Overview

This text provides a detailed analysis of two major aspects - glottalization and nasalization - of the phonology and phonetics of Coatzospan Mixtec, as well as an overview of the segmental phonology of the language. From a descriptive perspective, this work provides the first published phonetic data on Coatzospan Mixtec, one of the many underdescribed indigenous languages of the Americas. Of theoretical importance, the phonological analyses of glottalization and nasalization serve as examples of how optimality theory can be implemented in the extended treatment of a single language, in contrast to the typological emphasis of most optimality research. By focusing in detail on the whole of nasalization and glottalization systems, the book explores the implications of optimality theory for the traditional notion of underlying representation in phonological theory and motivates an extension of the mechanism of constraint conjunction to include conditional relations holding between distinct constraints in the grammar. At the same time, the phonetic analyses provide an example of a detailed treatment of the phonetic implementation of nasalization and glottalization in the Windows framework. Of special interest here is the relation between phonetic data and phonological feature specification. In particular, the data illustrates the complexity of the relationship between patterns of phonetic implementation and feature specification and leads to the conclusion that phonetic data must be interpreted in the context of the phonological system from which they are derived. This book should be of interest to linguists in general, and especially to researchers in both phonology and phonetics, to those interested in field work on underdescribed languages, and to those interested in Native American languages and linguistics.

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