Summary Overview eBook 53 Beal Soyaltepec Mazatec

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3.7 Summary

Soyaltepec Mazatec is a tonal language which contains 10 vocalic phonemes 5 oral and 5 nasal vowels, 17 consonant phonemes, 13 diphthongs 10 oral and 7 nasal and 27 possible consonant clusters. Consonant clusters are as common as simple onsets, but simple vowels are preferred to diphthongs. The maximal syllable is CCVV, but CV syllables are preferred. Onsets are required and codas are prohibited. Monosyllabic words are common, but disyllabic words are slightly more common. Trisyllabic words, and even longer words, occur occasionally, but most frequently are the result of morphology. There are no restrictions on the placement of syllable types within multisyllabic words. Any type of syllable may occur word initially, medially or finally. Stress occurs in Soyaltepec Mazatec on the final syllable of the stem, but it is not a very active process. The only feature licensed by stress is vocalic nasalization. 103 103 While in general tone is independent of stress in Soyaltepec Mazatec, one tonal process described in §5.2.2 may be shown to involve the attraction of a floating tone to a stressesd syllable under certain conditions. More research is needed to confirm the association. 165 CHAPTER 4 SURFACE TONE

4.1 Overview

In this chapter, I outline the surface tones that occur in Soyaltepec Mazatec and suggest representations based on the geometry proposed by Snider. The richness of the tonal inventory is reminiscent of Asian tone systems. While the major tonal categories found agree with those described by Pike that were examined in Chapter 2, some of the specific words examined have different tones than she described. In addition, I have expanded the tonal inventory to include an additional falling tone, i.e., Mid to Low ˧˩, that Pike did not use. Also, I found that both falling tones can occur lexically. The major divergences from Pike’s work involve not only the underlying representation of specific words but also the behavior of the Mid-high to High contour tone which was reported to be erratic in Pike’s description. I was not able to confirm any cases of the contour tones which were problematic for Pike and inspirational for Pizer. Specifically, I did not find examples in which a Mid-High to High rising tone split into a Mid on the original host syllable and a Mid-high on the following syllable. This tonal behavior will be addressed in Chapter 5. Another expansion I offer over Pike’s work is commentary on the relative incidence of the tones. Pike’s work did not indicate the overall commonness of any given tone other than to say that the Mid-high tone M 1 or 2 in Pike’s notation was not very common on single syllable words. The data that I found is in agreement with this claim. I found the H, M 2 and L tones to be common in addition to two of the rising tones: M 1 -H and M 2 -M 1 . A characteristic of Soyaltepec Mazatec that makes the system challenging to analyze is the tendency of speakers to maximize the pitch separation within each utterance. 104 Furthermore, the exact 104 I am not aware of any published works which address this topic cross-linguistically, so I am not able to say if this is a tendency of all tone languages, or a specific characteristic of Soyaltepec Mazatec. 166 pitch of a tone from a given speaker appears to be almost irrelevant. For example, unless a speaker is purposefully trying to enunciate, a word in isolation is often spoken near the middle of the speakers pitch range regardless of if it is High, Mid or Low. Furthermore, the difference in pitch between two words, the first with a High tone, the second with a Low tone, may be the same as the difference in pitch between two words in which the first has a High tone and the second a Mid tone. The difference between the two sets only becomes evident if a third word with a different pitch is added. Therefore, the analyst must be cognizant of the relationship of each syllable to its surrounding syllables and be careful to consider the morphemes not just in isolation or any given environment but also in several different environments. As a preview of the tones that will be discussed, Table 4-1 gives examples 105 of the tones that can appear on monosyllabic morphemes in Soyaltepec Mazatec. The tones are listed down the left column followed by vertical lists of near minimal pairs; i.e., there is minimal difference in the segmental material. The letters heading each column are placed for ease of reference to the material. In the sections that follow, I first present the tonal primitives of Soyaltepec Mazatec,and then I discuss how these primitives combine to form clusters. Throughout I suggest phonological representations. The underlying representations of the morphemes are assumed to contain no association lines between the tones and their anchors unless otherwise specified. The unassociated tones are linked via the Universal Association Convention UAC. Recall that in addition to being specified for both melody and register, each phonological unit must conform to the Obligatory Contour Principle OCP which prohibits identical elements from occupying adjacent positions. 105 In all of the data in the remainder of the dissertation, the segmental phonemes will be given, not allophones, except for the voiced obstruent allophones which occur after nasals. 167 Table 4-1 Minimal Tone Comparisons on Monosyllabic Morphemes Tone Near Minimal Sets A B C D E F G H I H th ɛ˥ ‘itch’ ti˥ ‘flame’ t ɛ˥ ‘dance’ sũ˥ ‘flat’ khia˥ ‘when’ ku˥ ‘and’ nda˥ ‘works’ hĩ˥ ‘name’ M 1 thi˦ ‘round’ thĩã˦ ‘there seated’ kũ˦ ‘are’ hi˦ ‘you’ M 2 ti˧ ‘boy’ t ɛ˧ ‘ten’ thia˧ ‘arm’ tku ɛ˧ ‘raspy’ thãĩ˧ ‘thick’ khan˧ ‘fights’ h ɛ˧ ‘fat’ L th ɛ˩ ‘grass’ ti˩ ‘fish’ t ɛ˩ ‘crushed’ k ʔia˩ ‘there’ tku˩ ‘head’ thao˩ ‘wind’ nda˩ ‘voice’ h ɛ˩ ‘young corn shoot’ M 1 -H th ɛ˦˥ ‘trash’ thĩ˦˥ ‘there are’ s ʔui˦˥ ‘party’ tkua˦˥ ‘snail’ hĩ˦˥ ‘blood’ M 2 -H th ɛ˧˥ ‘bug bite’ ki˧˥ ‘went’ t ɛ˧˥ ‘wide’ nda ˧˥ ‘good’ M 2 -M 1 th ɛ˧˦ ‘cough’ ta˧˦ ‘toasted’ tku˧˦ ‘elbow’ kha˧˦ ‘skunk’ hĩ˧˦ ‘eight’ M 1 -L th ɛ˦˩ ‘type’ sũ˦˩ ‘song’ thãĩ˦˩ ‘fungus’ M 2 -L ndʒ︢i˧˩ ‘wet’ ta˧˩ ‘unripe’ kho˧˩ ‘with’ kha˧˩ ‘delicate’ hĩ˧˩ ‘we’ L-M 2 ndʒ︢ɛ˩˦ ‘hominy’ t ʃ︢hũ˩˦ ‘woman’ t ʃ︢ho˩˦ ‘egg’ L-M 1 hao˩˧ ‘OK’ na˩˧ ‘mother’ 168

4.2 Tonemes