Oto-Manguean Prosody
Oto-Manguean languages are well known for possessing extremely complex tonal systems. Tone is used in all languages to mark lexical contrasts and may also be used to mark negation, verbal aspect, person, and other morphological categories. As part of my research interests, I have compiled a phonological database consisting of all phonological descriptions/research on Oto-Manguean languages. 94 languages have been included to date and appear on this map.
Click the upper left button to see the legend. Zoom in and/or click on any individual language to see other relevant phonological information about the variant.
The map below provides the stress system for each of the languages in the database.
10 categories for stress are considered. These are listed/described below.
- 1. initial stress
- 2. initial stress with trochaic meter (secondary stress)
- 3. final stress
- 4. penultimate stress (may be equivalent to initial stress in languages with mostly disyllabic words)
- 5. penultimate stress with trochaic meter (secondary stress)
- 6. contrastive stress
- 7. variable stress
- 8. monosyllabic (so no stress, per se)
- 9. H tone - languages with high tone-dependent stress
- 10. NA - languages where no description of stress is available