Abstract
The Kaingang language presents a particular vocalic alternation involving low nasal vowels, which has traditionally been treated either as dialect differences or as a case of “free variation”. My two-decade contact with native speakers of several Kaingang communities – particularly from Xapecó (SC), Nonoai, and Inhacorá (RS) – allows me to consider this vocalic alternation as a kind of “classifier” with some characteristics of “gender”. This paper argues that these distinctions in pronunciation are not mere dialect differences in Kaingang. The linguistic reality is much richer, more revealing and more interesting than the magical discard of “free variation”.
Highlights
The Kaingang language presents a particular vocalic alternation involving low nasal vowels, which has traditionally been treated either as dialect differences or as a case of “free variation”
On a wide set of names, a pronunciation alternation is possible, and where it operates it seems desirable, using the half-open anterior nasal vowel |ɛ| when one represents a circumstance which associates the term to the qualifiers “tall/long” or “thin/diffuse”, and using the back half-open nasal vowel |ɔ|̃ when, for the same term, one introduces a circumstance which associates to the qualifiers “short/round” or “thick/compact”
It is not an exclusively semantic component, which would point to classifiers, it involves a morphophonological alternation, which is similar to a gender marking in its semantic-pragmatic feature, that allows to distinguish, for example, “full moon” from “waning moon”, and a “big eye” from a “small eye”
Summary
The Kaingang language presents a particular vocalic alternation involving low nasal vowels, which has traditionally been treated either as dialect. Several linguistic discussions took place, with the Kaingáng teachers of the community and that was (and still is) for me one of the best experiences a linguist can have Some of those discussions concerned writing, given the quite general dissatisfaction with the “official” orthography of Kaingang, and because of the dialect peculiarities of each village, which teachers were eager to see represented in it. One of these discussions was about the spelling of the word for “moon” in Kaingáng: “kysã”, in the official orthography..
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