Laryngeal in Otomanguean

Sat Aug 25 02:52:58 UTC 2007

Greetings all/Hola a todos,

It seems that the contemporary tonal nature in OM is indisputable and that
an accepted reconstruction for POM has to be done. However, this depends on
more research on particular branches. We are on the same page, good.

One other consideration is that in addition to the lexical contrast there
are intricate grammatical tone rules in many OM languages. One may wonder
how long does it take for a language and/or groups of languages to develop
such rules. I bet it takes some time, therefore a recent origin of tone in
OM seems even less plausible.

Regarding the negative evidence of tone in languages adjacent to OM, I would
like to point out ongoing work I'm doing on this very specific topic.
First, the status of tone in Yucatec Maya has to be re-evaluated. The
received wisdom is that YM has a contrast H-L in long vowels, and is
non-contrastive in short ones. At this point is not clear to me what type of
tone YM would be. My impression is that it is closer to a Japanese pitch
accent type. Carlos Gussenhoven has found some evidence on this regard, I
believe. But more research is needed. Furthemore, for long time it has been
accepted (after Bricker and Poot) that there are tone patterns associated
with grammatical voice types. In a recent study presented at the LSA with my
students from UC Berkeley we found that, in contrast with previous
literature, grammatical voice inflection did not change the pitch of the
verb forms. Another student of mine Jason Grafmiller at Stanford obtained a
similar results in a different variety of YM. Thus, the moral is that
repeating that YM has tone is not enough and claims about tone in YM have to
be substantiated and further investigated to fully understand what type of
tone we are dealing with.

Now I would like to introduce a related issue to the tone one: The status of
non-modal phonation in Otomanguean and other linguistic families of the
area. Just to put it bold. I am working on the hypothesis that non-modal
phonation, laryngealized and breathy phonation is a Mesoamerican feature
although can be extended further. Many wonderful grammars have described
syllable and vowel types that suggest phonation types. Indeed, recent
research from UCLA, UCBerkeley, among other labs, indicate that an
intepretation of these syllable types can be characterized as a contrast in
phonation, rather than a sequence of segments V?V (or V7V for some
'orthographers'), or syllables of a particular type. At any rate, the
special status of this syllables follows from its phonatory properties.

There are a number of very hard and interesting issues to discuss from this
hypothesis. First, why not? The fact that reference grammars use a
particular nomenclature for a phenomena does not entail that their nature
cannot be translated into phonetic terms. We have the knowledge and methods
to study phonation, but not rearticulated syllables. At any rate, a matter
of labeling should not stop us from understanding the core of the phenomena.
Second, along the lines of the discussion on tone, can we reconstruct
non-modal phonation for POM? And lastly, just to stop at some point, what is
the relation of tone and non-modal phonation in OM and Mesoamerican
languages at large?

I would like to share very recent preliminary results of a comparative study
that I am conducting dealing with languages in which laryngeal features have
a distinct phonemic status. I am attaching a poster for those interested in
details.

The overall noteworthy result is that laryngealized phonation (which I
assume to underly the so-called 'rearticulated' syllable (or vowel) type
reported in grammars) is being implemented by languages like Mixe and
Yucatec as a modal vowel with falling contour. The biggest speculation is
that the mesoamerican languages I am analyzing may represent different
stages in the development of tonogenesis. The particular hypothesis
suggested by my analysis claims that contrastive tone may have been
developed from a contrast in phonation, particularly, modal vs
laryngealized: i. Languages like Mixe represent the initial stage in which
tone is an enhancing phonetic feature of the phonemic phonation contrast,
ii. Languages like Yucatec Maya represents an intermediate stage in which
tone has been phonologized and serves a the main cue to the voice quality
contrast, iii. Languages like Zapotec represent the last stage in which both
features co-exist and are concurrently produced in the same vowel.
Of course, both properties could have co-exited since the beginning of the
times as we know them now. There may be other possibilities, but they may
hard to prove.

Anyhow, this is an ongoing long term project of mine for which is very hard
to have all the answers and evidence at once. I would greatly appreciate
your suggestions, advices and criticisms.

Lastly, I would like to remind you that there is a group discussion hosted
by Linguistlist to discuss issues on Otomanguean linguistics. I am the
moderator of the list, which basically means that I filter the spam. You all
are welcome to make a more active use of the list and share your thoughts
with all the linguists included in that list. To subscribe to the list just
go to

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/otomanguean-l.html

and follow instructions from there.

I would like also to advance a proposal that I will be making to the
Otomanguean list shortly: basically consist in having an Otomanguean blog
(BlogOtomanguean) I believe that the intereaction is more active and dynamic
than e-mails, which in turn could be reserved to other purposes. I am just
considering the best way of implement the blog. I would greatly appreciate
your input on this.

With my best wishes,

Heriberto

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