Historical development of /b/ and /d/ in Arara/Ahawãdawa (Panoan)

Abstract

This paper describes and analyses the historical development of the consonants /b/ and /d/ in the phonological system of Arara/Shawãdawa (Panoan). To reach this purpose, based on the principles of Historical Phonology (JAKOBSON, 2008), we analyse the formation of these phonemes as a phonological change that initially produced prenasalized allophones of them, that is, [mb] and [nd], which also nasalized the preceded vowels. Then the nasal enhancement from those allophones were lost, so that were raised [b] and [d]. Next stage was the establishment of a phonological distinction between them and the sources they came from, /m/ and /n/, resulting in an opposition noted as /m/ : /n/ :: /b/: /d/ of the correlative type (in opposition to the disjunct type) (JAKOBSON, 2008), that is, a distinction in that the presence or absence of only one distinctive feature suffices to maintain this distinction in a set of phonemes. We also show that those prenasalized allophones can still be witnessed, given the fact that when we find /b/ or /d/ in medial position of word, the preceding vowel is nasalized. Furthermore, unlikely Cunha (1993), our analysis discourages the existence of nasal vowels in Arara/Shawãdawa.