The Xavante language is a Ge language spoken by the Xavante people in about 170 villages in the area surrounding Eastern Mato Grosso, Brazil. The Xavante language is unusual in its phonology, its object–subject–verb word order, and its use of honorary and endearment terms in its morphology.
The phonology of Xavante is described by McLeod (1974).
Xavante has nine vowel qualities, long and short. Four occur nasalized, long and short.
/i/ is [iː] when long and [ɪ] when short. /e/ is raised after /r/ in a non-initial syllable. /a/ is a central vowel. It is a rounded [ɐ̹] in certain stylistic conventions. /ɔ/ is a mid vowel [ɔ̝ː] when long, and a more open [ɔ] when short. /u/ is [uː] when long and [u] or [ʊ] when short. /o/, /ɨ/, and /ɛ/ do not vary much. /ə/ is written <ë> in the orthography.
Xavante has ten consonants, /p t c ʔ b d j r w h/. They are realized as,
(Placement is approximate; /j/ varies between obstruent and sonorant, alveolar and palatal.)
Xavante is highly unusual in lacking velar consonants, except for the labio-velar approximant /w/. At a phonemic level, it arguably also lacks nasal consonants, which is less unusual in the Amazon. The language however has a high degree of allophony, and nasal stops [m n ɲ] appear before nasal vowels.
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