Piltlahcuiloltzin ixitlauhca

[Michael McCafferty]

I have been enjoying this discussion, and am happy to see the 
dictionary taking shape. My question, I guess, is why, in a monolingual 
dictionary, apparently designed for native speakers, one even needs to 
discuss how to pronounce the sounds. Or am I missing something? 
Probably the latter.

Michael

Quoting Jesse Lovegren <lovegren at buffalo.edu>:

> Some thoughts on the definition:
>
> If the vowels are the four /i,e,a,o/ (but I don't know how the modern
> variety on which the dictionary is based differs from Classical Nahuatl),
> then I wonder whether it is necessary to note that the velum is closed,
> since there are only oral vowels.  Also it might be preferable to note that
> the jaw is swung wide open rather than that the tongue is at the bottom of
> the mouth.  /b/, for example, is also produced with the velum closed and the
> tongue at the bottom of the mouth.  But /a/ is the only sound that must be
> produced wtih the jaw significantly opened up.  So I think that
> articulatory-based definitions for the vowel sounds could be simplified to
> something like:
>
> /a/: the vowel with the mouth wide open
> /o/: the vowel made with the lips close together and rounded
>
> In the case of /i/ and /e/, there would need to be more than one property
> listed to differentiate them, so it wouldn't be as neat a definition as is
> possible with /a/ and /o/.
> /i/: the vowel made with the front of the tongue close to the palate and the
> mouth almost closed
> /e/: the vowel made with the front of the tongue close to the palate and the
> mouth halfway opened
>
> I'm glad to hear that the dictionary is becoming a reality.
>
> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 11:31 PM, John Sullivan <idiez at me.com> wrote:
>
>> Piyali listeros,
>> One of the difficult things we've been doing lately is to define the
>> letters of the alphabet for our monolingual dictionary. Joe Campbell
>> participated in this project during the summer. I'm going to present it at
>> the Maryland conference next month. I would like to start releasing the
>> definitions one per day on this listserv and see what people have to say. So
>> here's the long and short "a". Long vowels are shown here with a colon, as
>> the macron has demonstrated in the past its ability to send nahuat-l into
>> the land of giberish.
>> John
>>
>> A: piltlahcuiloltzin. Quimanextia tentzilincayotl huehueyac tlen caquizti
>> quemman motzacua tocopac huan tonenepil yohui tocamatzalan.
>>
>> A: letter. Represents the long vowel that is heard when the velum closes
>> and the tongue moves to the bottom of the mouth.
>>
>> A. piltlahcuiloltzin. Quimanextia tentzilincayotl cototztzin tlen caquizti
>> quemman motzacua tocopac huan tonenepil yohui tocamatzalan.
>>
>> A. letter. Represents the short vowel that is heard when the velum closes
>> and the tongue moves to the bottom of the mouth.
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Nahuatl mailing list
>> Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
>> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Jesse Lovegren
> Department of Linguistics
> 645 Baldy Hall
> office +1 716 645 0136
> cell +1 512 584 5468
>



_______________________________________________
Nahuatl mailing list
Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl