Nahuatl and CJ [vowel length question]

[David Robertson]

This thread is probably dragging on much too long for some of you, so
please feel free to rearrange your inbox at will.  I'll now try to grope
towards expressing the idea that I so spectacularly misphrased when I
stumbled over minimal pairs.

It's just that the CW vowel phonemes I know from Sally Thomason's important
1983 paper (page 825) are six:

i          u
e          o
     @ [schwa]
     a

And the variety of CW whose pronunciation I've had the most exposure to,
that of Grand Ronde, seems, as I've mentioned, to subdivide at least the
two high phonemes.  [This is the reverse issue from the GR CW pronunciation
of a few generations ago when many folks' L1 was still this or that
indigenous language, leading to variation like [u ~ o] and [i ~ e].]

Thus /i/ = [i] as in "seat" OR [I] as in "sit", /u/ = [u] as in Pacific NW
English "suit" OR [U] as in "soot".  Free variation does not seem to be in
play, nor does any conditioning environment.

My intuition (I repeat, I've never yet taken the trouble to do a phonology
of CW from scratch) is that each of these are pairs of phonemes.  Whether
or not we have strict (possibly there are none) or near-minimal pairs (more
likely), should these contrasts be considered phonemic?

And whatever the motivation behind teaching GR CW with the "Englishy"
vowels, what will emerge are speakers who make these contrasts phonemic,
no?  For example, in a time-honored strategy, they will add L1 (English)
words to their CW, maintaining English phonemic contrasts.  Or not?
If "soot" and "suit" were both borrowed into CW now, would they both
become /sut/?

At various stages in its history CW has had a succession of different
primary superstrate (slippery term there) languages and English is
certainly the main or only one now...

Languages change in fascinating ways.

--Dave R.

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