Chaʼpalaa language

Chaʼpalaa
Cayapa, Chachi
Chaʼpalaa
RegionEcuador
Native speakers
5,870 (2012)[1]
Barbacoan
  • Southern?
    • Chaʼpalaa
Language codes
ISO 639-3cbi
Glottologchac1249
ELPCha'palaa

Chaʼpalaa (also known as Chachi or Cayapa) is a Barbacoan language spoken in northern Ecuador by around 5,870 Chachi people.[1]

Name

"Chaʼpalaa" means "language of the Chachi people."

Documentation

This language was described in part by the missionary P. Alberto Vittadello, who, by the time his description was published in Guayaquil, Ecuador in 1988, had lived for seven years among the tribe.

Phonology

Vowels

Cha'palaa has four vowels: /a, e, i, u/.[2]

Consonants

Cha'palaa has 23 consonant phonemes.[3][4]

Consonants
Labial Alveolar Palatal Dorsal Glottal
Nasal m n ɲ
Stop voiceless p t k ʔ
voiced b d g
Affricate t͡s t͡ʃ
Fricative f s ʃ χ
Glide l j w
Liquid ɾ ʎ

Writing system

Chaʼpalaa is written using the Latin alphabet, making use of the following graphemes:

A, B, C, CH, D, DY, E, F, G, GU, HU, I, J, L, LL, M, N, Ñ, P, QU, R, S, SH, T, TS, TY, U, V, Y, and ʼ.

The writing system includes four simple vowels, and four double vowels:

Morphology

Chaʼpalaa has agglutinative morphology, with a Subject-Object-Verb word order.

References

  1. ^ a b Chaʼpalaa at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
  2. ^ Floyd, Simeon (9 June 2015). "Other-initiated repair in Cha'palaa" (PDF). DeGruyter. Open Linguistics.
  3. ^ Floyd, Simeon (2014). "Four Types of Reduplication in the Cha'palaa Language of Ecuador" (PDF). Voort-Goodwin.
  4. ^ Lindskoog, John; Brend, Ruth M. (1975). Fonémica cayapa. In M. Catherine Peeke (ed.), Estudios fonológicos de lenguas vernáculas del Ecuador: Quito: Ministerio de Educación Pública and Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. pp. 8–20.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)