Last updated: 2020-06-26
Background
Language Family: Mayan / Cholan-Tzeltalan / Cholan / Chol-Chontal
- Chol is spoken within the Chiapas state located in southern Mexico.
Phonology
Consonants
- Chol is heavily influenced by the Spanish language, thus many phonemes not present within the native inventory appear (e.g. /ɡ/, /d/, /t/, /n/) (Alvarez 2011, 35; Nicholas A. Hopkins and Josserand 2008, 89).
- Nicholas A. Hopkins and Josserand (2008) specifically state that unpalatalized /t/ and /n/ have been introduced into the language (p. 89). However, they aren’t often recognized as being part of the inventory, and speakers in general tend to implement the palatalized forms, thus I have opted to just use /tʲ/ and /ɲ/.
- Alvarez (2011) includes /b/ in the phonemic inventory (p. 35), whereas Coon (2017) includes /ɓ/ (p. 3). I have chosen to use /b/, given that the ingressive property of the Proto-Mayan consonant /ɓ/ has since been lost (Polian 2006 as cited in Alvarez (2011), p. 34).
|
|
Place of Articulation
|
|
Manner of Articulation
|
Labial
|
Alveolar
|
Postalveolar
|
Palatal
|
Velar
|
Glottal
|
|
Stops
|
p pʼ b
|
|
|
tʲ tʲʼ
|
k kʼ
|
ʔ
|
|
Affricates
|
|
ts tsʼ
|
tʃ tʃʼ
|
|
|
|
|
Fricatives
|
|
s
|
ʃ
|
|
x
|
|
|
Nasals
|
m
|
|
|
ɲ
|
|
|
|
Trills
|
|
r
|
|
|
|
|
|
Approximants
|
w
|
l
|
|
j
|
|
|
|
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are plain (voiceless) and those on the right are ejective (voiceless). The labial stops are ordered plain (voiceless), ejective (voiceless), and voiced.
|
Vowels
- Vowel length was once contrastive in Chol, but it has since been lost (Alvarez 2011, 41).
|
|
Front
|
Central
|
Back
|
|
High
|
i
|
ɨ
|
u
|
|
Mid
|
e
|
|
o
|
|
Low
|
|
a
|
|
Alphabet
- Although the Chol alphabet was normalized in 2010 (Alvarez 2011, 42), represented by the alphabet below, the Crúbadán corpus seems to represent older orthographies (see Orthographic Variations). Since there appears to be no conflation of the phonemes with any of the transcriptions, I will include all in the ruleset.
- As seen with the orthographic variations, an apostrophe indicates a glottal stop except when following a consonant, which indicates an ejective (Coon 2017, 2).
|
Grapheme
|
Phoneme
|
|
a
|
/a/
|
|
b
|
/b/
|
|
e
|
/e/
|
|
i
|
/i/
|
|
j
|
/x/
|
|
k
|
/k/
|
|
k’
|
/kʼ/
|
|
l
|
/l/
|
|
m
|
/m/
|
|
n
|
/ɲ/
|
|
ñ
|
/ɲ/
|
|
o
|
/o/
|
|
p
|
/p/
|
|
p’
|
/pʼ/
|
|
r
|
/r/
|
|
s
|
/s/
|
|
t
|
/tʲ/
|
|
u
|
/u/
|
|
w
|
/w/
|
|
x
|
/ʃ/
|
|
y
|
/j/
|
|
ä
|
/ɨ/
|
|
-
|
/ʔ/
|
|
Digraph
|
|
|
ch
|
/tʃ/
|
|
ch’
|
/tʃʼ/
|
|
ts
|
/ts/
|
|
ts’
|
/tsʼ/
|
|
ty
|
/tʲ/
|
|
ty’
|
/tʲʼ/
|
|
Orthographic variation
|
|
|
c
|
/k/
|
|
qu
|
/k/
|
|
tz
|
/ts/
|
|
tz’
|
/tsʼ/
|
|
ü
|
/ɨ/
|
|
ʌ
|
/ɨ/
|
|
’
|
/ʔ/
|
Syllable Structure
- Syllables in Chol consist of the following structures (Alvarez 2011, 46, 58), the consonant clusters of which do not consist of geminate consonants:
Lenition Rules
- /b/ and /l/ are often deleted word-finally (Alvarez 2011, 40).
Misc. Rules
- /b/, /l/, /w/, /n/, and /ɲ/ are devoiced word-finally (Alvarez 2011, 39).
- Glottal stops precede vowels in word-initial positions (Alvarez 2011. p. 38).
- /ɲ/ assimilates to the place of the following consonant (Alvarez 2011. p. 48).
- Vowel harmony is present in Chol (Alvarez 2011. p. 50).
- In some dialects there is free variation between /k/ and /tʃ/, /l/ and /ʔ/, as well as /k/ and /ʃ/ (Alvarez 2011. pp. 50-51).
- /tʃ/ changes to /ʃ/ preceding /tʲ/ (Alvarez 2011. p. 59).
- /ʃ/ changes to /x/ preceding palatal consonants (Alvarez 2011. p 60).
- Epenthetic glides appear intervocalically as vowel clusters are prohibited in Chol (Alvarez 2011. pp. 51-54).
- Consonant elision is used to avoid geminates/double consonants (Alvarez 2011, 58).
References
Alvarez, Juan Jesús Vázquez. 2011. “A Grammar of Chol, a Mayan Language.” PhD thesis, The University of Texas at Austin.
Coon, Jessica. 2017. “The Mayan Languages.” In The Mayan Languages, edited by Judith Aissen Nora England and Roberto Zavala Maldonado, 648–84. New York: Routledge.
Nicholas A. Hopkins, Ausencio Cruz Guzmán, and J. Kathryn Josserand. 2008. “A Chol (Mayan) Vocabulary from 1789.” International Journal of American Linguistics 74 (1): 83–114.
Polian, Gilles. 2006. Elements de Grammaire Du Tseltal. Lille: ANRT.