Pronunciation Questions

[Michael McCafferty]

WICKED!


Quoting "John Sullivan, Ph.D." <idiez at mac.com>:

> Hi Doug,
> 	I don`t know anything about number 2. And I don't understand number
> 3. The example seems to suggest that he is saying that all word final
>  -n's were originally -m's. That doesn't sound right.
> 	On number 1. In Huastecan Nahuatl, at least, syllable final -l's are
>  devoiced. Here is a fun example. In Older Central Nahuatl you have
> elnamiqui, niqu, "to remember s.t." In Modern Huastecan Nahuatl you
> would have ilnamiqui, but since the -l is devoiced, it then
> assimilates the following -n and produces a double devoiced l. So you
>  get illamiqui, nic. Then you can add the tla- non-specific non-human
>  object which bumps out the weak initial i- of the verb, giving
> tlallamiqui, ni. "to be intelligent". But, last of all, the initial
> tl- also becomes a devoiced l, so you get lallamiqui, ni. "to be
> intelligent".
> John
>
> John Sullivan, Ph.D.
> Profesor de lengua y cultura nahua
> Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
> Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, A.C.
> Tacuba 152, int. 47
> Centro Histórico
> Zacatecas, Zac. 98000
> México
> Oficina: +52 (492) 925-3415
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> idiez at mac.com
> www.idiez.org.mx
> ?
>
>
> On Feb 20, 2007, at 12:51 PM, Doug Barr wrote:
>
>> 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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