Extra Harmonic Vowel in Chicahuaxtla Trique

Chicahuaxtla Trique is spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico and belongs to the Trique language group of the Mixtecan family of the Otomanguean stock. The Trique language group is composed of three languages (Chicahuaxtla Trique, Copala Trique and Itunyoso Trique) and each Trique language has undergone a series of historical sound changes (Matsukawa, 2005, 2006, 2007a, 2007b). In Chicahuaxtla Trique, an extra harmonic vowel is added after a laryngealized vowel (either a glottalized vowel or an aspirated vowel) in a final syllable. The extra harmonic vowel does not exist in Copala Trique or Itunyoso Trique and is attached mostly to noun stems in Chicahuaxtla Trique. However, the extra harmonic vowel disappears when a noun is possessed or when a word with the extra harmonic vowel is followed by another word. In this paper, I will discuss the phonological or morphological function of the extra harmonic vowel in Chicahuaxtla Trique and analyze whether the extra harmonic vowel can be reconstructed in Proto-Trique.

In Chicahuaxtla Trique, an extra harmonic vowel is added after a laryngealized vowel (either a glottalized vowel or an aspirated vowel) in a final syllable.The extra harmonic vowel does not exist in Copala Trique or Itunyoso Trique and is attached mostly to noun stems in Chicahuaxtla Trique.However, the extra harmonic vowel disappears when a noun is possessed or when a word with the extra harmonic vowel is followed by another word.
In this paper, I will discuss the phonological or morphological function of the extra harmonic vowel in Chicahuaxtla Trique and analyze whether the extra harmonic vowel can be reconstructed in Proto-Trique.

Extra harmonic vowel in Chicahuaxtla Trique 2
Chicahuaxtla Trique has three types of vowels: short vowel (V), glottalized vowel (Vʔ) and aspirated vowel (Vh).Thus, only Chicahuaxtla Trique has the extra harmonic vowel after a laryngealized vowel among the three Trique languages and the extra harmonic vowel is mostly attached to noun stems.The extra harmonic vowel might be an unpossessed marker because it is lost when a noun is possessed.However, other Mixtecan languages including other Trique languages do not have an unpossessed marker and some adjectives have the extra harmonic vowel too.Besides, the extra harmonic vowel is also lost when a word with the extra harmonic vowel is followed by another word.At present, the phonological or morphological function of the extra harmonic vowel is unidentified and even whether the future investigation can clarify its function is uncertain.

Historical linguistics analysis
Although the phonological or morphological function of the extra harmonic vowel is still unidentified, both internal and external evidence shows that the extra harmonic vowel is a phonological or morphological innovation in Chicahuaxtla Trique and should not be reconstructed in Proto-Trique.In this section, I will present the reasons why the extra harmonic vowel should not be reconstructed in Proto-Trique.

Internal evidence 1: voicing of stop sounds in non-final syllables
The first reason why the extra harmonic vowel should not be reconstructed in Proto-Trique is related to the distribution of voiced stop sounds in Chicahuaxtla Trique.Chicahuaxtla Trique retains the voicing contrast of stop sounds in a final syllable, which has been lost in Itunyoso Trique: In Chicahuaxtla Trique, stop sounds can be voiceless in a penultimate syllable only in this environment and the data presented above support the hypothesis that the extra harmonic vowel is a later addition in Chicahuaxtla Trique.

Internal evidence 2: position of contrastive tone 7
The second reason why the extra harmonic vowel should not be reconstructed in Proto-Trique is related to the position of a contrastive tone in Chicahuaxtla Trique.
In the Trique languages, a contrastive tone always falls on a final syllable 8 : However, the extra harmonic vowel never carries a contrastive tone and a contrastive tone always falls on a penultimate syllable with the extra harmonic vowel: in non-final syllables in Proto-Trique because voiced obstruents are very rare in Mixtecan languages and only voiceless obstruents are reconstructed in Proto-Mixtecan (Kaufman, 1983;Longacre, 1957;Rensch, 1976).However, the voicing contrast of stop sounds might have existed in non-final syllables too in Proto-Trique. 6The cognate for 'lung' in Itunyoso Trique is uncertain, but the most likely candidate is tatãʔ. 7Trique languages have five levels of tones and tones are usually represented by superscript numbers from 1 to 5 after a tone-carrying syllable.In this paper, tone 1 represents the lowest tone and tone 5 represents the highest tone.Contour tones are represented by two successive numbers: e.g.31, 32, 13, etc.  8 Some irregular words have contrastive tones both on final and non-final syllables.

External evidence: cognates in other Mixtecan languages
In addition to the internal evidence presented above, external evidence also supports the hypothesis that the extra harmonic vowel is individual innovation in Chicahuaxtla Trique.