Tehuelche language

Spoken in

• Chon languages tehuelche

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Tehuelche (proper name: aonek'o ʔaʔjen, " language of the Southerners ") is a related family of Chon - languages ​​language of Argentina, the (Patagonia ) is spoken by representatives of an ethnic group in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz. In the years 1983/84 29 speakers were counted, most of which at that time was already over 40 years old; also differences in the language competence of these speakers were detected.

Phonology

Tehuelche has 25 consonant phonemes and 6 vowel:

In addition, existing, not listed in the table consonantal phonemes are the glottal plosive / ʔ /, the Laterallaut / l / and the Vibrant / r /. In particular, the simple plosives vary with their glottalized variants from speaker to speaker.

The vowel phonemes of the language are / e /, / e :/, / o /, / o :/, / a / and / a :/.

The accent is fixed and falls on the first syllable. Following syllable types occur (C stands for a consonant, V for vowel): V, CV, VC, CVC, VCC (only word initial), CVCC, CCVC (only word final), CC ( in word initial and final), C ( only word- initial and -final ).

Morphology

Nominal morphology

Nouns are inherently differentiated according to the genera masculine, feminine and neuter. Pronouns exist as free and bound variants that are affigiert to other lexemes lexical categories ( verbs, nouns, adverbs ).

Verbal morphology

There are three modes ( realism, subjunctive and imperative ) and four tenses, two of which relate to the past and two forward-looking.