Tracing sound change in Nasa Yuwe (western Colombia)

Abstract

This paper is a contribution to the historical phonology of Nasa Yuwe, a presumable language isolate of southwestern Colombia. It shows how a lexical comparison with two presumably unrelated language groups can help to reconstruct a sound change of *a > e in Nasa Yuwe. The two language groups compared with Nasa Yuwe in this paper are Andaqui, likewise of western Colombia, and the Misumalpan family of Central America. Whereas *a is documented as such in the Andaqui and Misumalpan forms, data discussed in this paper suggest that it has changed to e and related vowels in Nasa Yuwe.