tlahtoa / saltillo

[John Sullivan Hendricks]

Galen,
	Just two observations.  In the Huastecan dialects I work with, I would say
the saltillo is pretty close to a glottal stop when it is found between a
vowel and a consonant.  So in this environment, the glottal stop would be
phonemic.  Also, like I remarked before, Carochi distinguishes between the
pronunciation of word internal and word final saltillos, so perhaps, just as
in modern Nahuatl, the Classical saltillo had several allophones.
	John Sullivan
	Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas

-----Mensaje original-----
De: owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu [mailto:owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu]En
nombre de Galen Brokaw
Enviado el: Jueves, 10 de Febrero de 2000 07:28 p.m.
Para: Multiple recipients of list
Asunto: Re: tlahtoa / saltillo

John,
You are right. I think my last email crossed with yours in cyberspace. In
the
dialects we are discussing, the glottal stop is not a phoneme. But the
closing
off of the throat is a nonphonemic glottal stop which occurs at the end of
vowel
final words. I think that was the original issue that Fran's post raised in
my
mind. So, if I may sum up here just to see if we are all on the same page.
And
please Fran, Mary, John, et al please correct me if I'm wrong:
1. The saltillo was a glottal stop in Classical (I know that from what John
has
said he may disagree with this)
2. In many (most?) modern dialects the glottal stop evolved into an
aspiration
/h/
3. In these dialects the glottal stop is no longer a phoneme but exists as a
phonetic characteristic of world final vowels.
4. In these modern dialects, the indicative singular verbs end with this
nonphonemic glottal stop
5. In Classical, the indicative plural verbs ended with a glottal stop,
which
was referred to as a saltillo (see #1)
6. In these modern dialects, the Classical saltillo of the indicative plural
verbs has evolved into an aspiration /h/ (see #2 and #5).
7. Most linguists continue to refer to the modern /h/ as a saltillo/glottal
stop
for historical reasons even though phonetically it is not.

I do have one question for those who may know. Are there differences of
opinion
among linguists about what the saltillo was phonetically in Classical
Nahuatl?
Also, I should say that although this discussion may seem pedantic to many,
it
has been very informative for me and I appreciate the dialogue with John,
Michael, and Mary.
Galen



John Sullivan Hendricks wrote:

> Galen,
> I'm sorry for the lack of precision with my terminology, but I'm not a
> linguist and the last course I took in linguistics was about 20 years ago.
> However, my lay description of the phoneme/allophone distinction was
> correct, although we disagree on its applicability in this case.  Moving
> along, when I wrote, "The pronunciation of the vowel which ends the
singular
> form, terminates with a closing off of the throat.  But this is true of
all
> word final vowels," what I should have said was, "this is true of all word
> final vowels in Nahuatl."  I never meant to refer to "all languages.  With
> this said, I agree with Mary's suggestion that the closing off of the
throat
> after word final vowels in Nahuatl MIGHT only mark the absence of the
> saltillo. Don't you think it's a bit suspect that the only criterion for
> distinction between the two phonemes you postulate (glottal stop and
> aspiration) is in the case of singular vs. plural?  O are you aware of any
> word-internal distinctive pairs which contrast the glottal stop and the
> aspiration?
>         John Sullivan
>         Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
>
> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu
[mailto:owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu]En
> nombre de Mary Clayton
> Enviado el: Jueves, 10 de Febrero de 2000 01:57 p.m.
> Para: Multiple recipients of list
> Asunto: RE: tlahtoa / saltillo
>
> 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
>
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2000 brokawg at mail.lafayette.edu wrote:
>
> >
> > 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