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The possibility of a transitional phonetic off-glide whose presence is conditioned by the consonant would also not explain the occurrence of both types of diphthongs with the glottal consonants. The
presence of the high, vocalic phoneme must be lexical, but perhaps they are licensed by similar features on the consonant.
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The glottal consonants appear to be the least restrictive onset environment in Soyaltepec Mazatec and could possibly be interpreted as neutral phonemes.
3.4.2.2 Nasal Diphthongs
Like nasal vowels in general, nasal diphthongs are less common than their oral counterparts. The nasal diphthongs follow a similar pattern to the oral diphthongs; however, there are no co-occurrences with
t or f. Recall that f also never occurs with simple nasal vowels, so it is unsurprising that nasal diphthongs are likewise absent. Table 3-13 demonstrates the occurrence of the nasal diphthongs. It is set up
analogously to Table 3-12 with the consonant phonemes listed down the left column and the nasal diphthongs listed across the top row.
Table 3-13 Examples of Nasal Diphthongs
C ĩɛ̃
ĩã ĩũ
ãĩ ũĩ
ũɛ̃ ũã
a. p
b. w
c. f
d. t
e. s
sĩã˦ ‘upright’
f. ts︢
g. l
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This argument in some ways is contradictory to the co-occurrence restrictions based in the OCP that forbade similar features between the onset and nucleus and were argued for in §3.3.
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C ĩɛ̃
ĩã ĩũ
ãĩ ũĩ
ũɛ̃ ũã
h. ɾ
i. Σ
j. t
Σ︢ k.
j l.
k ʃkũɛ̃˦˥
‘unripe’ kũã˦˥
‘purple’ m.
ʔ kʔĩɛ̃˧
‘dead’ tʔãĩ˩
‘go’ tʃ︢ʔũĩ˥
‘chayote’ n.
h khĩɛ̃˥
‘eat’ thĩã˦
‘seated’ ts︢hĩũ˩
‘tobacco’ thãĩ˦˩
‘fungus’ ndʒ︢u˧khũã˦
‘aunt’ The nasal diphthongs are in a very restricted distribution. They mostly occur with consonant clusters
ending in glottal phonemes, perhaps reflecting the neutral nature of the glottal phoneme. It is curious that there are no examples of nasal diphthongs appearing after a simple h phoneme. There is one example of a
nasal diphthong ĩã occurring with s which is perhaps more motivation to look for sh clusters as this
type of co-occurrence could indicate the presence of the h phoneme. Also, similar to the oral diphthongs, ũ- initial diphthongs can occur after k. A variety of tones occur on the nasal diphthongs the four level
tones occur in Row n along with a falling tone and a rising tone occurs in Row k; there are no restrictions on the tones that occur with nasal diphthongs.
The seven more common oral diphthongs each have a nasalized counterpart. Like the common oral diphthongs, the nasal diphthongs each contain a high vowel. All exce
pt ãĩ begin with a high vowel. It is possible that nasalized examples of the three rare oral diphthongs ei, ao and io will surface with
further research. There are no diphthongs that appear nasally without an oral counterpart.
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3.4.3 Consonant Clusters
