MASON, TEPECANO, A PIMAN LANGUAGE OF MEXICO 319 



QUANTITY 



Both vocalic and consonantal quantity are marked in Tepecano 

 and an effort has been made to distinguish such. Practically all 

 consonants, as well as all vowels, are susceptible of lengthening. 

 In the case of stops this tends to further increase the acoustic 

 confusion of series. Marked duration is indicated by a postscript 

 raised or inverted period, as a*, t: It must be confessed that in 

 the actual recording of quantities much confusion occurred and little 

 agreement regarding quantity has been attained ; no individual case 

 therefore should be accepted as a criterion. In a few cases a mark- 

 edly short quantity was also observed but this was seldom recorded. 



Phonetic Processes 



GROUPING Of SOUNDS 



The typical Tepecano word consists of an orderly alternation of 

 consonant and vowel. Any vowel may stand initial or final in a 

 word. Any consonant except r may be initial and any one except 

 h final. / may stand initially only. No more than one consonant 

 may stand initial or final, even the generally excepted affricative 

 tc being of rare or doubtful occurrence initially and missing in 

 final position. Medially, complexes of three or more consonants 

 are never permitted, the rare affricative tc being considered a simple 

 sound, as piptcaG, hawks. But medial combinations of two con- 

 sonants are very frequent and in fact are favored whenever permit- 

 ted by other phonetic laws. 



All possible combinations of consonant and vowel are permitted 

 with the exception of certain ones involving the spirants s and c. 

 The latter may stand before only the vowel i initially, while s 

 never precedes i either initially or medially. 20 All other possible 

 combinations of both s and c with vowels have been found, though 

 certain ones appear far more frequently with one of the spirants 

 than with the other. For instance, co and co are rare medially, 

 os and 6s rare finally. Thus there will be in certain cases an 

 interchange of these two spirants, as : 



20 A like distinction is made in Papago (Dolores, op. cit.) between s and c, but here, 

 curiously, it is s that occurs before i and v, c before a, o and u. Rinaldini {op. cit.) 



