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Tone, stress, and their interactions in Cushillococha Ticuna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Amalia Skilton
Amalia Skilton*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Cornell University, 150 Central Ave., Ithaca, NY 14850 USA
*
amalia.skilton@cornell.edu
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Abstract

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Ticuna (ISO: tca; Peru, Colombia, Brazil) displays a larger tone inventory - five level tones - than any other Indigenous American language outside Oto-Manguean. Based on recent fieldwork, this article argues that, in addition to these tone properties, the Cushillococha variety of Ticuna also displays stress. Stress corresponds to morphological structure, licenses additional tonal and segmental contrasts, conditions many phonological processes, and plays a central role in grammatical tone processes marking clause type. Empirically, these findings expand our understanding of word prosody in tone languages in general and Amazonian languages in particular. Theoretically, they challenge current models of stress-conditioned phonology and grammatical tone.

Keywords

tonestressprosodystress-conditioned phonologyAmazonian languages

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonological Data and Analysis , Volume 5 , Issue 5 , 2023 , pp. 1 - 44
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
Published by the Linguistic Society of America with permission of the author under a CC BY 3.0 license.
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 Amalia Skilton.

Footnotes

*

I thank all of the Ticuna people who have worked with me on their language, especially the primary participants in this study: Katia Lucero Salate Cándido; the late Ling Cándido Serra; Deoclesio Guerrero Gómez; Lilia Witancourt Guerrero; and an anonymous consultant. This article took nearly six years from data collection to production, and I thank everyone who offered feedback along the way, especially Partie Epps, Larry Hyman, Sharon Inkelas, Myriam Lapierre, Lev Michael, Tony Woodbury, the PDA editors and reviewers, and an audience at the 2017 Conference on the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Special thanks go to Denis Bertet, Lambert and Doris Anderson, and - again - Lilia Witancourt for their individual insights into the Cushillococha tone system.

This material is based upon work supported by the Survey of California and Other Indigenous Languages under three Oswalt Grants; Cornell University under the Klarman Fellowship; and the National Science Foundation under Grants BCS-1741571 and SMA-1911762. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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