Siona language

Siona (otherwise known as Bain Coca, Pioje, Pioche-Sioni, Ganteyabain, Ganteya, Ceona, Zeona, Koka, Kanú) is a Tucanoan language of Colombia and Ecuador. Ecuadorian Siona and Colombian Siona, as well as Secoya, have a high level of mutual intelligibility, but have some lexical, morphological, and phonological differences between them.

As of 2013, Siona is spoken by about 550 people. The Teteté dialect (Eteteguaje) is extinct.

There are 6 oral vowels and six nasal vowels. Only nasal vowels occur next to a nasal consonant /m/ or /n/.

There are two series of obstruent consonant. Both often produce a noticeable delay before the onset of the following vowel: the 'fortis' series (written p t č k kw s h hw) tends to be aspirated, with a noisy transition to the vowel, while the 'lenis' series (written b d g gw ’ z), optionally voiced, is glottalized, with a silent transition to the vowel, which in turn tends to be laryngealized. The glottal stop is faint, and noticeable primarily in the laryngealizing effect it has on adjacent vowels.

/ʈˀ/ is realized as [ɾ] between vowels. /j/ is realized as [ɲ] next to nasal vowels.

Stress is obligatory on all verb stems, root words, and some suffixes. It disappears when the syllable is not the nucleus of a phonological word. Some monosyllabic morphemes have both stressed and unstressed forms. Although the position of stress within a word is not contrastive, vocalic and consonantal allophony depends on whether a syllable is stressed. Initial stressed vowels followed by unstressed vowels are long and have a falling tone.

• Ecuadorian Siona

• Wheeler, Alva. 1970. Grammar of the Siona language, Colombia, South America. Ph.D. thesis. University of California. 192 p.
• Vocabulario de la lengua que usan los indios de estas misiones. World Digital Library. c. 1600s. Retrieved 2013-05-23.
• Siona (Intercontinental Dictionary Series)