40 palatalization in the Oaxacan Mixe languages, it is hoped that this study will elucidate the phenomenon
and contribute important data to the body of general linguistic knowledge.
3.8 Palatalization as an autosegmental feature
Beginning with the description of Copainalá Zoque by Wonderly 1951, a number of the Zoque languages were described as having a third person prefix j- that caused primary palatalization in some instances and
that metathesized with other consonants e.g. labial, velar and glottal see section 3.5 and the individual language descriptions in section 3.6. The term, metathesize, simply means “an alteration in the normal
sequence of elements” Crystal 1997:240 and does not give any indication as to whether any phonological processes are caused by the metathesis. In the case of Copainalá Zoque described by Wonderly 1951,
Sagey 1986:106–111 interpreted the data to mean that all of the consonants had undergone a process of palatalization
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section 3.6.1, thus, it is ambiguous as to whether there is actually a sequence of two consonants e.g. pj, kj, hj, or one palatalized consonant.
In the Mixe languages, Crawford 1963 phonemicized the third person prefix j-, together with the initial consonant of the word, as Cj section 3.7.2. He clearly stated that this sequence indicated
[secondary] palatalization of the initial consonant, not an actual sequence of two consonants. However, it seems that the concept of the sequence of two consonants prevailed, because in the survey done by
Maddieson 1984, the language described by Crawford 1963 is not included with the languages that have secondary palatalization section 3.3 and no other authors who discuss palatalization in detail have
included the Mixe languages among their examples. In this type of representation, the fact that palatalization manifests the third person morpheme is also not apparent. It is to be noted that the earlier
descriptions of the Mixe languages attempted to describe all the features using the linear model; the development of autosegmental models came later.
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Secondary palatalization as an autosegmental feature will be shown to be the most appropriate way to handle morphemically-induced secondary palatalization in the Oaxacan Mixe languages section 5.
Describing secondary palatalization as an autosegmental feature obviates the need for a set of palatalized consonants on the phonemic level and does not complicate the linear consonant-vowel structures of the
syllable. The phonetic manifestation of the morpheme is clearly revealed by the autosegmental approach.
In addition, in describing Mixe secondary palatalization as an autosegmental feature, it can also be recognized as a consonant mutation; thus, it can be compared with other consonant mutations in the
world’s languages that are morphemes and are described as autosegmental features, such as labialization and palatalization in Chaha McCarthy 1983, continuant and voicing in Nuer Lieber 1983, continuant
and nasalization in Fula Lieber 1983 and palatalization in Japanese mimetics Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994, Mester and Ito
1989.
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Sagey 1986:106–111 does not use the terms primary and secondary palatalization. However, in her analysis, the Copainalá Zoque labial, velar and glottal consonants undergo what it called secondary palatalization in this study she
indicates a secondary articulation and the alveolar and alveopalatal consonants undergo what is here called primary palatalization.
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Although only the word initial third person morpheme is discussed here, in at least some of the Mixe languages, there are also verb-word final palatalization morphemes see sections 3.7.5, 4.4.7, and 5.5.1.
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4. A case study of secondary palatalization in Isthmus Mixe
4.1 Introduction
Given that the morpheme indicating third person manifests itself as palatalization of the initial consonant of the word, secondary palatalization in Isthmus Mixe is widespread. This third person morpheme affixes to
nouns and verbs, which all begin with one consonant followed by one vowel. Since all the consonant phonemes in the language may occur word initial and they may be followed by any of the six vowel
qualities,
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every consonant and every vowel may be affected by palatalization in word-initial syllables. While palatalization in other languages is usually caused by the phonetic influence of an adjacent front
vowel, palatalization in Isthmus Mixe is morphologically induced: there is no purely phonological trigger for the process.
In the waveforms and spectrograms shown in figure 4.1, it can be seen that there is no overt phonetic influence causing palatalization of the consonant p. There is nothing preceding the palatalized consonant
[p
j
] in [p
j
a ÿm] from
j
-pa-me
h
t s-
j
‘they follow arrived’ to trigger palatalization, nor is the low vowel a which follows [p
j
] a trigger. Palatalization is a manifestation of the third person morpheme affixed to the consonant.
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One exception is that consonant j is not followed by vowel i.
