29 The glottal stop may occur in a compound word between morphemes if the second morpheme does
not begin with a consonant, as in 25 from tu-a»m: tu ‘trail’; -Ða»m ‘on’.
25 tu-a»m [tuÐa»m]
‘on the trail’ 26
wink-‚na πk
[ wi¯g‚na
πk] ‘different youth’
However, there are more examples in Text A and in other connected speech data where the second morpheme is not separated by a glottal stop, as 26
wink-‚na πk: wink ‘different’; ‚naπk ‘youth’, in which
the final consonant of the first morpheme becomes the onset of the following syllable, the vowel of which begins the second morpheme. No regular patterns have been observed regarding omission or inclusion of
the glottal stop in compound words.
2.5.1 Syllable onsets and codas
In syllable-initial position, only single consonants occur and any consonant in the inventory may occur as the syllable onset. The person marker morphemes i.e. n- ‘first person’,
43
m- ‘second person’, and
j
-¾- ‘first and second person object’ are word affixes, and are not considered on the syllable level. Since they prefix
the syllable onset, they create a word-initial consonant cluster at the surface level. In the coda of a CVC syllable, all consonants except
Ð and h occur. To the verb final consonant, a clause marker -p also -
p-
j
may be affixed, and similar to the person marker word affixes, this clause marker is a word affix, not part of the basic syllable coda. Plosives release into the following vowel or
consonant, but are usually unreleased preceding a pause. Compound words often drop the final plosive of the first word in the compound, such as
t saµp ‘heaven’ and t‚µk ‘house,’ which combine to become
[ t
saµt‚µk] ‘church building.’ The consonants that may compose the coda of a CVCC syllable are restricted to
pt pk tk kt p¾ k¾ t
sk о ¾p ¾t ¾k m¾ n¾ nt nk most may be palatalized. Some examples are: kopk ‘head,’ metsk ‘two,’ u¾p
j
‘alligator,’ he m¾
j
‘heavy,’ and winma πnt
j
‘thought.’
44
Several of the coda clusters have arisen historically from truncation of the final syllables of proto-forms as listed by Wichmann 1995. For
example, from proto-Mixe tu:tuk ‘turkey,’ Isthmus Mixe omits the final-syllable vowel, resulting in tutk. The glottal stop in the coda cluster
о is either Ðp¾ or Ðk¾ in the proto-forms. For example, the proto- Mixe-Zoque word
po»Ðk¾ ‘rest’ is po»Ð¾ in Isthmus Mixe.
45
Isthmus Mixe words retain the p¾ or k¾
cluster when there is no glottal stop in the proto-form, for example, kap¾ ‘talk’ in figure 2.13.
In continuous texts, usually only the first consonant of a syllable-final cluster is apparent from the transition on the preceding vowel; the second member of the cluster is not pronounced. However, it
becomes apparent as part of the morpheme when a suffix or clitic follows the cluster. An example from Text A
is ma» ha~kaµpt~‚n [ma»hakaµpt‚n] ‘to the town’ in which the clitic ~‚n ‘
LOCATIVE
’ attaches to kaµpt ‘town’ causing pronunciation of both members of the consonant cluster. When the cluster is
followed by a pause, the consonants are unreleased and only the first member of the cluster is noticeable from the transition from the preceding vowel.
On the basis of the patterns of Isthmus Mixe syllable onset and coda, the affricate t
s is considered to be one unit: 1 there are no consonant clusters in syllable initial position; 2 syllable coda clusters are
limited to two phonemes; and 3 both elements of the affricate are pronounced syllable final. Data examples of
t s in syllable-initial position include tsaµt‚µk ‘church building’ and in a consonant cluster
43
In the case of n- and m-, they serve both as possessive markers on nouns and as subject markers on verbs. The third person marker is palatalization, which is considered in the following chapters.
44
There is no known morpheme represented by palatalization in these forms.
45
Wichmann’s rule for Isthmus Mixe is that “p k are deleted between a glottal stop and š” 1995:57.
30 me
t sk ‘two’. In addition, to syllable onset and coda patterns, the occurrence of [s] is always and only
immediately following [t] in native Mixe words. Furthermore, the affricate t
s is considered to be one phoneme in all of the Oaxacan Mixe languages, as well as in proto-Mixe-Zoque Wichmann 1995.
In contrast to the voicing of single plosives and the affricate, any consonant cluster composed of plosives andor fricatives remains voiceless between vowels. For example, in m
t sok‚t [mdsog‚t] ‘you
should love,’ the suffix - ‚t causes voicing of the k which precedes it, but in n‚kap¾‚t [n‚gap¾‚t] ‘[they]
should [not] talk about …’ figure 2.13, the consonant cluster remains voiceless between the vowels.
2.5.2 Syllable nuclei
