Rising tone in Teotitlán Zapotec

Abstract

Crosslinguistically, contour tones are known to prefer phonetically longer vowels. In Teotitlán Zapotec, however, a rising tone consistently prefers a closed syllable over an open syllable both in the distribution and alternation (*Cǎ(:)]σ). Furthermore, loanword data suggests that this is not a fossilized constraint, but rather a synchronically active constraint for Zapotec speakers. Generally a vowel is phonetically longer in an open syllable rather than a closed syllable, so that the constraint against a rising tone on an open syllable represents an ‘unnatural’ sound pattern. We show that such a synchronically unnatural constraint finds a natural diachronic explanation that it resulted from an accumulation of phonetically natural sound changes.