Re: NATLANG: Maya pronunciation guide

Tim May wrote:
> From:    Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
> Quoting Tim May <butsuri@...>:
>
> > > See pages 4 & 5 of this document for a better description of what
> > > looks like basically the same system:
> > > http://www.mesoweb.com/resources/vocabulary/Vocabulary.pdf
> >
> > An odd feature of this is that it has b' but no simple b, especially as the b'
> > sound is characterized only as a voiced labial stop.
>
> Yes, I noticed that, and it is rather odd.  /b/ _is_ sometimes
> implosive in modern Mayan languages.  And since it's the only
> contrastively voiced stop, one wonders whether it might resemble the
> glottalized series more than the plain...

Indeed, it's not very surprising.  The voiceless labial ejective
/p'/ is highly marked crosslinguistically, with roughly a third
of languages having a glottalized series not having that one.  Among
other things, it has been claimed as one of the arguments favoring
the glottalic theory of the PIE obstruent system. The markedness
hierarchy with ingressives, on the other hand, is the inverse, with
/b'/ being least marked and /g'/ being most.  In principle, I find it
entirely plausible that the language originally contrasted simply
glottalization with nonglottalization, and the marked /p'/ arose as
or was lautgesetzed into being /b'/.


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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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Chicago, IL 60637

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