Madí phonology and orthography

Madí has a relatively small phonemic inventory, distinguishing four vowel qualities and twelve consonants.

## Vowels

1. The back vowel here represented as /o oː/ is unrounded; its most common realization is mid-back [ɤ ɤː], but this varies freely with close-back [ɯ ɯː].

All vowel qualities may occur short or long, but the distinction is fairly limited and has a low functional load. All monosyllabic words have a long vowel: /baː/ "to hit", /soː/ "to urinate". In polysyllabic words, however, vowel length is occasionally contrastive, as shown in the minimal pair /ˈaba/ "fish" and /ˈaːba/ "to be finished, dead". Many instances of long vowels developed historically from the loss of /h/ preceding an unstressed syllable, a process that is still ongoing; for example, the citation form /ˈɸaha/ "water" may be pronounced /ɸaː/ in casual speech.

Vowels are allophonically nasalized when adjacent to nasal consonants /m n h/, and at the end of main clauses.

## Consonants

1. The voiced alveolar stop /d/ occurs in the Jamamadí and Banawá dialects; in Jarawara it has merged with /t/.
2. The palatal stop /ɟ/ may be realized as a semivowel [j] in rapid speech, and especially before /i/.
3. The glottal stop [ʔ] has a limited distribution. It occurs between the elements of a compound where the second element begins with a vowel, e.g. /iso-ete/ "leg-stalk" > [isoʔete] "shin". Similarly, it occurs after reduplication when the reduplicated stem begins with a vowel: /ata-atabo/ "be muddy all over" is realized as [ataʔatabo]. Dixon therefore argues that the glottal stop is not a phoneme in its own right, but rather marks a *phonological* word boundary occurring within a *grammatical* word, when the following phonological word begins in a vowel.
4. The glottal fricative /h/ is nasalized - that is, air escapes from both the mouth and nose while it is articulated - and is therefore represented here as <h̃>. This causes the allophonic nasalization of surrounding vowels mentioned above.
5. The most common realization of the liquid /r/ in Jarawara is a "darkish" lateral approximant [l~ɫ]; a tap [ɾ] occurs as an allophone, most commonly before /i/. In Jamamadí and Banawá, however, this consonant is realized as [ɾ] in most contexts.
6. The semivowel /w/ cannot occur, or is non-distinctive, before or after the back vowel /o oː/. As a result, it is often analysed as a non-syllabic allophone of /o/.

The Jarawara dialect does not distinguish voicing in any of its consonants. It is cross-linguistically unusual, however, in that voicing in its stop series is asymmetrical; /t k/ are underlyingly voiceless, whereas /b ɟ/ are underlyingly voiced. All except /ɟ/ have occasional voiced or voiceless allophones, i.e. /p d g/; voiced allophones often occur word-initially, and voiceless allophones tend to occur word-medially. This system is the result of several mergers occurring in the transition from Proto-Arawan, which had a much larger consonant inventory. The latter system is mostly preserved in the modern Arawan language Paumarí.

## Syllables and stress

In common with many other Amazonian languages, Madí has a very simple syllable structure (C)V; that is, a syllable must consist of a vowel, which may be preceded by a consonant. All consonant-vowel sequences are permitted except /wo/. VV sequences are heavily restricted; aside from /oV Vo/ (which may also be transcribed /owV Vwo/, with an intervening consonant), sequences where /h/ is deleted before an unstressed vowel, and the recent loanword /ɟia/ "day" (from Portuguese *dia),* the only permitted sequence is /ai/. Words cannot begin with VV sequences, except when /h/ is deleted from the sequence /VhV-/.

In the Jarawara dialect, stress is assigned to every second mora counting from the end of the phonological word, beginning with the penultimate, e.g. /ˌkaraˈɸato/ "tape recorder". Since long vowels bear two moras, they are always stressed: /ˌbatiˈriː/ "priest".

In Banawá, however, stress is counted from the beginning of the word: the first (in words of two moras) or second (in words of three or more) mora is stressed, along with every second mora following. Jamamadi may share this system.

## Orthography

Like all indigenous languages of South America, Madí was not written prior to Euro-American contact; moreover, no officially standardized orthography yet exists for the language, and most native speakers are illiterate. The basis for written representation of the language today, both among native and non-native speakers, is a practical orthography devised by SIL for the Jamamadí dialect. The differences between the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the SIL orthography for Jamamadí, and Dixon's orthography for Jarawara are listed below.

 Vː
 ɸ | f
 ʔ
 ɾ~l
 owV, Vwo

This article, which focuses mostly on the Jarawara dialect, will henceforth use Dixon's practical orthography even when discussing Jamamadí and Banawá.