PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION OF CONSONANTAL AND VOCALIC SEGMENTS IN THE TIKUNA LANGUAGE

Abstract

This study investigates the phonetic and phonological variation of the Tikuna language in two Indigenous communities located in the Upper Solimões region of the Brazilian Amazon, seeking to understand how different linguistic realizations are manifested among speakers and which factors may influence such occurrences. The research is grounded in the theoretical framework of Variationist Sociolinguistics, particularly the contributions of Labov, Mollica, and Braga, as well as phonetic-phonological studies developed by Silva and research dedicated to the description of the Tikuna language. A qualitative and descriptive approach was adopted, based on the analysis of linguistic data collected from speakers of the Tikuna Indigenous communities of Feijoal and Betânia. The corpus consisted of linguistic productions recorded during fieldwork and subsequently subjected to phonetic and phonological analysis. The results revealed the occurrence of systematic variations involving both vocalic and consonantal segments, including processes of substitution, deletion, lengthening, and syllabic reorganization. The differences observed between the investigated communities indicate that the Tikuna language exhibits patterns of variation conditioned by linguistic and sociocultural factors, confirming its dynamic and heterogeneous nature. It is concluded that the identified variants constitute legitimate manifestations of the internal linguistic diversity of the Tikuna language and contribute to expanding knowledge of its phonetic-phonological structure, reinforcing the importance of documenting, describing, and valuing Brazilian Indigenous languages.