Dâw is a Nadahup language spoken in the northwestern part of the Amazonas state of Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, in an area commonly known as Alto Rio Negro. The number of speakers is 94, and the language is spoken by the Dâw people

Dâw people

The Dâw people are an indigenous people of the Amazon Rainforest. They are living on the right bank of Rio Negro in an area commonly known as Alto Rio Negro...

, of which most also speak Nheengatu and Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

.

Vowels

Dâw has 15 vowels:

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also...	Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel...	Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark...
	Unrounded Roundedness In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...	Rounded Roundedness In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...	Unrounded Roundedness In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...	Rounded Roundedness In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the...	i, ĩ		ɯ, ɯ̃	u, ũ
Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...		ɵ	ɤ	o
Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...	ɛ, ɛ̃			ɔ, ɔ̃
Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...	a, ã

Vowels are laryngealized when occurring beside a glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...

, as seen in the examples below.

/ʔɛʔ/ [ʔɛ̰́ʔ] "large mouth"

/nɯʔ/ [nɯ̰́ʔ] "to lack"

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony

Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other....

 in Dâw is seen primarily in two situations: in compounding

Compound (linguistics)

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...

 and with the focus marker /-Vʔ/, where V indicates a vowel. When combining two words with the first word having the syllable structure CVC, vowel harmony is not seen, e.g. /pɔx/ "high" + /lã̌ʃ/ "boat" = /pɔxlã̌ʃ/ "airplane". However, when combining two words with the first word having the syllable structure CV, vowel harmony is seen, e.g. /xɔ̂/ "canoe" + /tɯm/ "eye" = /xɯtɯm/ "sun". The vowel of the focus marker /-Vʔ/ is the same as the vowel of the syllable it is appended to, e.g. /jɯ̂w/ "blood" + /-Vʔ/ = /jɯ̂wɯʔ/.

Consonants

Dâw has 25 consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

s:

		Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth...	Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
Plosive	Voiced	p	t		c	k	ʔ
	Voiceless	b	d		ɟ	ɡ
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...				ʃ		x	h
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...	Plain	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
	Glottalized Glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice...	mˀ	nˀ		ɲˀ
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...	Plain		l		j	w
	Glottalized Glottalization Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice...		lˀ		jˀ	wˀ

Glottalized consonants are also laryngealized, as seen in the examples below.

/wˀac/ [w̰ˀác̚] "oar"

/ʃělˀ/ [ʃěːl̰ˀ̚] "banana"

The plosive consonants are unreleased

Unreleased stop

An unreleased stop or unreleased plosive is a plosive consonant without an audible release burst. That is, the oral tract is blocked to pronounce the consonant, and there is no audible indication of when that occlusion ends...

 when being codas

Syllable coda

In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...

, e.g. /pɤp/ "to kick" is realized as [pɤp̚], and /kɤɟ/ "to scratch with the nail" as [kʼɤc̚]. When being onsets, /c/ and /k/ are realized as ejective consonant

Ejective consonant

In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants...

s, i.e. [cʼ] and [kʼ], unlike the other plosive consonants, which are realized simply as plain consonants, e.g. [cʼóc̚] "without hair", [kʼɛ̃́k̚] "to hook".

Stress

Stress

Stress (linguistics)

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...

 is fixed in Dâw, occurring on the last syllable of a word. A few suffix

Suffix

In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...

es in Dâw do not take the stress, however. The suffixes are divided into two groups, metric suffixes and extrametric suffixes. The former follows the general rule of stress on the last syllable, while the latter does not. See the examples below, where /-ɔh/ is a metric suffix, and /-ĩh/ an extrametric suffix.

[bɤ̀ˈjɤ̂ː] "to return"

[bɤ̀jɤ̂ːˈɔ́h] "return!"

[bɤ̀ˈjɤ̂ːĩ̀h] "is returning"

Tone

In Dâw there are either three or four tones

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

, depending on analysis. There are a low tone, a high tone, a rising tone and a falling tone, marked by a grave accent

Grave accent

The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...

, an acute accent

Acute accent

The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...

, a caron

Caron

A caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...

 and circumflex

Circumflex

The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...

, respectively, but only the two latter are lexical. The low tone only occurs on syllables without stress, while the high tone only occurs on syllables with stress, and the rising and falling tones may occur on all syllables. As the low and high tones are not lexical, they are often left unmarked, as in /tɤɡ/ "tooth", which really is realized as [tɤ́ɡ̚].

Besides the lexical function of tone, tone may also function morphologically

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

 and syntactically

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

. Consider the examples below, the first being morphological and the second being syntactical, showing how tone is used in a derivative manner

Derivation (linguistics)

In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...

 and how tone is used to differentiate intransitive

Intransitive verb

In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....

 from transitive verb

Transitive verb

In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...

s.

[wɛ̂d̚] "to eat"

[wɛ̌d̚] "food"

[cʼɔ́ᵇm] "to bathe (oneself)"

[cʼɔ̂ːᵇm] "to bathe (someone)"

Vowel length

Vowel length

In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...

is predictable and present in Dâw, yet not distinctive lexically. All vowels with a rising or falling tone are long, while all vowels without a tone are short.