Guerrero Mixtec "Field" work
Posted: 20 May 2021 19:34
I just finished a course where we did "field" work (over Zoom) with Mixteco immigrants from Guerrero. This is my sketch of the phonology and morphology, and I will post a syntactic analysis soon.
Phonemes in Mixteco:
/ⁿb t ⁿd k (kʷ) ʔ/
/m n ɲ ŋ/
/β s ʃ x/
/t͡ʃ/
/r/
/j l/
/i u/
/ĩ ũ/
/ɛ ɔ/
/ɛ̃ ɔ̃/
/a/
/ã/
/˥ ˧ ˩/
Notes:
1. The prenasalized voiced stops are conjectured as being phonemes since:
A. Voiced stops only occur after homorganic nasals
B. Nasals do not occur as codas except before homorganic voiced stops.
This could also be explained by saying there is an archiphoneme /N/ that before stops is expressed as a coda, and voices them, and in other positions nasalizes the vowel, but the Law of Parsimony makes this unlikely.
2. /kʷ/ is put in parenthesis because it may be a /kuV/ sequence.
3. There are vowel sequences, but they do not seem to be phonemic diphthongs or long vowels, given the pulses of the vowels in PRAAT. They do not have glottal stops between them.
4. /i/ has an allophone /ɪ/, but further analysis is needed to determine the rules when the allophone occurs.
Phonotactics:
(C)V(V)(ʔ)
Morphology:
Nominal morphology:
Nouns are divided into classes. The ones that have been elicited are Male Human, Female Human, Animal, Wood and Trees, and Fruits and Vegetables.
The 3P pronouns are formed by the class prefix followed by /kaa/.
The Person and Numbers that are marked for humans are:
1P sing
2P sing
3P sing masc
3P sing fem
1P plr incl
1P plr exc
2P plr
3p plr masc
3p plr fem
Possession is divided into inalienable possession vs. alienible.
Alienable possession is formed by POSSESSED.NOUN CLASIF-PERS.NUMB
Example (Yerba Santa dialect):
kwai sane
kwai san-e
horse CLAS.ANIM-1P.SING
“My horse”
Inalienable possession is formed by attaching a person-number marker to the noun:
ⁿdaʔa
"hand"
ⁿdaʔí
ⁿdaʔ-í
hand-1P.SING
“My hand”
Verbal morphology:
Verbs take person and number marking. These are the same as the inalienable possessive markers, and if they begin in a vowel, the vowel replaces the last vowel of the root. For non-human subjects, they take a classifier marker, that does not change for plural.
The difference between present and past is tonal. As most roots are bisyllabic, it seems that the pattern for present is HM or ML, while the past is MH or LM.
The future is formed by suppletion.
Examples:
“Eat” present and past: ʃiʃi
“Eat” future: kùʃi
“Drink” present and past: ʃiʔi
“Drink” future: koʔo
Verbs may take the suffix /ku/ before the person/number suffix, which seems to be progressive.
Example present progressive paradigm:
ʃiʃi "eat"
1P sing: ʃiʃikui
1P plr incl: ʃiʃikujo
1P plr excl: ʃiʃikundi
2P sing: ʃiʃikũ
2P plr: ʃiʃikundo
3P sing Masc: ʃiʃikurà
3P sing fem: ʃiʃikuɲá
3P sing anim: ʃiʃikuri
3P plr: ʃiʃikúnú