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Taos phonology


The main description of Taos Tiwa phonology was contributed by George L. Trager in a (pre-generative) structuralist framework. Earlier considerations of the phonetics-phonology were by John P. Harrington and Jaime de Angulo. Trager's first account was in Trager (1946) based on fieldwork 1935-1937, which was then substantially revised in Trager (1948) (due in part to the inclusion of juncture phonemes and newly collected data in 1947 in the analysis). The description below takes Trager (1946) as the main point of departure and notes where this differs from the analysis of Trager (1948). Harrington's description (although from a different period) is more similar to Trager (1946). Certain comments from a generative perspective are noted in a comparative work Hale (1967).

The two following sections detail phonetic information about Taos phonological segments (i.e., consonants and vowels), as well as their phonological patterning in morphophonemic alternations.

Trager (1946) lists 27 consonants (25 native) for Taos, although in his later analysis he posited 18 consonants.

Words exemplifying Taos consonants are in the table below:

The stem-initial consonant in many verb stems has alternates (i.e. shows consonantal ablaut) between two different forms in what Trager calls the "basic" stem and the "stative" stem. The "basic" stem is used for the preterit active verb form while the "stative" stem is used for the resultative stative verb-forms and deverbal nouns.

A different set of alternations are what Trager calls "internal" ablaut. The last consonant of the verb stem alternates between two different consonants in the basic stem form and the negative stem form.


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