Dissimilation: kk> hk

[David Wright]

Antonio del Rincón (1998 [1595]) wasn't supposed to be in the list of
references in my last post. I was considering mentioning his phonological
discussion on the saltillo, which I think means that he was hearing two
allophones, probably [?] and [h], of the phoneme /?/. This has some bearing
on the examples of kk > hk that I cited, but I left it out in an attempt to
keep thinks as simple as possible.

Since I mentioned it, here's the quote, respecting the original spelling and
punctuation except for restoring the letter 'n' when it has been replaced by
a diacritic over the preceding vowel, changing the letter 'u' to a 'v' when
it's used as a consonant, and writing the cedilla as a z to avoid web
transmission problems. The quote is on folios 63v and 64r (book 5, chapter
1):

  "[...] Accento del saltillo es, quando la syllaba breve se pronuncia con
alguna aspereza como, tlazolli.
  "Esta aspereza no es del todo .H. hablando propriamente porque en la
provincia de Tlaxcalla, y en algunas otras apartadas de Mexico pronuncian
con este Spiritu aspero muy affectadamente de manera que no solo es .H. mas
aun pronunciada con mucha aspereza y fuerza verbi gracia, tlacohtli,
tlahtoani, y por esta causa con mucha razon algunos han llamado, a este
espiritu aspero el saltillo, porque ni del todo a de ser .H. como en
Tlaxcala ni suspension de la syllaba, como algunos han dicho.
  "Accento suspenso: porque ese es oficio del accento agudo que es largo y
suspende la syllaba, y assi no es mas de una manera de salto, o singulto,
que se haze en la syllaba, y esto solamente se halla en la syllaba breve.
[...]
  "Ultimo nota los caracteres con que conoceremos estos accentos en este
arte, el accento agudo desta manera ´ el grave ` el moderado ^ el saltillo
[mutilated letter 'o' forming an arc like a letter 'u'] el breve tiene por
señal el no tenerla".

The printer was unable to include the "accents" or diacritical marks that
Rincón originally used in his manuscript to mark vowel length and glottal
stops, except in the last sentence of the quote, so we read tlazolli without
the saltillo at the end of the first syllable, and we're missing some long
vowels in his examples.

Rincón's use of the letter 'h' should be seen in the light of 16th and early
17th century Spanish phonology, in which it still represented an aspiration
(Cobarruvias, 1611: f. 459r), unlike today, although some speakers in New
Spain during the first decades of the colonial period already pronounced it
without aspiration, as revealed by a careful analysis of spelling
conventions (Arias, 1997: 29-31).

The phrase "y esto solamente se halla en la syllaba breve" lends support to
the rule that long vowels shorten before a saltillo in early colonial
central Mexican Nahuatl. As a native speaker of náhuatl, Rincón had a better
grasp of phonetics than the Spanish grammarians that preceded him, like
Olmos and Molina, and his attempt to set the phonological record straight is
a watershed in the history of Nahuatl studies.

Referencias

Arias Álvarez, Beatriz, El español de México en el siglo XVI (estudio
filológico de quince documentos), Mexico, Instituto de Investigaciones
Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1997.

Cobarruvias Orozco, Sebastián, “Tesoro de la lengua castellana, o española”,
facsimile of the 1611 ed., in Lexicografía española peninsular, diccionarios
clásicos, digital ed., Pedro Álvarez de Miranda, editor, Madrid, Fundación
Histórica Tavera/Mapfre Mutualidad/Digibis, 1998.

Rincón, Antonio del, “Arte mexicana”, facsimile of the 1595 ed., in Obras
clásicas sobre la lengua náhuatl, digital ed., Ascensión Hernández de
León-Portilla, editor, Madrid, Fundación Histórica Tavera/Mapfre
Mutualidad/Digibis, 1998.


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