Phonetics and phonology of Mopan Maya: segments, processes, and syllabic patterns

Abstract

Languages of the Yucatecan branch –Yukatek, Lacandon, Itzaj, Mopan– have been hugely studied among the Mayan family; nevertheless, such linguistic descriptions and analysis have not given enough attention to phonetic and phonological levels, especially as regards to the phonetic description of the consonantal and vocalic segments of this group of languages. This paper presents a brief description and analysis of the phonetic and phonological levels of Mopan Maya. It is organized as follows. In §1, general information about the language is provided, including lexical loans of other Mayan languages. This section also includes the methodology of the investigation and some general information about the consultants whose speech is described here. In §2, the vowel system and its contrasts are presented. In §3, the consonantal system, its contrasts, and most prominent phonological processes are presented, although those that have been widely described by previous authors are not included –such as assimilation of nasals, vowel harmony and vowel dissimilation–. Section §4 describes the syllable structure of words in, and Section §5 focuses on acoustic analysis and phonetic description of the contrast between glottalized and non-glottalized obstruents, and the realizations of glottal stop. Lastly, some final considerations are offered.