Introduction A case study of secondary palatalization in Isthmus Mixe

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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, 64 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. 64 One exception is that consonant j is not followed by vowel i. 42 Figure 4.1. Comparison of [p j ] in [p j a ÿm] with [p] in [pak]. The most characteristic indication of the palatalization of a consonant, as seen on a spectrogram, is a raised F2 transition of the adjacent vowel. In figure 4.1, a raised F2 transition is seen adjacent to the palatalized consonant [p j ] in [p j a ÿm]; in contrast, the F2 transition is low following the plain consonant [p] in [pak]. The palatalization is heard as occurring simultaneously with the primary consonantal articulation and as a short glide transition on the vowel. Besides word-initial palatalization, some types of clause-final markers 65 consist of secondary palatalization that palatalizes the verb-final consonant or consonant cluster see sections 3.7.5 and 4.4.6. In addition, there are a number of other palatalized word-final consonants or consonant clusters that are also related to a historical process of final-syllable truncation see section 3.7.5. Thus, there is also considerable word-final palatalization. A study of the effects of secondary palatalization on Isthmus Mixe consonants and vowels was made on Text A, which is fluent continuous speech, 100 seconds long see Appendix. There are a total of 356 syllables, which averages 3.56 syllables per second. 66 All consonants and vowels except those found in non-Mixe words, such as Spanish names were analyzed, a total of 398 consonants and 300 vowels. 67 See section 2.1 for a description of Text A, and section 4.3 for methodology. The frequency counts of the consonants and vowels in this text in relationship to secondary palatalization show the widespread effects of palatalization and give an overview of the language. 65 Palatalization of the final consonant of the verb is characteristic of the three types of conjunct clauses, and it also occurs in conjunction with the verb-final suffix -p in one of the nonconjunct clauses. These clauses are described in Dieterman 1995 and Dieterman 1998. 66 As a basis for comparison, Ladefoged 2001:169 says that English-speaking network newscasters speak at about three syllables per second. 67 The syllable count included the non-Mixe words, whereas only the segments in native Mixe words were analyzed in depth. 43

4.2 Frequency counts of Isthmus Mixe consonants