tlahtoa / saltillo

[brokawg at mail.lafayette.edu]

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
=20

On Wed, 9 Feb 2000, John Sullivan Hendricks wrote:

> Galen,
> =09First of all, if I'm not mistaken, Carochi distiguishes between the
> pronunciation of the word-internal and the word-final saltillo.  In other
> words, saltillo refers not to a specific sound, but to a distinct linguis=
tic
> element whose sound may vary in different environments (I know there is a
> word for this in linguistics: is it phoneme?  I can't remember.)  The
> important thing is that this linguistic element (with its sound variation=
s)
> was used then and is still used now as the plural marker for the present
> tense.  Its pronunciation may have evolved (although I'm not so sure), bu=
t
> its function in this case is the same.
> =09I don't think what you hear at the end of the singular indicative is a
> glottal stop.  This problem is precisely what called my attention to the
> aspirated nature of the word final saltillo.  One of the native speakers =
I
> work with (who is from Chapulhuacanito, municipio de Tamazunchale, San Lu=
is
> Potos=ED), pronounces what would standardly be considered a word final "i=
", as
> an "e" (Spanish pronunciation reference).  Noting also that he uses a "t"
> dialect, he would say, for example, "ayohte", instead of "ayohtli" for
> calabaza.  The fun comes when a non-native speaker has to distinguish
> between the singular and plural forms of preterite verbs.  Since he uses =
the
> "old" singular marker, "-qui", which he pronounces "-que", we have for
> example: "tinehnenque" =3D you walked, versus, "tinehnenqueh" =3D we walk=
ed.
> When I first heard these two words, they sounded pretty much alike to me.
> So I put my ear as close to my friends mouth as I could, and listened har=
d.
> This is what I discovered.  First, the plural form ends with a barely
> audible aspiration.  This is the saltillo.  The pronunciation of the vowe=
l
> which ends the singular form, terminates with a closing off of the throat=
=2E
> But this is true of all word final vowels.  If they weren't pronounced th=
is
> way (with a definite end/closing of the throat), then air would escape th=
e
> mouth at the end of the pronunciation, and you will have added the saltil=
lo.
> (Which you don't want to do, unless that's really what you want to do,
> right?)
>=20
> =09John Sullivan