17 Table 2.2
Duration of Nasals as marked fortis or lenis in Text A Utterance final
Syllable final Syllable initial
utterance medial
duration in ms
Fortis N 2
Lenis N 6
Fortis N 16
Lenis N 11
Lenis N 85
50 1
1 45
50–75 50
62 35
75–100 37.5 25
27 19
100–150 25 24
1 150–175 37.5
Although this small sample does not prove or disprove the presence of a fortislenis contrast of nasals, it suggests that no such contrast exists in Text A, which is considered to be representative of the language
phonologically. The voicelessvoiced contrasts of the plosives are better described as allophones, as is shown in section 2.3.2.1. Moreover, no minimal or analogous monomorphemic pairs based on a fortislenis
contrast in duration have been observed in Text A or in the other data of the study.
2.3.4 Acoustic nature of ¾ in Isthmus Mixe
Although the ¾ in some other Mixe languages is retroflexed Crawford 1963:43, Van Haitsma
[Dieterman] and Van Haitsma 1976:10, there is no acoustic evidence for retroflexion in Isthmus Mixe. According to Fant 1973:28 the “retroflex modification” of an alveolar articulation is “F
4
low and close to F
3
” and of a palatal articulation is “F
3
low and close to F
2
.” Ramasubramanian and Thosar 1971 classify the retroflexed consonants of Tamil as palatal stop, nasal, lateral.
29
Their data and spectrograms show that the steady-state formants of vowels adjacent to the retroflexed consonants have a lowered F3 in
comparison to the steady-state formants of vowels adjacent to non-retroflexed consonants. The F3 transitions of vowels adjacent to retroflexed consonants drop down to join with the F2 transition at the
border with the consonant. In the data of Text A, selected portions of the text immediately following Text A, and data obtained from other speakers of Isthmus Mixe, the phenomena associated with a markedly lower
F3 of vowels adjacent to
¾ do not occur.
30
Also, there is no lowering of F4 such as Fant 1973 observed for alveolar articulations. In figure 2.6,
[¾‚] ¾‚» ‘name,’ the F3 transition is not lower than the steady-state; instead it is seen to be higher, with a distance from the F2 transition. Although the F4 transition is lower
than the F4 steady-state formant, it does not approach the F3 transition. Another vowel with ¾, namely o,
shown in figure 2.7, [o ¾] from m‚ko»¾k ‘five’ is similar to [¾‚] in regard to the F3 and F4 transitions.
More detailed analyses have not been made concerning the articulatory position of the Isthmus Mixe ¾;
however, on the basis of the acoustic data, it is considered to be palato- alveolar. The palatalized allophone is contrasted with the nonpalatalized allophone in chapter 4, section 4.4.3.
29
The exact physical details of how retroflexion was produced are not discussed in either Ramasubramanian and Thosar 1971 or Fant 1973.
30
The F3 steady-state values of ‚ and o adjacent to ¾ in figures 2.6 and 2.7 are somewhat lower than the mean of
these vowels in the case study section 4.6.2, but still well above the minimum in the minimum-maximum range. The F3 values of the case study have been analyzed but not published.
18
Figure 2.6. Formants of the vowel adjacent to [ ¾] in [¾‚].
Figure 2.7. Formants of the vowel adjacent to [ ¾] in [o¾].
2.4 Isthmus Mixe vowels
