Description of Acoustic and Articulatory Parameters of Vowels in Mapudungun Speakers. Pilot Study

Mapudungun is a language used by Mapuche people in some regions of Chile and Argentina. The aim of this study was to describe the vowel phonemes with regard to the articulatory parameters (position of the tongue with respect to the palate and jaw opening) and acoustic parameters (f0, F1, F2 and F3) in Mapudungun speakers in the Region of La Araucanía. The vocalic phonemes of Mapudungun are six, where the first five are similar to those used in Spanish (/a e i o u/), to which is added a sixth vowel (/ɨ/) with its vocalic allophones (/ɨ/) and [Ә]. Three Mapudungun speakers were evaluated. The tongue movements were collected by Electromagnetic Articulography 3D and the data were processed with MATLAB and PRAAT software. It was possible to describe the trajectory of each third of the tongue during the production of the vowels. It was observed that the sixth vowel /Ә/ had minimal jaw opening during its pronunciation. In addition, the characteristic of /Ә/ as an unrounded mid-central vowel was corroborated. In this study, the tongue of mapudungun speakers was in a more posterior position than the found in other studies.