Clusters vs units in Otomanguean: the cases of Tlapanec (Mè’phàà) and Zapotec (Dixsa:)
Since the pioneering work of Trubetzkoy (1939), there have been various proposals as to how to distinguish consonant clusters and units in individual languages. In this paper, I will look at the cases of Malinaltepec Tlapanec (Mè’phàà) and Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec (Dixsa:), two Otomanguean langua...
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| Format: | Online |
| Language: | English Spanish |
| Editor: |
El Colegio de México, A.C.
2021
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| Online Access: | https://cuadernoslinguistica.colmex.mx/index.php/cl/article/view/224 |
| Journal: |
Cuadernos de Lingüística |
| Summary: | Since the pioneering work of Trubetzkoy (1939), there have been various proposals as to how to distinguish consonant clusters and units in individual languages. In this paper, I will look at the cases of Malinaltepec Tlapanec (Mè’phàà) and Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec (Dixsa:), two Otomanguean languages. I will look at general and language-particular criteria to distinguish clusters and units in these languages. I will show that in both cases the criteria do not always converge: some sequences are judged to be clusters by certain criteria but as units by others. Based on these observations, and drawing insights from Canonical Typology (Brown et al. 2012), I argue that the distinction between clusters and units is not dichotomous, but multidimensional: individual cases may simultaneously resemble clusters in some aspects but units in others, thus the typology of behaviors is richer than a simple binary opposition. |
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