Glottalized vowels in Nivacle: A prosodic perspective

GUTIÉRREZ, ANALÍA

Portland

Conferencia; The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas Annual Meeting. Portland, 8-11 Enero.; 2015

Linguistic Society of America/The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas

Laryngealization or creakiness on vowels is not reported as a contrastive feature in Mataguayan languages other than Nivacle. Whereas Stell (1989:97) postulates a phonemic distinction between plain vowels and glottalized vowels, I argue that Nivacle glottalized vowels are underlying sequences of vowel-glottal stop, where the glottal stop is featurally specified simply as [constricted glottis]. Glottalized vowels are always stressed. I thus propose that Nivacle glottalized vowels are underlyingly bimoraic and are licensed by the head of an iambic foot.