La palatalización en mixe

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the palatalisation triggered by the aspectual suffix -y. In Mixe; -y targets the consonants and vowels: it adds a secondary palatal articulation to all segments [-syl; -cor]; and it provokes the fronting of all [+post] vowels. Since the process targets both consonants and vowels; it argues for a representation of place features as proposed in Clements (1993). The author asserts that a single set of features characterizes both vowels and consonants; and therefore that they form a natural class of segments. The Mixe process provides evidence for such a feature system. The paper focuses on the exceptional behaviour of coronal consonants; showing how their representations block coronal propagation onto vowels. The other process involved is nasal assimilation; which is argued to apply before palatalization; thus explaining why [n] allows palatalization to reach the vowels.