BACKGROUND This book focuses on two major issues - vowel glottalization and nasalization - in the phonology and phonetics of Coatzospan Mixtec (henceforth CM). CM is an Otomanguean language currently spoken by roughly 2000 people (Small 1990) in the village of San Juan Coatzospan, which is located in the Sierra Mazateca of northern Oaxaca, Mexico.' Though Mixtec constitutes a major branch of the Otomanguean family, the so-called dialects are most appropriately viewed as distinct languages. According to Josserand (1982), there are at least 22 mutually unintelligible varieties of Mixtec. For...

BACKGROUND This book focuses on two major issues - vowel glottalization and nasalization - in the phonology and phonetics of Coatzospan Mixtec (henceforth CM). CM is an Otomanguean language currently spoken by roughly 2000 people (Small 1990) in the village of San Juan Coatzospan, which is located in the Sierra Mazateca of northern Oaxaca, Mexico.' Though Mixtec constitutes a major branch of the Otomanguean family, the so-called dialects are most appropriately viewed as distinct languages. According to Josserand (1982), there are at least 22 mutually unintelligible varieties of Mixtec. For...