tlahtoa / saltillo

[Galen Brokaw]

John,
You are right. I think my last email crossed with yours in cyberspace. In the
dialects we are discussing, the glottal stop is not a phoneme. But the closing
off of the throat is a nonphonemic glottal stop which occurs at the end of vowel
final words. I think that was the original issue that Fran's post raised in my
mind. So, if I may sum up here just to see if we are all on the same page. And
please Fran, Mary, John, et al please correct me if I'm wrong:
1. The saltillo was a glottal stop in Classical (I know that from what John has
said he may disagree with this)
2. In many (most?) modern dialects the glottal stop evolved into an aspiration
/h/
3. In these dialects the glottal stop is no longer a phoneme but exists as a
phonetic characteristic of world final vowels.
4. In these modern dialects, the indicative singular verbs end with this
nonphonemic glottal stop
5. In Classical, the indicative plural verbs ended with a glottal stop, which
was referred to as a saltillo (see #1)
6. In these modern dialects, the Classical saltillo of the indicative plural
verbs has evolved into an aspiration /h/ (see #2 and #5).
7. Most linguists continue to refer to the modern /h/ as a saltillo/glottal stop
for historical reasons even though phonetically it is not.

I do have one question for those who may know. Are there differences of opinion
among linguists about what the saltillo was phonetically in Classical Nahuatl?
Also, I should say that although this discussion may seem pedantic to many, it
has been very informative for me and I appreciate the dialogue with John,
Michael, and Mary.
Galen



John Sullivan Hendricks wrote:

> Galen,
> I'm sorry for the lack of precision with my terminology, but I'm not a
> linguist and the last course I took in linguistics was about 20 years ago.
> However, my lay description of the phoneme/allophone distinction was
> correct, although we disagree on its applicability in this case.  Moving
> along, when I wrote, "The pronunciation of the vowel which ends the singular
> form, terminates with a closing off of the throat.  But this is true of all
> word final vowels," what I should have said was, "this is true of all word
> final vowels in Nahuatl."  I never meant to refer to "all languages.  With
> this said, I agree with Mary's suggestion that the closing off of the throat
> after word final vowels in Nahuatl MIGHT only mark the absence of the
> saltillo. Don't you think it's a bit suspect that the only criterion for
> distinction between the two phonemes you postulate (glottal stop and
> aspiration) is in the case of singular vs. plural?  O are you aware of any
> word-internal distinctive pairs which contrast the glottal stop and the
> aspiration?
>         John Sullivan
>         Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
>
> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu [mailto:owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu]En
> nombre de Mary Clayton
> Enviado el: Jueves, 10 de Febrero de 2000 01:57 p.m.
> Para: Multiple recipients of list
> Asunto: RE: tlahtoa / saltillo
>
> Galen,
>      I think you've given an admirable account of the concept of
> phonemes and allophones. I think that the 'disagreement' here may actually
> involve an unstated assumption, which doesn't directly involve 'fact', but
> (as is usual in linguistics at all levels of analysis -- even phonetics)
> *interpretation* of fact.
>      I think that the question that one would need to ask is: Is there any
> *third* way for words to end [that don't end in other consonants, of
> course]? That is, do the h and the glottal stop form a three-way contrast
> with a simple final vowel which is followed by NEITHER of these? Because a
> (not unreasonable) linguistic assumption might be that one of these is
> distinctive (as are other consonants) while the other just marks its
> absence, that is, just draws special attention to the fact that the word
> in question ends in a vowel rather than glottal stop (or h, depending on
> which way you want to argue). Seen this way, the question would be: Can
> words end in
>       -h,
>       -? ( = glottal stop)
>       -C ( = any consonant other than glottal stop)
>       or -V (= any vowel)?
>
> Or are the choices just
>       -h and -V as "allophones"
>       -?
>       -C
>
> or    -? and -V as "allophones"
>       -h
>       -C
>
>      Most people take a historical position on this question, calling the
> [historical] glottal stop a 'glottal stop' or 'saltillo' regardless of
> whether it is pronounced as [h] or [?] in the dialect in question.
> Whichever the pronunciation, this segment shows up in the morphologically
> expected places, which is one reason to keep the name the same even
> thought the pronunciation of presnest-day dialects may differ.
>      A way to 'explain' the modern distribution of sounds for those
> dialects which have  *real* glottal stops in the singular is that
> the *historical* glottal stop has > [h], and the *new* glottal stop just
> signals its absence. Taken too literally, this sounds like double-talk, of
> course: [?] = nothing and [h] = glottal stop, but it's a natural way of
> thinking for people who work with both classical and modern.
>
>      Let me mention two personal observations which are relevant to the
> issue, and certainly don't make it any simpler:
>
>      -- One of Joe's young friends (from Oapan) who is heavily
> Nahuatl-dominant, when speaking Spanish very frequently ends vowel-final
> words with a glottal stop. Spanish "si/" is [si?] and "no" is [no?]. I
> don't think he's exceptional. He's just the one I've heard the most (on
> tape -- his tapes frequently accompany us on car trips.)
>
>      -- There is a characteristic of general Mexican Spanish which may
> play a part in the confusion. I'm talking about Mexican speakers who know
> no Nahuatl, many of whom have probably had little or no exposure to it. My
> Caribbean-hearing ear (I'm from Tampa and grew up around Cuban-type
> Spanish) hears enough trailing-off of voice at the end of vowel-final
> words in Mexican Spanish to qualify them for -s final words in Cuban.
> That is to say, many pronunciations of singular nouns would be heard as
> plurals by people who turn s > h, and third-singular verbs sound like
> tu-forms.  But Mexicans don't *mean* or *intend* this 'aspiration', it's
> just the way they frequently pronounce vowels in final positions.
>      This may well influence the way 'outsiders' who are very familiar
> with Mexican Spanish, whether native spekers or not, perceive final vowels
> or final -h's in Nahuatl. I'll stop short of speculating what effect it
> may have on Nahuatl speakers.
>
> Mary
>
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2000 brokawg at mail.lafayette.edu wrote:
>
> >
> > John,
> > I have to respectfully disagree. The linguistic terms you refer to are
> > phoneme and allophone. The phoneme is the phonetic element which may have
> > various allophones depending on the environment. In Spanish, for example,
> > the phoneme /n/ is pronounced one way when it is intervocalic and another
> > when it is followed by a [g] or [c] and another when followed by [t], etc.
> > The way you determine whether or not two sounds are separate phonemes or
> > allophones of the same phoneme is to try and find two different words that
> > are exactly the same except for the two sounds in question. If two such
> > words exist, then the sounds are separate phonemes. I don't have enough
> > experience to be able to make judgments about all modern dialects of
> > Nahuatl, but my impression is that the aspiration and the glottal stop are
> > two separate phonemes. I would support this by providing a contrastive
> > pair of words consisting of the singular and plural of the indicative.
> > Now, John, I know that you disagree that the singular ending of the
> > indicative is a glottal stop. It is tough to argue these kind of things
> > over email without the benefit of speech, and you have more access to
> > native informants than I do, but I still think that what you describe as a
> > closing off of the throat is a glottal stop. And I disagree that all words
> > in any language must end by closing off the throat. In English when we
> > pronounce a word that ends in a vowel, we don't close off the throat at
> > the end. The word "go" for example doesn't end by abruptly interrupting
> > the vibration of the vocal chords by closing off the throat. The vocal
> > chords just quit vibrating and we cease to expel air. Glottal stop is
> > defined precisely as a closing off of the throat using the glottis and
> > consequently an abrupt stopping of vocal chord vibration. The native
> > speaker with whom I have had experience had a very clear glottal stop at
> > the end of verbs in the indicative singular. The difficulty I had was in
> > determining if there was an aspiration at the end of the plural or not. I
> > like to think there was a faint aspiration just as you have noted in the
> > speech of Huastecan Nahuatl. So, if this is the case, then we have a
> > contrastive pair in the third person singular and third person plural
> > indicative verbs such as quicua [kwa?] and quicuah [kwah] where the
> > [?]=3Dglottal stop. (The phonetic symbol is actually an upside down
> questio=
> > n
> > mark with no dot, but I can't make that go through on the email.) I
> > conclude therefore that the glottal stop and the aspiration are two
> > separate phonemes.
> > I submit this argument humbly and ask any of the professional linguists to
> > correct my reasoning if it is flawed.
> > Galen=20