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Palantla Chinantec, also known as Chinanteco de San Pedro Tlatepuzco, is a major Chinantecan language of Mexico, spoken in San Juan Palantla and a couple dozen neighboring towns in northern Oaxaca. The variety of San Mateo Yetla, known as Valle Nacional Chinantec, has marginal mutual intelligibility.

A grammar and a dictionary have been published.

Phonology

Vowels

Close vowels /i u/ typically are articulated as more open and are realized as more closed when represented by different tones. The close back vowel /ɯ/ tends to be articulated as when present in vowel clusters following /u/, or when preceding the /j/ consonant, and may also have a higher central sound. The mid back vowel /ɤ/ tends to be articulated as or when preceding a /w/ consonant. The low central vowel /a/ tends to be realized as following /i/ when one of the consonants /t l n/ occurs.

Each vowel can be nasalized as /ĩ ɯ̃ ũ ɛ̃ ɤ̃ õ ã/. The language is unusual in having, for some speakers, a three-way contrast between non-nasalized, lightly nasalized, and heavily nasalized vowels.

Stress tones may include either high or low /v́ v̀/ tones.

Consonants

References

1. Palantla Chinantec at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
   Valle Nacional Chinantec at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
2. ^ Merrifield, William R. 1968. Palantla Chinantec grammar. Papeles de la Chinantla 5, Serie Científica 9.México: Museo Nacional de Antropología.
3. Merrifield, William R. and Alfred E. Anderson. 2007. Diccionario Chinanteco de la diáspora del pueblo antiguo de San Pedro Tlatepuzco, Oaxaca. . Serie de vocabularios y diccionarios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves” 39. Mexico DF: Summer Linguistic Institute. .
4. Juliette Blevins (2004). Evolutionary Phonology: The Emergence of Sound Patterns. Cambridge University Press. p. 203. ISBN 978-0-521-80428-8.
5. Merrifield, William R. (1963). Palantla Chinantec Syllable Types. Anthropological Linguistics Vol. 5, No. 5: Anthropological Linguistics. pp. 1–16.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)

• Chinantec languages