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sandhi rules; Pike mentions several other environments which appear to be nonperturbable which will be discussed below.
2.2.2.3 Nonperturbable Sequences
Pike claims that the tone sandhi of Soyaltepec is very regular. The only time that morphemes fail to cause the expected perturbation is when the target syllable is nonperturbable. We have already seen that
certain tones block the split and shift of the contours that was described above, namely an underlying H or M
1
-H. In this section, I discuss those word tone patterns that are nonperturbable sequences. The regressive and progressive perturbation discussed in
§2.2.1 above are very regular processes and occur whenever the proper environment is met. The only exception offered by Pike is in the case of the
progressive perturbation caused by a final High tone when it is influencing the final High tone of the following morpheme. Every High tone in this environment experiences the progressive perturbation
described in §2.2.1.2 and surfaces as a High to Mid-high falling contour tone
˥˦ except when it is part of a disyllabic word with a L H word tone pattern. This type of word is never changed by its environment.
The first syllable of the L H disyllabic word is also not altered by the sandhi described in §2.2.2,
but in this case it is not alone, there are four other word tonal patterns that resist change to the first syllable. Typically, when a morpheme has an initial syllable with a Mid or Low tone, it will experience the
perturbation described above in §2.2.2.1 and §2.2.2.2, resulting in a High, Mid-high or Mid-high to
Low falling tone on that syllable. The exceptions include the disyllabic words with the tone sequences listed in 14
below. 14
Nonperturbable initial syllables of disyllabic words M
2
H L H
M
2
M
1
-L L M
1
-L M
2
M
1
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When the five tonal patterns listed in 14 are examined, we find that the second syllable of each of these exceptions to the sandhi pattern contains either a H or a M
1
. The hypothesis, however, that the presence of these tones in some way hinders sandhi is overridden by Pike since she gives one example of a word with a
M
2
M
1
-H pattern which participates in the sandhi described in §2.2.2.1, reproduced here as 15.
15 M
2
M
1
-H participates in sandhi Pike 1956:62 Trigger
Target Result
ts︢hʔei˩˦ +
ts︢ha˧kĩ˦˥ → ts︢hʔei˩ ts︢ha˦kĩ˦˥
‘take ǃ’
‘firewood’ ‘buy firewood
ǃ’ It is evident from 15 that the presence of H and M
1
on the second syllable of the target word does not prevent sandhi from occurring. There is also a group of trisyllabic word tone patterns that resist sandhi on
their first syllable. All of these patterns begin with the M
2
M
1
pattern on the first two syllables. The word patterns are listed in 16.
16 Trisyllabic word patterns resistant to tone sandhi on the first syllable
M
2
M
1
M
2
M
2
M
1
M
2
-M
1
M
2
M
1
M
1
-H M
1
M
2
L The final trisyllabic word pattern that resists perturbation is placed in parentheses because it is only
resistant to sandhi under certain conditions such as if it is a loan word from Spanish, or if the underlying representation contains a rising contour on the first syllable which has already been altered by sandhi. The
interested reader is referred to the original article for more details. It is suspicious that the second syllable once again contains the M
1
tone in most cases that are resistant to sandhi; however, an all-encompassing generalization is not forthcoming. Pike is very thorough
in her description of what is possible in the tone system of Soyaltepec; however, the system she describes requires lists or classes of words which are difficult to generalize.
2.2.2.4 Sandhi and Enclitics
