Word Accent Robindra Nath Banerji [email protected] Haverford College Department of Linguistics
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Huichol (Wixárika) Word Accent Robindra Nath Banerji [email protected] Haverford College Department of Linguistics Abstract Huichol: Context and Sociolinguistic Background Evidence For Word Accent In Huichol The Huichol language (ISO code hch), also known by its autonym, Wixárika, is a language in the Uto-Aztecan In (3), the two words with segmental material /tame/ have different meanings based on the placement of The analysis of systems of tone, stress, and intonation in the world’s languages is a center of debate in family spoken by approximately 45,000 people (INEGI 2010). Huichol is spoken primarily in the Sierra Madre the accent—the phenomenon Iturrioz, Ramírez, and Pacheco (1999) called “lexical stress accent.” This modern phonology. While prototypical cases of stress languages such as English and tone languages such Occidental in the western Mexican states of Jalisco and Nayarit, as well as in parts of Durango and Zacatecas example provides evidence for the presence of differing accent in underlying forms of these two words, as they as Yorúbà are well understood, languages on the peripheries of these prototypes, especially those with (see Figure 1). were produced in isolation of any other linguistic material. It suggests that, at least in a certain subsection of interactions between tone and stress systems, often pose challenges to researchers and theorists. The the lexicon, Huichol uses accent to distinguish between different words with the same segmental material. interaction between stress and tone in the Huichol (Uto-Aztecan) language of western Mexico, can be While most speakers of Huichol live in the Huichol homeland, in modern times many have migrated to urban understood using van der Hulst’s (2014) concept of accent, a lexically underlying mark of prominence. areas outside of western Mexico in search of economic opportunity. In the Mexico City metropolitan area, for (4) gives evidence for the distinctive use of tone to serve a grammatical purpose (an areal feature of Mesoamerica, The analysis that Huichol is an accentual language with one accented mora per word is based instance, the 2005 Mexican census counts 51 Huichol speakers in the Federal District as well as an additional cf. Campbell, Kaufman, and Smith-Stark (1986)), which in this case is verb tense; the contrast between high on both published and original Huichol-language data. Huichol has privative tone that interacts 67 in the State of Mexico. tone on penultimate and final results in the distinction between present tense and past tense for the verb nePena with the accentual system: accented moras are assigned high tone. Thus, Huichol should be classified as a ‘I hear’. tone-accent language. The only previous study of accent and tone in Huichol is that of Grimes (1959), which posits four level tones; the four-way tonal contrast is only realized in the nucleus of the phonological phrase, whereas only two can be A final example of a minimal accent pair is found in (5): two lexical items with the segmental material /naka/, realized on non-nuclear syllables. It is apparent from cursory study of Grimes’ (1959) work that the analysis with accent falling on the final and initial vowels respectively. However, this distinction may be taken with Introduction would benefit from disambiguation between tonal and intonational, phrase-level pitch effects. caution, as (5-b) is most likely a direct borrowing of the Spanish vulgar word naca, in which the stress falls penultimately. In the two other borrowed Spanish words in the corpus, accent also falls penultimately: Currently, three major theoretical frameworks are prevalent in the study of prosody: (6) w`ak´ar`1 (7) k`ap´ur`a • Isolation of tone and stress as independent phenomena (Inkelas and Zec 1988, among others). This cf. Spanish /"Baka/ vaca cf. Spanish /"kabRa/ cabra approach is also taken in the pioneering work of Grimes (1959) in Huichol phonology. ‘cow’ ‘goat’ • The “property-driven” approach (Hyman 2006; 2009; 2014), highly descriptive and considering each The penultimate accent in the (6) and (7) cannot be a directly borrowed effect from Spanish, even though language’s stress and tone systems as self-contained, with a list of definable properties. most Spanish words bear penultimate accent. This is evident because the final syllable in w`ak´ar`1 ‘cow’ has no • The “accentual” approach, which posits an underlying mark of prominence on certain syllables corresponding syllable in Spanish; vaca ‘cow’ bears stress on the first (and penultimate) syllable /Ba/. (Abercrombie 1976; van der Hulst 2014). Conclusion and Additional Findings The Accentual Approach This study finds that Huichol is a word-accent language; Huichol-language data shows that words can be The accentual approach is the most compelling for the description of Huichol and other languages that had distinguished on the basis of accent alone. Additional findings include: previously been classified as “pitch-accent” languages, as it bears out the possibility of different phonetic and • The tone-bearing (and thus accent-bearing) unit of Huichol is the mora, not the syllable, as commonly phonological effects of “prominence” in different languages. While in Huichol, accented syllables bear H(igh) thought. Michael (2011) also finds this to be the case for Iquito (Zaparoan), a language with a similar tone, Tokyo Japanese accented syllables are realized with a HL contour docking to a single unpredictable, accentual system. lexically underlying syllable in each word as seen in (1) (Hyman 2009). (2) shows data from Kinga (Bantu), • Accent is culminative and obligatory in Huichol: there is one and only one accented mora per word. which has a single tone, H, which appears once per word, on the antepenultimate syllable (Schadeberg 2010). • Accent in Huichol is marked with privative H tone—that is, accented moras are realized with H tone and all (1) Japanese (2) Kinga other moras are realized with ? tone, phonetically realized as low. a. mákura ga ‘pillow.nom’ a. Uk´Uheka ‘to laugh’ • Like English, Huichol has two classes of affixes: one that has underlying accent and preserves it after b. kokóro ga ‘heart.nom’ b. UkUg´eenda ‘to go’ Figure 2: Interview with Estrella, a Huichol woman living in Mexico City. affixation, but deletes the accent from the root, and one that maintains its accent and does not delete the c. atamá ga ‘head.nom’ c. UkUhwa´anana ‘to become similar’ accent from the root word. d. sakana ga ‘fish. d. UkUgeend´elela ‘to walk around’ nom Methods References The original data in this study was collected through interactions with two individuals, both migrants from Tuapurie (also known by its Spanish name, Santa Catarina, and its Náhuatl name, Huaixtita) who are members Abercrombie, David. 1976. Stress and some other terms. Work in Progress 9: 51–53. of the Mexico City Huichol community and live in the same Huichol household. Campbell, Lyle, Terrence Kaufman, and Thomas C. Smith-Stark. 1986. Meso-America as a linguistic area. Language 63 (3): 530–570. Carrillo Robles, Diego, and Robindra Nath Banerji. 2014. Field notes. Mexico City, Mexico. Grimes, Joseph E. 1959. Huichol tone and intonation. International Journal of American Linguistics, 221–232. Words were elicited in isolation by lexical category; nouns and verbs were elicited first, followed by a limited list Hulst, Harry G. van der. 2014. The study of word accent and stress: Past, present, and future. Word Stress: Theoretical and of adjectives. Data was recorded as high-quality audio recordings, as well as field notes, which were notated for typological issues: 3–55. Cambridge University Press. pitch on each syllable and mora. These pitch judgments were confirmed by the language consultants as well as Hyman, Larry M. 2006. Word-prosodic typology. Phonology, 23 (02): 225–257. acoustic phonetic analysis. Hyman, Larry M. 2009. How (not) to do phonological typology: the case of pitch accent. Language Sciences, 31 (2): 213–238. Hyman, Larry M. 2014. Do all languages have word accent?. Word Stress: Theoretical and typological issues: 56–82. Cambridge University Press. Data Inkelas, Sharon and Draga Zec. 1988. Serbo-Croatian pitch accent: the interaction of tone, stress, and intonation. Language 64. 227–248. My data shows considerable evidence for the existence of word accent in Huichol, including three minimal pairs. Iturrioz Leza, José Luis, Julio Ramírez de la Cruz, and Gabriel Pacheco Salvador. 1999. Gramática didáctica del huichol: Vol. I. Estructura Fonológica y Sistema de Escritura. Función: 19–20. Universidad de Guadalajara. (4) a. n`eP´en`a (5) a. n`ak´a Michael, Lev. 2011. The interaction of tone and stress in the prosodic system of Iquito (Zaparoan). Amerindia, 35 : 57–79. (3) a. t`am´e hear.1sg ear Schadeberg, Thilo. C. (2010). Kinga: a restricted tone system. Studies in African Linguistics, 4 (1). tooth ‘I hear’ ‘ear’ For a complete bibliography, contact the author at [email protected] ‘tooth’ b. n`eP`en´a b. n´ak`a b. t´am`e hear.1sg.fut (vulgar word) 1pl ‘we’ ‘I will hear’ Acknowledgements I am immensely grateful to Brook Danielle Lillehaugen, my thesis advisor—my thesis would not have been the same without her help and advice. Muchos agradecimientos a todos en México, especialmente mi gran maestro Diego. También quería agradecer el Dr. Francisco Arrellanes Arrellanes de la UNAM, y Figure 1: Location of the largest concentration of Huichol speakers, extending over the Mexican states of Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango, and todos en la Casa de los Amigos. Generous funding and logistical assistance was provided for this project from the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship at Zacatecas. Haverford College. Thanks also to the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities for their financial support..