Consonants

Yawalapiti and Waurá, an Arawakan language belonging to the same subgroup, share a very similar phonemic inventory. The main segments are classified in the following table.

There are no voiced plosives or affricates in the language. The palatal [c] appears to be an allophone of /k/ occurring before the front vowel /i/, e.g. [puˈluka] "countryside" vs. [naˈciɾu] "my aunt". Also, the fricative /ʂ/ is in free variation with its voiced counterpart and /ʐ/ respectively, e.g. [iˈʂa ~ iˈʐa] "canoe".^[5]

There are also some phonotactic constraints that dictate what types of consonants are allowed to appear in certain positions inside a word. For instance, the sounds /tʃ, l, ɾ/ cannot occur before the vowel /ɨ/, and the latter two are restricted to the medial position. In a similar manner, the liquid /ʎ/ is only observed in medial position and never before /a/. As for the voiceless /r̥/, it is the only rhotic segment that is allowed to appear in any position and before any vowel. The semivowel /w/ is found in initial, medial and final position, while /j/ does not occur in final position.^[6]

The glottal stop is automatic in words beginning or ending in a vowel, i.e. a word like /u/ "water" is pronounced as [ˈʔuʔ].^[7]

Vowels

The Yawalapiti language has both oral and nasal vowels, as shown below.

Although nasal vowels mostly occur before or after nasal consonants, e.g. [ˈĩmi] "pequi oil" or [ˈmũnu] "termite",^[6] there are cases in which they are found in non-nasal environments, e.g. [hã ~ hĩ] (emphatic particle).^[9] Simple vowels can form various diphthongs, mainly /iu, ui, ia, ai, au, ua, ɨu, uɨ/.^[10]

Contrary to Waurá, Yawalapiti has no /e/ sound. This is because Proto-Arawak *e has evolved as /ɨ/ while, at the same time, Proto-Arawak *i and *ɨ have merged resulting into /i/ in Yawalapiti.^[11]

Phonotactics

Syllables in Yawalapiti can be of the type V, CV and, only in word-final position, (C)Vʔ. The stress may fall on the penultimate or on the last syllable of a word.^[10]

Classifiers and derivational suffixes

As other Arawakan languages, Yawalapiti is agglutinative and makes use of affixes, especially suffixes, to convey basic grammatical relations. Nominal suffixes can be divided into two groups: classifiers and derivational suffixes.

The main classifiers found in Yawalapiti refer to the shape of an object or some other characteristic of it, like texture, length and position.^[12]

These morphemes attach to adjectives when they refer to a noun that needs a classifier, as in the following example.

Derivational suffixes are applied to primitive nouns to form new compound nouns. Sometimes, however, the meaning of the original noun is not known.

Possessives

Nominal and verbal prefixes intervene in the formation of possessive phrases, and can indicate the subject or the object of a verb phrase. The set of possessive prefixes of Yawalapiti is very similar to those of the other languages of the Arawakan branch.

In vowel initial nouns and verbs, the forms ni- and pi- are frequently used with roots beginning in u, while the prefix aw- appears systematically before a. In nouns and verbs beginning in consonant, the form ti- occurs only when the root starts with h (in all the other cases, hi- is used). The third person plural is actually a circumfix formed by the correspondent prefix of the third person singular and the pluralizer suffix -pa. When nouns beginning with p, k, t, m, n, w and j are modified by the prefix of second person singular or plural, their initial sounds are subject to the following morphophonemic changes.^[14]

p → ɾ

k → tʃ

t → ts

m → ɲ

n → ɲ

w → Ø

j → Ø

Thus, for example, -kuʃu "head" becomes hi-tʃuʃu "your head" (but nu-kuʃu "my head"), -palaka "face" becomes hi-ɾalaka "your face" (but nu-palata "my face") and -jakanati "saliva" becomes hi-akanati "your saliva" (but nu-jakanati "my saliva").

Apart from possessive prefixes, alienable nouns also receive alienable possessive suffixes, as in the case of uku "arrow", which becomes n-uku-la "my arrow", p-uku-la "your arrow", in-uku-la "his/her arrow", etc.

Independent pronouns

Independent pronouns of first and second person are listed in the table below.^[15]

For the third person, Yawalapiti speakers use demonstrative pronouns, which are also marked for gender.^[15]