Mayan Consonant-Vowel Correlations,
Syllable Structure, and Phonetics
To appreciate a phonetically-based explanation for Mayan spelling patterns, we need accounts of the following. Other than the role of glottalization, here is the explanation proposed by Anderson already in 1999. It is easiest to understand if one assumes that the "unpronounced" final vowels can be relics from an earlier time when those final vowels were pronounced. The evidence on Mopan and Ch'olan "echo vowels" is relevant here. Pronunciation involves phonetics, not merely phonemics. It is not a counterargument that current reconstructions of Mayan languages and intermediate proto-families do not have final vowels, since those final vowels can easily have been lost in parallel in all the descendant languages (one of the best examples for parallel changes, Sapir's "drift"). There might be some other explanation for the actual correlations found in the data between consonant phonetics and quality of "unwritten" vowels in Mayan spellings. But the one presented here is easy at least for linguists to understand. Here are three components:
(a)
how phonetics can relate to choice of supposedly "unpronounced" vowels;
(b) how "unpronounced" vowels related differently to syllable structure,
specifically CVC and CVVC roots; and
(c) how syllable structure relates to Mayan spelling patterns.
Linguists are more sensitive than others to the fact that explanations for language forms in the real world must often be detailed because the real word is complex. There are gradients, matters of degree, and intermediates. The idea (mistitled "Occam's razor") that a simpler "rule" is better is scientific nonsense, because it amounts to a claim that nature is simple. Nature was not designed for our mental convenience. (Similarly, the phrase "the exception proves the rule" is nonsense in the current meaning of English "prove". The phrase makes sense in its older meaning "the exception tests the rule". The modern phrase is used almost always to evade dealing with real exceptions which can seriously undermine a hypothesis.) There are no substitutes or short-cuts for actual evidence and examples typologically similar to what someone is hypothesizing to explain particular observations.
(a) There is a natural relation between certain consonants and certain vowels, the vowels being close to the default offsets or releases of particular consonants, or articulated similarly to the consonants to the extent possible between vowels and consonants. These relations have been stated on the main page for Mayan Spelling Patterns. The hypothesis that such relations are having an influence on some set of data is a single hypothesis about a type of causal force. It is not a long list of special exceptional cases, a separate one for each consonant, although at least one scholar attempted to "frame" the argument as if it were.
(b) If word forms with final vowels once existed, and the final vowels were gradually shortened, reduced, devoiced, and lost, then these processes almost certainly occurred by degrees, and certain contexts would promote such reductions and losses of final vowels more than others. When a simple CVC syllable would result from loss of final vowel, the process is likely to go farther and to occur earlier than when a CVCC syllable would result, and there should also be differences between final consonant clusters which are easier vs. more difficult to produce or to hear. In addition to that, there are numbers of languages where syllables may contain either one or two "moras", a measure of syllable length or "weight". In languages where syllables are limited to two moras, a syllable can contain either a long vowel or a final consonant, but not both, so in such languages CVC and CVV are possible but not CVVC. Of the following three rows, in processes of reduction of final vowels, the first row is likely to occur ahead of the second, and the second ahead of the third.
CVCV > CVC(v) > CVC
CVVCV > CVVC(v) > CVVC
CVCCV > CVCC(v) > CVCC > CVC (cluster simplification at or near a final stage)
Therefore, a contrast of the following kind is quite reasonable, where the period "." marks a syllable boundary in the second case, for a full final syllable or a reduced final syllable.
CVC (syllables with short vowel and final consonant, original final vowel completely lost)
CVV.C(v) (syllables with long vowel and final consonant-plus-reduced-vowel,
at least intermediate to being a form with two syllables, even if the second syllable is reduced.
This links significant final reduced vowels with words which have a long root vowel.
There should be significant distinctions of final vowels possible for the second type at some stage when they are no longer possible for the first type. This may be a stage which was fossilized in Mayan spellings, spellings which still persisted even after all final vowels were lost (except perhaps for the "echo vowels" in Mopan and elsewhere). So this can explain precisely the one-directional statements in Robertson's treatment of Mayan spellings: We cannot have a short-vowel root in which a syllabary sign spelling the last consonant has a different vowel, as in CaC-ci, but with a long vowel in the root, we can have either a same or a different vowel in a final syllabary sign.
Spellings: Syllables at an intermediate stage:
CaC-ca CaC
CaaC-ca Caa.c(a)
CaaC-ci Caa.c(i)
If forms with final vowels were once quite normal, then presumably any vowel could occur finally (barring special restrictions in some particular language). During the reduction process, the variety of final vowels would be reduced, and those reduced final vowels which remain are likely to be highly influenced by the articulation of the consonant which precedes them. This links syllable-structure to the correlation between consonants and vowels having articulations most similar to those consonants.
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