tlahtoa / saltillo

[Galen Brokaw]

Mary,
Thank you for your comments. As I was writing my response to John's message, I
realized that if all vowel final words ended in a glottal stop and that was the
only place it appeared, then this might present a problem in my analysis. But I
didn't take the next step and articulate for myself the reasons. If I understand
you then, in a dialect in which words can only end in -?, -h, and -C, the glottal
stop /?/ really has no phonemic value because it is kind of a default for vowel
final words. It would have phonetic value, but only as part of an allophone of
whatever vowel the word ended with.
I also see the utility in maintaining the vocabulary saltillo/glottal stop to
refer to the /h/ eventhough it was originally a /?/, but it just seems so
misleading if you don't include a qualification explaining the difference between
Classical and modern dialects.
I guess part/most of my disagreement with John had to do with this issue of the
semantics of "saltillo". If most people use the term to refer to the modern /h/, I
guess maybe I can conform.
John, Mary has started to sway me to the dark side. :-)
Galen


Mary Clayton wrote:

> Galen,
>      I think you've given an admirable account of the concept of
> phonemes and allophones. I think that the 'disagreement' here may actually
> involve an unstated assumption, which doesn't directly involve 'fact', but
> (as is usual in linguistics at all levels of analysis -- even phonetics)
> *interpretation* of fact.
>      I think that the question that one would need to ask is: Is there any
> *third* way for words to end [that don't end in other consonants, of
> course]? That is, do the h and the glottal stop form a three-way contrast
> with a simple final vowel which is followed by NEITHER of these? Because a
> (not unreasonable) linguistic assumption might be that one of these is
> distinctive (as are other consonants) while the other just marks its
> absence, that is, just draws special attention to the fact that the word
> in question ends in a vowel rather than glottal stop (or h, depending on
> which way you want to argue). Seen this way, the question would be: Can
> words end in
>       -h,
>       -? ( = glottal stop)
>       -C ( = any consonant other than glottal stop)
>       or -V (= any vowel)?
>
> Or are the choices just
>       -h and -V as "allophones"
>       -?
>       -C
>
> or    -? and -V as "allophones"
>       -h
>       -C
>
>      Most people take a historical position on this question, calling the
> [historical] glottal stop a 'glottal stop' or 'saltillo' regardless of
> whether it is pronounced as [h] or [?] in the dialect in question.
> Whichever the pronunciation, this segment shows up in the morphologically
> expected places, which is one reason to keep the name the same even
> thought the pronunciation of presnest-day dialects may differ.
>      A way to 'explain' the modern distribution of sounds for those
> dialects which have  *real* glottal stops in the singular is that
> the *historical* glottal stop has > [h], and the *new* glottal stop just
> signals its absence. Taken too literally, this sounds like double-talk, of
> course: [?] = nothing and [h] = glottal stop, but it's a natural way of
> thinking for people who work with both classical and modern.
>
>      Let me mention two personal observations which are relevant to the
> issue, and certainly don't make it any simpler:
>
>      -- One of Joe's young friends (from Oapan) who is heavily
> Nahuatl-dominant, when speaking Spanish very frequently ends vowel-final
> words with a glottal stop. Spanish "si/" is [si?] and "no" is [no?]. I
> don't think he's exceptional. He's just the one I've heard the most (on
> tape -- his tapes frequently accompany us on car trips.)
>
>      -- There is a characteristic of general Mexican Spanish which may
> play a part in the confusion. I'm talking about Mexican speakers who know
> no Nahuatl, many of whom have probably had little or no exposure to it. My
> Caribbean-hearing ear (I'm from Tampa and grew up around Cuban-type
> Spanish) hears enough trailing-off of voice at the end of vowel-final
> words in Mexican Spanish to qualify them for -s final words in Cuban.
> That is to say, many pronunciations of singular nouns would be heard as
> plurals by people who turn s > h, and third-singular verbs sound like
> tu-forms.  But Mexicans don't *mean* or *intend* this 'aspiration', it's
> just the way they frequently pronounce vowels in final positions.
>      This may well influence the way 'outsiders' who are very familiar
> with Mexican Spanish, whether native spekers or not, perceive final vowels
> or final -h's in Nahuatl. I'll stop short of speculating what effect it
> may have on Nahuatl speakers.
>
> Mary
>