Sierra Popoluca Syllable Structure

1 The only available published material on the Popoluca language, aside from a few incomplete word lists, occurs in George Foster's article "The Geographical, Linguistic, and Cultural Position of the Popoluca of Veracruz," AA 45.531-46 (1943). In this brief paper Foster presents a tentative chart of the phonemes of the Sierra dialect, with brief discussions of palatalization and voicing of stops. His purpose however is to classify the Popoluca languages and presents only enough data to establish their position. The occurrence of the phonemes charted by Foster has been verified, and they are now described, with the inclusion of a further series, a set of voiced stops, which he did not handle as separate phonemic entities. The material presented in this paper was gathered by the writer during the period 1943-45 while doing field work under the direction of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Informants used were from the Sierra Popoluca village of Ocotal Chico, Ver. The principal informant was Fermin Gutierrez, but the data have been checked with others of the village. The writer wishes to express thanks to Kenneth L. Pike and others of his colleagues of the Summer Institute of Linguistics for their valuable suggestions while the paper was in preparation. consonant or utterance-final silence. The consonants are phonetically syllabic in this position, but considering them as a part of the preceding syllable provides a neater and simpler description. For example, the word hesm that has two chest pulses but is most conveniently described as constituting a single phonemic syllable. The following evidence supports this conclusion. (1) Other consonants which are never syllabic (such as voiceless stops) also occur following glottal stop and preceding silence: ?i'ku?t he ate it, mu?k grass. This establishes a pattern CV?C to which the pattern CV?9 might prove to be analogous. (2) The phonetically-syllabic nasals and y are never stressed. Vowels occurring in a similar situation (i.e., after [V9]) are potentially stressed. Contrast 'hu?mi with an owl (in which the nasal never occurs stressed following the glottal stop) with na'?ami with gum (in which the vowel after glottal stop is stressed). Note also hu?! owl and 'na?a gum with stress on vowel preceding the [?]. These data force the investigator to conclude that the pattern CV?Q is distinct from CV?V. From these evidences together, the conclusion is drawn that the phonetically-syllabic nasals and y function structurally like the final consonant in the pattern CV?C and thus are to be considered a part of the preceding syllable; the two phonetic syllables, then, form a single phonemic syllable.