Abstract

This article presents the segmental phonemes of the spoken Mapudungun in Icalma and a phonetic-phonological profile of a large part of the Pewenche-speaking mountain range. The frame of reference used is the American descriptivism, whose proposals come from Pike (1947) and are updated in the works of Burquest (2006) and Salamanca, Cifuentes and Figueroa (2011). A lexical list of 108 items was used as the instrument and the number of collaborators interviewed was nine. In relation to the phonetic-phonological description of the spoken Mapudungun in the area, these are the main results: A) voiceless fricative realizations [f] and [θ] predominate; b) interdental segments [, [] and [], and the velar fricative segment [Y] have phonemic status; and c) the segment [] does not occur in the area. Furthermore, if the spoken Mapudungun in Icalma is compared with those in Alto Bio-Bio, Lonquimay and Curarrehue, a greater affinity with the spoken Mapudungun in the latter zone can be seen.