative | s | h | hʷ | ||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||||||
| Lateral | voiced | l | |||||||||
| voiceless | l̥ | ||||||||||
| Approximant | j | w | |||||||||
- Aspirated sounds [pʰ, tʰ, kʰ~qʰ] only occur as allophones of /p, t, k/.
- /k, kʷ, kʼ/ can also have allophones of [q, qʷ, qʼ].
- /m, n/ can have allophones [m̥, n̥, n̥ʲ] word-medially, when occurring after /h/. [n̥ʲ] occurs when /i/ is preceding the sequence /nh/.
- /h/ can also be heard as [x] word-medially and word-finally.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | o | |
| Open | a | (ɑ) |
See also
editNotes
edit- ^ a b Wichí Lhamtés Güisnay at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ a b Zdrojkowski-Avram, Megan L. (2008). A Phonological Description of Wichí: The Dialect of Misión La Paz, Salta, Argentina. Eastern Michigan University.
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