Sunday, November 28, 2021

On the lexicalization of Triqui compounds

In the process of doing historical reconstruction, one is often led to believe that the conditioning factors leading to sound change are specific to a phonotactic context, i.e. one finds /k/ > [tʃ]/_i and perhaps only in onsets. Yet, there are several variable patterns in Itunyoso Triqui compounds that suggest that stress-induced simplification might also cause unique types of sound changes.

As a bit of background, it is important to know that Itunyoso Triqui words are mostly polysyllabic. About 70% of the lexicon is disyllabic or trisyllabic roots. Though, monosyllabic roots have higher token frequency in running speech (as per Zipf's law). The final syllable of these morphemes has special status. It is phonetically longer than non-final syllables and most of the contrasts occur on the final syllable (cf. DiCanio 2010).

What occurs in the final syllable in a polysyllabic word?
a. Every possible tone: /1, 2, 3, 4, (4)5, 13, 32, 43, 31/.
b. All consonants: /p, t, k, kʷ, tʃ, ʈʂ, ʔ, m, n, ⁿd, ᵑɡ, ᵑɡʷ, ɾ, β, s, l, j, ˀm, ˀn, ˀⁿd, ˀᵑɡ, ˀɾ, ˀβ, ˀl, ˀj/.
c. All vowels: /i, e, a, o, u, ĩ, ã, ũ/
d. Coda consonants /ʔ, ɦ/ (though all syllables are otherwise open).

What occurs in the non-final syllable of a polysyllabic word?
a. Only level tones /1, 2, 3, 4/, but the caveat is that tones /1/ and /4/ are not truly contrastive here - they only occur due to leftward tonal spreading onto the non-final syllable (cf. DiCanio, Martínez Cruz, and Martínez Cruz 2020). So, really it's just tone /2/ and tone /3/ that contrast here.
b. Only simple consonants (no prenasalized stops, no glottalized sonorants, no glottal stop): /p, t, k, kʷ, tʃ, ʈʂ, m, n, ɾ, β, s, l, j/.
c. Only oral vowels /i, e, a, o, u/ and mid vowels only occur if they also occur in the final syllable. So, really just /i, a, u/ are contrastive here.
d. All syllables are open.

So, we have many asymmetries in which sounds occur by syllable. We can call this stress or prominence or whatever term you wish, but the patterns above occur mostly without exception.

There is an additional observation too - a contrast between singletons and geminates only occurs in monosyllabic words, e.g. ta³ 'this' vs. tta³ 'field', nũ³² 'be inside' vs. nnũ³² 'epazote.' This contrast does not occur in polysyllabic words (cf. DiCanio 2010, 2012).

Now that we know about the stress-based consonant patterns, what does this mean for sound change? Consider that one very common type of word formation process in Triqui (and in Otomanguean languages more generally) is compounding. When each morpheme of a compound retains some of its phonological identity as a distinct root, there may be no sound changes. Yet, if the compound begins to lexicalize, the restrictions on phonological distributions above start to cause rather robust changes. Let's look at some examples.

1. The Triqui word 'de veras/truly' is a reduplicated form yya¹³ yya¹³, literally meaning 'true true.' Most adverbs in the language appear post-verbally before personal clitics (V+ADV+SUBJ order), so clitic morphophonology applies to them. The 1P clitic involves a > o, glottal stop insertion, and tone 4. Yet, with this word you get yyo¹³ yyoʔ⁴, with vowel harmony. Then with lexicalization, you can't get a contour tone on a non-final syllable and no geminates are permitted in polysyllabic words, so it's yo³yoʔ⁴.

2. The Triqui word 'each' is a reduplicated compound  ᵑɡo² ˀᵑɡo² 'one-one.' Yet, it is often pronounced as [ko²ˀᵑɡo²] in running speech. You lose the prenasalized stop in the penultimate syllable as per the patterns above.

3. The Triqui word 'soda/soft drink' is a compound nne³² tsiʔ¹ 'water + sweet.' Yet, it is often pronounced as [ne³siʔ¹]. You lose the contour tone and the gemination on the penultimate syllable because neither are permitted there.

4. The Triqui word for 'bread' is a historical compound /ʈʂːa³ ʈʂũɦ⁵/, lit. tortilla+horno (tortilla del horno). It is pronounced as [ʈʂa³ʈʂũɦ⁵] by older speakers but as [tʃa³tʃũɦ⁵] by younger speakers (who have mostly merged the retroflex and post-alveolar affricates). The historical gemination of 'tortilla' has been lost here.

5. The Triqui word for 'rifle' is [ʈʂu³ʈʂi³aʔ³], but the roots are ʈʂːũ³ 'wood' + ʈʂi³aʔ³  'to shoot.' In the compound, we see observe degemination (because it's in a disyllabic word now) and loss of the vowel nasalization too. And as mentioned above, many speakers now produce the retroflex series as post-alveolar.

I am mentioning this examples here because, as per Rensch (1976), it is extremely difficult to reconstruct non-final syllables in many Otomanguean languages. It may be that (a) processes of reduction in unstressed syllables and (b) a general pattern of distributional asymmetries in the phonological inventories will help to reconstruct them. The [k] you observe that comes from a reduced [ᵑɡ] (as in #2 above) might only occur in a handful of words because reduplicated compounds are relatively uncommon in Otomanguean languages.

In sum, neutralization due to stress-based distributional asymmetries can lead to superficial similarities between words, e.g. the /n/ onset in #3 'soda' is from */nn/ while a different word like /ne³tã³/ 'ejote/green bean' is probably related to Mixtec words like /ñityì/ (SJC Mixtec) where onset /n/ has a */ny/ reflex. 

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