Siona (otherwise known as Bain Coca, Pioje, Pioche-Sioni, Ganteyabain, Ganteya, Ceona, Zeona, Koka, Kanú) is a
Tucanoan language of
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
and
Ecuador
Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...
.
Ecuadorian Siona and Colombian Siona, as well as
Secoya, have a high level of mutual intelligibility, but have some lexical, morphological, and phonological differences between them.
As of 2013, Siona is spoken by about 550 people. The Teteté dialect (Eteteguaje) is extinct.
[Hammarström (2015) Ethnologue 16/17/18th editions: a comprehensive review: online appendices]
Phonology
Vowels
There are 6 oral vowels and six nasal vowels. Only nasal vowels occur next to a nasal consonant or .
Consonants
There are two series of obstruent consonant. Both often produce a noticeable delay before the onset of the following vowel: the 'fortis' series (written ''p t č k kw s h hw'') tends to be
aspirated, with a noisy transition to the vowel, while the 'lenis' series (written ''b d g gw ’ z''), optionally voiced, is
glottalized, with a silent transition to the vowel, which in turn tends to be
laryngealized. The
glottal stop
The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...
is faint, and noticeable primarily in the laryngealizing effect it has on adjacent vowels.
is realized as between vowels. is realized as next to nasal vowels.
Stress
Stress is obligatory on all verb stems, root words, and some suffixes. It disappears when the syllable is not the nucleus of a
phonological word
The phonological word or prosodic word (also called pword, PrWd; symbolised as ω) is a constituent in the phonological hierarchy. It is higher than the syllable and the foot but lower than intonational phrase and the phonological phrase. It i ...
. Some monosyllabic morphemes have both stressed and unstressed forms. Although the position of stress within a word is not contrastive, vocalic and consonantal allophony depends on whether a syllable is stressed. Initial stressed vowels followed by unstressed vowels are long and have a falling tone.
References
Internal links
*
Ecuadorian Siona
External links
* Wheeler, Alva. 1970.
Grammar of the Siona language, Colombia, South America.' Ph.D. thesis. University of California. 192 p.
*
Siona(
Intercontinental Dictionary Series)
{{Languages of Ecuador
Tucanoan languages
Indigenous languages of Western Amazonia
Languages of Colombia
Languages of Ecuador