Pronunciation Questions

[Doug Barr]

Hello, all -

I was so good and saved all my grammar questions until my copy of  
"Introduction to Classical Nahuatl" showed up, but now I have some  
pronunciation questions which Andrews doesn't answer (and in one  
case, raises).

1. He talks about 'n' and 'w' becoming unvoiced at the end of  
syllables, but not about 'l'. I've seen elsewhere (on the Net) a  
statement that 'l' also becomes devoiced, which I gather would sound  
like the release of 'tl,' i.e. an unvoiced lateral fricative. Is this  
common? And I assume 'm' at the end of syllables in words like  
*ipampa* would do the same?

2. Secondary stress, especially in compound words: does stress simply  
proceed back every second syllable from the penultimate, or does the  
normally stressed syllable of each component other than the last  
receive secondary stress? For example, "nixochitemoa," "I seek  
flowers." Would that be - using capital letters for stressed  
syllables - NIxoChIteMOa with regular alternation of stressed and  
unstressed syllables, or niXOchiteMOa, putting secondary stress on  
the XO of XOchi(tl) as would be done if it were an independent word?  
I'm guessing the latter, since he says that there is a point of  
'internal open transition' - i.e. slight but audible pause - between  
the constituents of a compound, which is sometimes recognized in the  
traditional spelling, but confirmation or denial would be helpful...

3. Andrews says, "a ([voiceless n]) phone resulting from this change  
(of -m at the end of a word to voiceless n) reverts to the original / 
m/ sound when the following vocable of the stress group begins with a  
vowel. For example, *in i:i:xpan* is  pronounced ([phonetic  
transcription of *im i:i:xpan*]) and in some texts is written *im  
i:i:xpan*." OK, so is 'in' always pronounced as 'im' before words  
beginning with a vowel, or at least words it's linked to? Why then  
the classical transcription *ini:n* rather than *imi:n*, etc.?  
Confused...

Tlazohcamati!
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