446

/si/ or /ji/ is usually deleted; according to two speakers
in their twenties, forms with initial /ji/ or /si/ sound
overly emphatic and old-fashioned, ‘the way old people
talk'. The one form that usually has a preposed /si/

or /ji/ in Socca is 3>4 S§. Huancané has /ji/ on 173 S

and /j/ alone, optionally, on 2+3 S; /ji/ occurs option-
ally on 3>3 RIK also, as in (ji)s.xa.tayn, but is required
before -chi NI. Bertonio attests forms with optional
initial /i/ (but no /j/ or reduplicated /s/).

Like La Paz and Huancané, Jopoqueri usually avoids
initial clusters in sa.fia, but does so not by retaining
/si/ or /ji/ but by reduplicating the root vowel and re-
taining the length before consonant-requiring suffixes
beginning with a consonant, e. g. 173 S sa:.t"a 'I said’.
In Sitajara, where initial clusters in sa-.fia are more
usual, the root vowel of the verb may also sometimes
be lengthened. (Vowel length retention, rather than
vowel reduplication, occurs in Sitajara in certain other
verb roots whose vowel length is analogous to the phoneme
sequence /ya/; see 4-3.22.15).

Lengthening of the root vowel of sa.fia results
in certain forms for the Simple tense which are homo-
phonous with RDK in certain persons, namely 1>3, 2>3,
4+3, 1+2, and 3+2. When there is a verbal derivational
suffix in the stem, however, it is clear that the length

goes with the root, not the inflection. Examples: