The phonemes /l/ and /r/ do not occur natively within the Texistepec language. These two phonemes are borrowed from Spanish phonology and have become integrated into Texistepec phonology (Reilly). According to early work conducted by Foster another “outstanding feature of Texistepec consonants is the strong development of voicing” especially with stops and [s]. Below are his phonological rules of voicing (1943, p.536).
/p/, /t/, and /s/ become voiced in the word-initial position.
[p, t, s]→voiced/#__
[k] becomes the voiced allophone after a nasal or between two vowels.
[k]→[ḳ]/[m, n, ŋ]__ or /V_V
According to Wichmann "Stress is not distinctive in Texistepec Popoluca. Stress is assigned to:
1. the last heavy syllable of a lexical morpheme, where a heavy syllable is defined as containing a long vowel;
2. if not to the penultimate syllable of a lexical morpheme (whether heavy or light);
3. if not to the only syllable of a phonological word;
4. if not to certain suffixes that are inherently specified for stress.
5. Stress assignment applies iteratively leftwards in a composite stem to produce secondary stresses (1994, 469)”
Consonants[]
Bilabials: stop- /p/, /b/ -nasal- /m/ Alveolar: stop- /t/, /d/ /dʲ/ -nasal- /n/ -lateral, trill- /l/, /r/ Palatal: nasal- /ɲ/ -affricates- /t͡s/ -fricatives-/s/ Velar: stop- /k/ -velar- /ɳ/ Glottal: stop- /ʔ/ -fricatives- /h/
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | /p/, /b/ | /t/, /d/ /dʲ/ | /k/ | /ʔ/ | |
| Nasal | /m/ | /n/ | /ɲ/ | /ɳ/ | |
| Lateral, Trill | /l/, /r/ | ||||
| Affricates | /t͡s/ | /t͡ʃ | |||
| Fricatives | /s/ | /ʃ/ | /h/ |
Vowels[]
The vowels in Texistepec can be counted as the five listed in Table 3, for the sake of simplification and consistency as presented by multiple sources. However it could potentially include six, or even twelve vowels if accounting for the contrast between long and short vowels. According to research by Wichmann and later modified by Reilly, the vowels of this language “have a non-phonemic nasal counterpart, usually only realized in the presence of an inflectional nasal autosegment…
Vowels ɨ, u, ɛ, ɔ, a
| Vowels | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | /ɨ/ | /u/ | |
| Mid-low | /ɛ/ | /ɔ/ | |
| Low | /a/ |
Vowel Phonemes
| Underspecified | ɛ | ɨ | a | u | o |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| high | + | + | |||
| back | + | ||||
| round | + | + |
| Fully Specified | ɛ | ɨ | a | u | o |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| high | - | + | - | + | - |
| back | - | + | + | + | + |
| round | - | - | - | + | + |
“Long and short vowels are also contrastive in lexical representations as is evident from the following minimal pair[s]:"
- t͡ʃɛːɲ ‘honey’
- t͡ʃɛɲ rude word for ‘excrement’
(Reilly 2002, 11)
- pak 'bone'
- paːk 'cold'
(Wichmann 2007, 40)