Tariana has a large inventory of phonemes, compared with the closely related Baniwa of Içana and with neighbouring East Tucano languages. Tariana phonology has undergone a strong areal impact from Tucano (see Aikhenvald 1996a and 1999c).

Segmental phonology

The basic syllable pattern in Tariana is (C1)V(C2) where C2 can be h, y and rarely n, and C1 can be any consonant (see discussion in §2.2.1). A notable feature of Tariana is that phonotactic restrictions on the occurrence of consonants and of vowels depend on the type of morphemes (roots, affixes and clitic) summarised in Tables 2.2 and 2.4.

Consonants

The phonological system of Tariana consonants is shown in Table 2.1. Consonants differ in frequency and in phonotactic restrictions (summarised in Table 2.2 at the end of this section).

Tariana has labial, apico-dental and velar stops, with voicing distinctions only in the labial and dental series. Voiceless stops can be aspirated or unaspirated. In the remainder of this section I discuss the occurrence of consonants.

A. STOPS. Voiceless bilabial stops – unaspirated and aspirated – occur in roots in initial and in medial position, e.g. pú:we ‘capuchin monkey’, pumenípeɾi ‘sugar’, dípe ‘his meat’; kú:phe ‘fish’; phiɾimítfi ‘cotton’, phiɾìpanakwári ‘nightingale’, yáphini ‘thing’. The unaspirated p occurs in the initial position in suffixes, e.g. -pi ‘classifier: long thin things’, while ph occurs in both initial and medial positions, e.g. -phe ‘classifier: leaflike’, -mapha ‘classifier: completely covered’.