Two grammars of A’ingae glottalization: A case for Cophonologies by Phase

Abstract

This paper describes and analyzes phonological processes pertinent to the glottal stop in A’ingae (or Cofán, iso 639-3: ). The operations which the glottal stops undergo and trigger reveal an interaction of two morphophonological parameters: stratum and stress dominance. First, verbal suffixes are organized in two morphophonological domains, or strata. Within the inner domain, glottal stops affect stress placement, which I analyze as an interaction with foot structure. In the outer domain, glottal stops do not have any effects on stress. Second, some verbal suffixes delete stress (i. e. they are dominant). Dominance is unpredictable and independent of the suffix’s morphophonological domain, but dominance and the phonological domain interact in a non-trivial way: only inner dominant suffixes delete glottalization. To account for the A’ingae data, I adopt Cophonologies by Phase (Sande et al. 2020), which (i) models phonological stratification while (ii) allowing for morpheme-specific phonological idiosyncrasies, which (iii) interact with the phonological grammar of their stratum. Stress deletion triggered by the dominant suffixes is modeled with AntiFaithfulness (Alderete 1999, 2001). Antifaithfulness to a metrical foot entails antifaithfulness to its features (glottalization). This captures the fact that only the inner dominant suffixes delete glottal stops.

The phonology of A'ingae

“…All the data drawn from previous publications and databases are cited as such. A dialectal split has been anecdotally reported between the language's Ecuadorian and Colombian varieties (Dąbkowski, 2021a;Repetti-Ludlow et al, 2019). All data presented in this paper reflects the Ecuadorian language variety, with no further dialectal variation observed within Ecuador, although speakers sometimes remark that people from other communities speak differently.…”

“…Roots can be classified as plain (54i), stressed (54ii), or glottalised (54iii) (Dąbkowski, 2023c). The first category consists of roots that do not have underlying stress.…”

“…In morphologically complex forms, stress depends on the morphophonological class of the suffixes attached. Here, I adopt Dąbkowski's (2023c) terminology, categorising suffixes as inner (templatically closer to the root), outer (farther away from the root), recessive (preserving prior metrical specification), dominant (deleting prior metrical specification), and glottalised (whose stress assignment patterns are due to the glottal stop).…”

“…For example, Andean phonological features include contrastive aspiration and the lack of tone. Amazonian features include contrastive vowel nasality, nasal spreading, and vowel glottalisation (AnderBois, et al, 2019;Dąbkowski, 2021a). The morphological profile of A'ingae is highly agglutinating and exclusively suffixing.…”

“…Outside of A'ingaespeaking community-lead primary schools, the language does not receive much institutional support. Despite the challenges, the Cofán people take pride in their cultural and linguistic heritage, and see A'ingae as one of the cornerstones of their ethnic identity (Cepek, 2012;Dąbkowski, 2021a).…”