SOUTHERN BARASANO PHONEMICS

Southern Barasano is a member of the Eastern Tucanoan language family and is spoken by approximately 300-400 inhabitants living along the Piraparan River, Vaupes, Colombia. The material for this paper was gathered under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics during two field trips made during 1965/66. The main informant was Antonio (no last name), a monolingual Southern Barasano approximately 22 years of age. The major features of Southern Barasano phonemics are (1) the conditioning of variants by contiguous oral or nasalized vowels, (2) the simultaneous occurrence of high pitch and stress. Special acknowledgement is due to Esther Matteson for assistance in the development of this analysis.