The Cubeo language is a SOV language spoken by the Cubeo people

Cubeo

The Cubeo are an ethnic group of the Colombian Amazon. Cubeo is a generic name that is used in local Spanish and appears in the literature in reference to a social and linguistic group. Although the term does not have any meaning in their language, the Cubeo refer to themselves by that name in...

 and is a member of the central branch of the Tukano language. It has many lexical loans from the Nadahup languages and has a grammar which was apparently influenced by Arawak. The language is spoken in the Vaupés department

Vaupés Department

Vaupés is a department of Colombia in the jungle covered Amazonas Region. It is located in the southeast part of the country, bordering Brazil to the east, the department of Amazonas to the south, Caquetá and Guaviare, and Guainía to the north covering a total area of 54,135 km²...

, Cuduyari, and Querarií rivers and tributaries of Columbia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

. It is also spoken in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

.

Phonetics and Phonology

Vowels
There are 6 oral vowels and six nasal ones. (See ɨ if you are not familiar with this letter.)

	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...
High	i ĩ	ɨ ɨ̃	u ũ
Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...	ɛ ɛ̃		o õ
Low		a ã

Consonants

	bilabial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...	alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	prepalatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
voiceless stops Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	p	t		k
voiced stops Stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...	b	d
voiceless Affricate			tʃ
Fricative				x
Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...		r
Semi-vowel	w		j

Strangely, Cubeo has a velar fricative /x/ but not strident fricatives. When older Cubeos use Spanish loans with /s/, they pronounce it as /č/ before vowels. The /s/ deletes in word-final position in loans as in [xeˈtʃu] < Sp. Jesús [heˈsus] 'Jesus'.

Stress

The stressed syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

is the first syllable with high tone in the phonological word (usually the second syllable of the word). Stress (and by extension, the position of the first high-tone syllable) is contrastive.

Nasality

Most morphemes belong to one of three categories:

1. Nasal (many roots, as well as suffixes like -xã 'associative')
2. Oral (many roots, as well as suffixes like -pe 'similarity', -du 'frustrative')
3. Unmarked (only suffixes, e.g. -RE 'in/direct object')

No roots are unmarked with respect to this nasal/oral division, however some roots are partially oral and nasal, /bã'kaxa-/ [mã'kaxa-] 'to defecate'.

Suffixes that begin with consonants without nasal allophones may be only nasal or oral (not unmarked) although suffixes that begin with consonants that have nasal allophones (/b, d, j, w, x, r/) may belong to any of the three classes above. It is impossible to predict the class to which a nasalizable consonant-initial suffix may belong.

There are some suffixes that are partially oral and partially nasal, like -kebã 'suppose'. There are no cases in modern Cubeo in which -kebã is divided into separate oral and nasal suffixes.

Nasal assimilation

Nasality spreads rightward from the nasal vowel, nasalizing all oral vowels within a word provided they are not nasal and that all intervening consonants are nasalizable (/b, d, j, w, x, r/)

bu-bI-ko

/buˈe-bi-ko/

[buˈebiko]

'She recently studied.'

Unlike the previous example, in the next one nasality spreads from the initial vowel to the following one, but is blocked from the third syllable by a non-nasalizable /k/:

dĩ-bI-ko

/dĩ-bĩ-ko/

[nĩmĩko]

'She recently went.'

Nasal spreading is blocked by underlyingly oral suffixes or vowels that are underlyingly oral in a nasal/oral morpheme.

External links

• Ethnologue entry for Cubeo
• WALS entry for Cubeo
• Cubeo cross-referenced on the LinguistList