This study aims to document, describe and analyze some phonological aspects
of the Waiwai language, one of the languages of the Cariban family, and apply them for
scientific purposes. This language is spoken by the inhabitants of the Indigenous Land
Nhamundá / Mapuera, located on the border of the state of Pará with the state of Amazonas.
The study is justified by the attempt to update the data on other aspects of phonology and
grammar of the Waiwai language. The only works about the phonology of the Waiwai
indigenous people are those of Neil W. Hawkins (1952) and Robert E. Hawkins (1998). For
this reason, it will seek to establish, more specifically, the phonetic-phonological system of
the language. The methodology used is part of a descriptive approach, interpreting,
synchronously, the phonological structure of language study in its oral form. The research
corpus is based on systematic analysis of the data, identifying and analyzing the vowel and
consonant segments, objects of study of phonetics and phonology, giving an account of how
this language organizes its sounds, as well as some considerations about the accent and
syllabic pattern of the language. For the development of this research we have considered
works by structural linguistics and functionalist linguistics scholars.
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