Early Pamean studies: Soustelle 1934[1993], Manrique 1967

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. 3 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 The early 20 th century research by Jacques Soustelle 1934 marks the first real attempt to describe Pame languages within a framework of general linguistics and typology. He accomplishes this task by extensive field work that covers five primary languages within the Otopame family including various dialects of Otomi Querétaro and Hidalgo, Mazahua Mexcio State, Matlazinca Mexico State, Chichimeco Jonáz Guanajuato and Pame San Luis Potosí. The data on all of these languages enabled Soustelle to make important observations about their phonology, morphology and syntax. The discussion that follows summarizes his observations regarding Northern Pame phonology and morphology. 4 Although his research was the most valuable on Northern Pame at the time, Soustelle did not hesitate to confess his utter bewilderment with the Northern Pame data facts that confronted him. In his presentation of Northern Pame phonetics, we find the following statement regarding the perception of Mestizos regarding the difficulties of the Pame language. 3 For a comprehensive list of early Pamean studies other than those summarized here, see Soustelle 1993, Manrique Castañeda 1967 and Avelino 1997. 4 Soustelle made no distinction of Pame languages, only dialects. The Northern Pame discussion referred to here was termed Pame Alaquines 340, which was then named after Alaquines, San Luis Potosí where Soustelle obtained his data. The Alaquines dialect is very similar to the Northern Pame data collected by this writer from Cuesta Blanca Municipio Tamasopo 20 miles south. En la región septentrional los indígenas son numerosos; su lengua tiene fama de ser extraordinariamente difícil, si no imposible, de pronunciar correctamente y, al contrario de lo que ocurría en territorio otomí, los no indígenas ni siquiera intentan aprender unas palabras 339. In the northerly region the indigenous people are numerous; their tongue is famous for being extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to pronounce correctly, and contrary to what occurs in the Otomi territory, the non-indigenous people do not even try to learn some of the words. The chapter is full of similar statements about the complexities of the language, whether they be phonological or morphological. For example, in presenting data on nouns and the recurrence of what appear to be classifiers he mentions: Es posible que estas partículas se refieran a un sistema de clasificación, pero cuando se considera un número bastante alto de palabras, se ve que la misma partícula puede aplicarse a palabras que designan objetos muy diversos...340. It is possible that these particles refer to a system of classification, but when the high number of words is considered, it can be seen that the same particle can apply to words that designate very diverse objects… Soustelle’s instinct that these particles were classifiers is verified in this present study, but it so happens that he had the misfortune of gathering a large number of irregular paradigms. 5 Regarding the phonetics of the language, he mentions that Northern Pame is quite complex in its consonantal codas 339. In fact, in his typological survey, Pame surpasses all other languages in Otopame syllable margin complexity. He also noted the free variation that existed between coronal affricates and velar stops. In fact, today we find that this variation to be one of the major phonological distinctions between Northern and Central Pame. As to morphology, Northern Pame is no less challenging according to Soustelle. This can be seen 5 This can be seen in the comparison Soustelle makes between the unmarked and first person possessor form for the Nahuatl loan word for ‘deer’. Soustelle 1993: 340 mɑsɑt ‘deer’ nsɑt ‘my deer’ Morphologically, we can see that mɑ- alternates with n- for the possessive form while the stem -sɑt remains constant. In the following, the full morphological paradigm for ‘deer’ is given with the correct morpheme breaks. Notice that there is more morphology here tone marking is excluded. Class Possessor Root Stem mɑsɑt mɑsɑt ‘deer’ n- ʔw- sɑt nʔsɑt ‘my deer’ n- əj- sɑt nəʃɑt ‘your deer’ n- ʔj- sɑt nʔʃɑt ‘his deer’ What was unknown to Soustelle is that unlike most other nouns, animals must have n-class classifiers when possessed, while their unmarked forms vary. Any other n-class noun conjugates like the following. Class Possessor Root Stem n- k’əʃ nk’əʃ ‘piece of paper’ n- ʔw- k’əʃ nʔk’wəʃ ‘my piece of paper’ n- əj- k’əʃ nt͡ʃ’əʃ ‘your piece of paper’ n- ʔj- k’əʃ nʔt͡ʃ’əʃ ‘his piece of paper’ In this example, the same classifier surfaces on the unmarked form as well as the posessive form. with his statement about possessive nouns. Innumerables veces hemos encontrado ya este tipo de pronombre, tan característico del otomí, el mazahua, etc. En nuestra opinión, es muy natural que un pronombre así como un verbo varíe de acuerdo con la persona y el número; pero que estos dos factores rijan toda una serie de variaciones muy complejas en los sustantivos es un hecho mucho menos corriente Soustelle 1993: 343. Countless times we have found this type of pronoun, so characteristic of Otomi, Mazahua, etc. In our opinion, it is very natural that a pronoun just like a verb varies in agreement with person and number; but that these two categories completely spread an entire series of complex variations in the nominals is much less common. The fact that Pame has person and number agreement between pronouns and verbs provides Soustelle with no intuitive difficulty. However, he considered it quite marked that the language would insist on person and number categories for nouns. Compared to his description of nouns, Soustelle had much less to say on the issue of verbs. He gives us one “abstract” paradigm for the verb ‘to see’ to illustrate certain stem changes Soustelle 1993: 355. However, he does touch on two important facts here. One is that the palatal glide is a very productive verbal morpheme and moreover, that the third person plural is characterized by some type of segmental modification of the initial root consonant. 6 In his contribution to The Handbook of Middle American Indians, Manrique Castañeda 1967 writes an introductory description of Jiliapan Pame, which at the time of his paper had only “five or six persons able to speak it” Castañeda 1967: 331. Although Jiliapan Pame is a variety of Southern Pame, there are a number of common “Pamean” characteristics that are worth pointing out. With regard to phonology, Jiliapan Pame has laryngeally ambiguous vowels where the same vowel quality is bifurcated with either a glottal stop or a laryngeal fricative. 1 ntihin ‘corn dough’ mũhũ ‘pumpkin’ Manrique Castañeda interprets these as sequences of segments, rather than as integral units see discussion in chapters 3, 4 and 6. Likewise, he describes the voiced stops as being susceptible to intervocalic weakening i.e. b→β etc., while surfacing as full voiced stops after homorganic nasals Castañeda 1967: 334. 2 sibich’i [siβich’ì] ‘lime’ numbúʔu [numbúʔu] ‘wooden hammer’ Manrique Castañeda mentions that Jiliapan Pame has three tones: high, low and falling Castañeda 1967: 334. These tones are only contrastive on stressed syllables. Although he does not say so explicitly, stress appears to be predictable on the lexical root of a word. He, also comments that unstressed vowels “tend to be more or less obscure, increasing the difficulties of phonemic interpretation” Castañeda 1967: 335. Finally, Manrique mentions that Jiliapan Pame has no instance of tone functioning to mark grammatical categories as is common place in the other Pamean languages. Likewise, possession is indicated with separate pronouns rather than with grammatical tone. 7 6 In fact, the presentation on verb classes shows that in these circumstances a feature morpheme of spread glottis [+sg] is the most productive type. 7 With only five or six speakers, all of whom converse in Spanish this is not surprising. In fact, in my interviews with Northern Pames it was found that the possessive forms were the first to be forgotten by those who did not speak the language regularly. Whether Southern Pame had possessive nouns or not is a question that will unfortunately never be answered.

2.3 Central Pame studies: Gibson 1956, Gibson and Bartholomew 1979