Tonally Differentiated Allomorphs in Soyaltepec Mazatec

Abstract

1 Data for this paper were based on research in the spring of 1954 when on loan from the Summer Institute of Linguistics to the Instituto Nacional Indigenista of Mexico. The informant was Alberto Ruiz Clara, formerly of San Miguel Soyaltepec, Oaxaca, more recently of Chichicasapa, Oaxaca. He was moved to the latter location as part of the mass evacuation of 11,000 Mazatec Indians from the part of the Papaloapan basin which is being flooded by the Rio Tonto at the closing of the new Miguel Aleman dam. 2 In this paper when two or more tones occur on the same syllable, I have chosen to use the term 'tone cluster' or 'syllable tone-sequence'. 'Word tone-sequence' is used of tones occurring on contiguous syllables within a grammatical word. A word tone-sequence may be comprised of noncontiguous single tones, or of single tones plus noncontiguous tone clusters, or of noncontiguous tone clusters.