CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE AND THEORY
2.1 Introduction
There are a number of important works that have contributed to a foundational understanding of Pamean languages.
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Soustelle 1934[1993] was the first to systematically describe Pame in light of typological evidence, while Manrique 1967 documented the then moribund and now extinct Southern
Jiliapan Pame. The observations made by these researchers were further developed in Gibson’s meticulous study of Central Pame phonemics and morphophonemics 1956 and Gibson and
Bartholomew’s 1979 description of Central Pame noun inflection. Northern Pame linguistic documentation since Soustelle has been most recently completed by Avelino 1997, 2002, who focused
on Northern Pame dialectology, segmental phonology and tone. From a theoretical perspective, the present work has much to owe to Silverman 1997a, 1997b and
Lombardi 1994 in addition to many others in the area of laryngeal phonology. Silverman’s ‘phasing and recoverability’ hypothesis focuses on the sequencing of laryngeal features on the major classes of
phonological segments. Likewise, his research on Otomanguean laryngeally complex vowels has a direct consequence on Northern Pame laryngeal segmentation in chapter 4. Lombardi’s central claim of a
laryngeal node and its delinking in laryngeal neutralization is also worthy of mention and will be returned to in chapter 8.
Finally, the present research is largely cast within the theoretical framework of Optimality Theory Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1995. Based on the premise of universal grammar,
this approach allows us to stipulate markedness constraints as universal, yet violable under the notion of constraint ranking so that a constraint may be violated if a conflicting constraint is ranked higher in the
phonology of a language. Such a view of grammars has the advantage of relating them based on their markedness patterns via language-specific constraint ranking.
2.2 Early Pamean studies: Soustelle 1934[1993], Manrique 1967
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