Phonetic structure in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec consonants Christian T. DiCanio University at Buffalo & Haskins Laboratories [email protected] Caicai Zhang Hong Kong Polytechnic University [email protected] Douglas H. Whalen Haskins Laboratories & CUNY Graduate Center [email protected] Rey Castillo García Secretaria de educación pública, Guerrero (Mexico) [email protected] While Mixtec languages are well-known for their tonal systems, there remains relatively little work focusing on their consonant inventories. This paper provides an in-depth phonetic description of the consonant system of the Yoloxóchitl Mixtec language (Oto-Manguean, ISO 639-3 code xty), a Guerrero Mixtec variety. The language possesses a number of contrasts common among Mixtec languages, such as voiceless unaspirated stops, prenasalized stops, and a strong tendency for words to conform to a minimally bimoraic structure. Using a controlled set of data, we focus on how WORD SIZE and WORD POSITION influence the acoustic properties of different consonant types. We examine clo- sure duration, VOT, and formant transitions with the stop series, spectral moments with the fricative series, the timing between oral and nasal closure with the prenasalized stop series, and both formant transitions and qualitative variability with the glide series. The general effect of WORD SIZE is discussed in relation to work on POLYSYLLABIC SHORTENING (Turk & Shattuck-Hufnagel 2000) and demonstrates the importance of prosodic templates in Mixtec languages (Macken & Salmons 1997). The prenasalized stop data provides evidence that such stops are best analyzed as allophones of nasal consonants preceding oral vowels (as per Marlett 1992) and not as hypervoiced variants of voiced stops (as per Iverson & Salmons 1996). 1 Introduction The process of language description frequently focuses on aspects of a language that are notable from an areal, typological, or theoretical perspective. Although Mixtec languages have relatively less complex consonantal inventories than many languages from other Oto-Manguean families, e.g. Zapotecan, Popolocan, Otomian, and Tlapanecan, several aspects of Mixtec consonantal phonology have been the focus of debate in the literature. For instance, the phonological status of prenasalized stops throughout different Mixtec languages is unresolved. Marlett (1992) argues that they are best analyzed as allophones of Journal of the International Phonetic Association (2020) 50/3 © International Phonetic Association doi:10.1017/S0025100318000294 First published online 12 February 2019 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 06 Feb 2021 at 22:20:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use. 334 Christian T. DiCanio, Caicai Zhang, Douglas H. Whalen & Rey Castillo García nasal consonants, while Iverson & Salmons (1996) argue that they are best analyzed as voiced stops with hypervoicing (see Section 5.1.1 below). Moreover, in Coatzospan Mixtec, there is evidence for nasalized fricatives (C. Gerfen 2001). This stands counter to a claim in the pho- netics literature arguing that it is aerodynamically impossible to maintain nasal airflow while simultaneously producing sufficiently high intra-oral air pressure to maintain turbulence in the oral cavity for fricative production (Ohala & Ohala 1993, Huffman & Krakow 1993). Debates like these can certainly be informed with instrumental phonetic data from Mixtec languages, but there are also several independent motivations for pursuing descrip- tive phonetic work on undescribed or under-described languages. First, it is by no means certain that contrasts which have been labeled identically across languages, even at the pho- netic level, e.g. ‘velar ejective,’ are produced similarly across languages. While some of these differences may arise from errors in transcription, others arise from the coarseness inherent to phonetic transcription itself. For instance, the fundamental frequency (f0) on the vowel following the stop release is dependent on the phonological voicing of the stop (Keating 1984, Kingston & Diehl 1994). Thus, in a language like Hindi, where a phonetically voice- less unaspirated stop is an allophone of a voiceless stop series, e.g. [t] is an allophone of /t/, f0 raises upon release. In a language like English, where a phonetically voiceless unaspi- rated stop is an allophone of a VOICED stop series in utterance-initial position (Davidson 2016), e.g. [t] is an allophone of /d/, f0 LOWERS upon release. These stops are identically, narrowly transcribed as [t] in the IPA, but they differ in phonetic detail. Second, the estab- lishment of these phonetic details in an individual language is the baseline from which one may test more targeted theories of speech production. Research on well-studied languages often relies on fundamental work in phonetic science which assumes existing knowledge of the descriptive phonetic properties of the language, i.e. the extensive research on voice onset time (VOT; Lisker & Abramson 1964, Abramson & Whalen 2017) was made possible because early work investigated the descriptive properties of languages like English, French, and Thai. Third, careful phonetic detail is useful for the purposes of historical reconstruc- tion (Ohala 2001, Blevins 2004) and for examining how a language’s phonological contrasts compare with those from well-studied languages. Finally, a majority of the published pho- netic literature on endangered languages has not been based on large samples, partly due to limited use of automatic methods for acoustic analysis. The current paper relies heavily on automated methods for the analysis of different acoustic properties, and we will discuss the limitations as well as the advances inherent in the methods. The scripts used in this study are listed in the Appendix A. We hope that this study can serve as an accessible model for modern descriptive phonetic research. The focus of the current paper is an acoustic examination of the different consonant types in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec, a Mixtec language in the Guerrero Mixtec branch (Josserand 1983) and the focus of major documentation work (Amith & Castillo García, n.d.). In the remainder of this section, we provide a background discussion of the language and its phonological inventory. In each of the following sections, the acoustics of a particular consonant type are investigated. The phonetic data consists of field recordings of different consonant types produced in carrier phrases by eight native speakers. Like similar studies on the phonetic structure of a language (Silverman et al. 1995, Maddieson, Avelino & O’Connor 2009), the current study is exploratory and not driven by an over-arching set of theoretical hypotheses. However, individual theoretical concerns pertinent to specific sound contrasts are explored throughout the paper. 1.1 Language background The genetic affiliation of the Mixtecan languages is provided in Figure 1. While Cuicatec and Triqui have notably little internal diversification, Mixtec has extensive internal diversi- fication, possessing roughly sixty distinct varieties (recognized as separate languages in the ISO-639 standard) spoken in twelve pan-dialectal regions (Josserand 1983). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. 06 Feb 2021 at 22:20:04, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use. Phonetic structure in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec consonants 335 Figure 1 Mixtecan languages (Rensch 1976). Mixtec Amoltepec Central Coastal Eastern Guerrero Mixtepec Northeastern Northern Northern Southern Tezoatlan Western (2) Baja (2) (7) Alta (9) (4) Alta (3) Alta (3) Baja (4) Baja (3) Alta (14) Alacatlatzala Alcozauca Metlatonoc Yoloxochitl Figure 2 Mixtec languages (Josserand 1983). As a result of this, there are a large number of languages, each of which is labelled ‘Mixtec’, but many of which are as distinct as modern-day Italian and Portuguese. The internal diversification of Mixtec ostensibly began in the late Preclassical period in Mexico (Josserand 1983: 458), giving it roughly the same time depth as the diversification of Romance languages, beginning 1800–2000 years ago (Adams 2007).1 Yoloxóchitl Mixtec, the focus of the current study, is an endangered language spoken in the towns of Yoloxóchitl, Cuanacaxtitlán, Buena Vista, and Arroyo Cumiapa (Castillo García 2007), located approx- imately 20 miles north of the town of Marquelia, Guerrero, along the southeastern coast ‘la costa chica’ of Guerrero, Mexico. Within Cuanacaxtitlán and Buena Vista, the shift to Spanish is nearly complete among the younger generation, while in Yoloxóchitl speakers of all generations have maintained the language. There are approximately 4,000 speakers remaining, though many younger speakers are more dominant in Spanish than in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec. Figure 2 shows the diversification of Mixtec and its sub-family, Guerrero Mixtec, the larger grouping into which Yoloxóchitl Mixtec belongs.2 The numbers next to each lower branch reflect the number of language variants within that branch. There is reasonably good mutual intelligibility across most of the Guerrero Mixtec languages (Castillo García 2007), but only approximately 30% mutual intelligibility between Guerrero and Southern Baja varieties spoken nearby (Lewis, Simons & Fenning 2013).3 Linguistic work on the Mixtec languages has a long history, with the first dictionary appearing in the colonial period (de Alvarado 1593). Even more than four hundred years ago, de Alvarado remarked on the extensive diversity of Mixtec languages. It was not until the mid-20th century,