tlahtoa / saltillo

[Galen Brokaw]

Hi John,
Ok, but isn't it misleading to call all of these phenomena "saltillo"?
The way I understand it, "saltillo" is the word in Spanish that refers to the
glottal stop ["a little jump"]. It seems to me that the rules that you list
below force the term "saltillo"[=glottal stop] to apply to all phenomena that
were glottal stops in Classical Nahuatl, but some of which have evolved and
turned into something else, such as an aspiration. I think this problem arises
from applying older linguistic descriptions to modern speech without taking into
account changes in pronunciation.
The best explanation for these changes that I have heard is that in Classical
Nahuatl the "saltillo" was actually a glottal stop followed by an aspiration
when the stop is released (kind of like a grunt, I guess). In some environments,
the glottal stop was lost leaving only an aspiration. Although Joe is my source
for this, I believe he heard it from another linguist. Of course, this doesn't
explain why the singular indicative marker would acquire the glottal stop where
it didn't exist before.
Getting back to the terminology, I would argue the following:
1. "saltillo" means "glottal stop"
2. Depending upon the modern dialect some/many/all sounds that were
saltillos/glottal stops in Classical have evolved (into aspirations, for
example), and therefore should no longer be described as saltillos/glottal
stops.

Galen

John Sullivan Hendricks wrote:

> The saltillo spoken by the two native speakers from the Huasteca I work with
> goes like this:
> 1. between two vowels it sounds just like an English "h": "ahacatl" = wind
> 2. between a vowel and a consonant it sounds like the saltillo described in
> the classical grammars (Like Mark says : glottal stops that emanate and
> terminate below the mouth): "ohtli" = road
> 3. at the end of a word it's a barely audible aspiration after the vowel:
> "ticamanaloah" = we talk.
>
>         John Sullivan
>         Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas