Tilquiapan Zapotec

Tilquiapan Zapotec (Zapoteco de San Miguel Tilquiápam) is an Oto-Manguean language of the Zapotecan branch, spoken in southern Oaxaca, Mexico.

Tilquiapan Zapotec
San Miguel Tilquiápam
Region	Oaxaca in Mexico
Native speakers	5,000 (2007)[1]
Language family	Oto-Manguean Zapotecan Zapotec Central Valley Tilquiapan–Yatzechi Tilquiapan Zapotec
Writing system	Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	zts
Glottolog	tilq1235[2]

Santa Inés Yatzechi Zapotec is close enough to be considered a dialect, and Ocotlán Zapotec is also close. They were measured at 87% and 59% intelligibility, respectively, in recorded text testing.[3]

Sounds

Vowels

Vowel phonemes of Tilquiapan Zapotec[4]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Mid	ɘ		o
Open	a

Each vowel can also be glottalized, a phenomenon manifested as either creaky voice throughout the vowel or, more commonly, as a sequence of a vowel and a glottal stop optionally followed by an echo of the vowel.[5]

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Tilquiapan Zapotec[6]

		Bilabial		Dental/ Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar
										plain		labialized
Nasal		m		nː n
Plosive		pː	b	tː	d	tːʃ	dʒ			kː	ɡ	kːʷ	ɡʷ
Fricative				sː	z	ʃː	ʒ
Approximant	central							j
	lateral			l͡d l

As with other Zapotec languages, the primary distinction between consonant pairs like /t/ and /d/ is not of voicing but between fortis and lenis (measured in length[7]), respectively, with voicing being a phonetic correlate.[6] There are two exceptions to this in Tilquiapan:

• The contrast between fortis /nː/ and lenis /n/
• The contrast between fortis /ld/ and lenis /l/

Neither is voiceless, but /nˑ/ is pronounced a little longer and /ld/ replaces /l/ in certain causative verbs in ways similar to other fortis/lenis consonantal changes (e.g. [blaˀa] 'get loose' vs. [bldaˀa] 'let loose').[6]

Notes

1. Tilquiapan Zapotec at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Tilquiapan Zapotec". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
3. Egland, Cruz Ramos & Bartholomew (1978)
4. Merrill (2008), p. 109
5. Merrill (2008), p. 110
6. Merrill (2008), p. 108
7. See Nellis & Hollenbach (1980)

References

• Egland, Steven; Cruz Ramos, Saúl; Bartholomew, Doris (1978), La inteligibilidad interdialectal en México: resultados de algunos sondeos [Interdialectal intelligibility in Mexico: study results] (in Spanish), México: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, ISBN 9683100031
• Merrill, Elizabeth (2008), "Tilquiapan Zapotec" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 38 (1): 107–114, doi:10.1017/S0025100308003344
• Nellis, Donald G.; Hollenbach, Barbara E. (1980), "Fortis versus lenis in Cajonos Zapotec phonology", International Journal of American Linguistics, 46: 92–105, doi:10.1086/465639