UC San Diego

One of the principle goals of linguistics is to understand the structure of language: what are the different domains of grammar, and how do they interface and interact? This dissertation addresses these questions through the lens of laryngeal sounds in Chicontepec Nahuatl (ChN), a Uto-Aztecan language. I show that laryngeal sounds arise in distinct domains of the grammar (i.e. lexical and postlexical phonology, and morphology) and can cooccur. This dissertation documents and describes the multiple sources of laryngeal sounds in ChN through original field data and provides a detailed acoustic analysis of the phonetic implementation of these sounds.

ChN has a rich laryngeal landscape in which [h] is contrastive (/h/) but also derives from neutralizing lenition processes; [h] also features in templatic and realizational morphology, and forms the single exponent of morphological constructions. There is also glottalization that is sensitive to morphological boundaries and larger prosodic domains. I argue that phrase-final glottalization is a suprasegment that moves inward from the phrasal edge to the nearest available anchor point when the expected phrase-final vowel is voiceless—a behavior documented for edge tones but not previously for laryngeal articulations.

The phonetic outcome of cooccurring laryngeal sounds where both [h] and glottalization are specified to cooccur sheds light on the interactions of grammatical domains and cost of reduction to morphological meaning. Findings suggest a derived environment effect: glottalization is realized more strongly when co-occurring with an underived [h]. There is also an effect by cost of reduction to unique meaning: glottalization is less likely to occur when [h] reduction has a high cost. Finally, the distribution of laryngeals in ChN is situated within the larger language. This dissertation deepens our understanding of the phonology and phonetics of an under-described variety of Nahuatl, of the Nahuatl language and the Uto-Aztecan family more generally, and of indigenous languages of the Americas.