Yuchi phonology

The language has 49 sounds, 38 of which are consonants, and the remaining 11 are vowels. This number is more than twice the number of most Southeastern Native American Languages.

Vowels
Yuchi has Oral and Nasal vowels. Oral vowels are defined as being created by the raising of the soft palate to the nasopharyngeal wall, creating a velopharyngeal space within the oral cavity; nasal vowels, on the other hand, are typically defined as being created by the lowering of the soft palate, allowing air to escape through the nasal cavity.

Two vowel charts appears below. Note that the vowels below represent the phonetic inventory, meaning the set of all (or most) sounds in the language; the phonemic inventory, those sounds which contrastively mark differences in meaning, are highlighted in the list below the vowel charts. (Please note that the Nasal Vowel chart is incomplete.)

The phonemic vowels of Yuchi are ; some levels of phonological or morphological variation must therefore be occurring in order for all of the sounds above to be possible.

Phonological variation
Phonological variation often occurs in different kinds of morphological environments. For example, the phoneme is often pronounced in 1st-person singular and impersonal 3rd-person pronouns in the place of  by Big Pond speakers. Also, the phonemes and  can become  in unstressed environments.

Length
Vowel length indicates grammatical function, such as superlative or comparative adjective forms or emphasis. It may also indicate contracted morphemes, and thus is not a phonological process but rather a morphological one.

Consonants
Yuchi has been analyzed as having from 19 to 40 consonants, chiefly depending on whether the glottalized and labialized consonants are counted, or considered to be sequences with and, respectively. Some of the latter are included in the table in parentheses:

Stress
Stress in Yuchi is fairly regular. All major parts of speech have syllable-final stress, and syllable-initial secondary stress; also, particles (one-syllable words) are stressed. There are some minimal pairs to be found due to stress; some representative samples include:

– “Creek person, tribe” – “go see someone” – he sees – she sees – “weeds” – “squirrel”

As mentioned above, most nouns have syllable-final primary stress; there are, however, some regularized exceptions to this rule, the most common of which are nouns with lexicalized suffixes in the stem, which have stress on the penultimate syllable. Also, contractions within compounded nouns have primary stress on the contraction. There are various other exceptions, but the two mentioned above are the most frequent and the most important in helping us to understand why Yuchi nouns often appear to have irregular stress patterns.

Both regular and non-regular stress patterns are exemplified below, all glossed. All data come from Wagner, 1974, unless otherwise noted.

– young man – sparks of fire – water – earth – the sun ~ – today, morning – misty rain – meat

Verb stems typically have primary stress on the ultimate syllable, as well. The two major exceptions are reduplicated verbs, which have equal stress on both the last and reduplicated syllables of the stem, and verb compounds with the head root, in which primary stress is syllable-initial. Some examples include:

– to hold it up – light

Intonation
Intonation varies depending upon the kinds of sentences being uttered. Declarative, negative, and command speech acts have falling intonation, while information questions and yes/no questions have rising pitch. Morphologically, intonation can also change the reception of a word and its intended meaning, as we see in the following example of three different intonation patterns for the word “What”:

– “What?” (requesting information) – “What?” (didn't hear) – “What?” (frightened/surprised)

Contractions
One of the most significant aspects of Yuchi morphophonology is the prevalence of contractions. Contraction should not here be taken to mean only a shortening of words; rather, it is more useful to think of contraction as a deletion of sounds that in turn affects surrounding vowels.

What can be contracted is dependent upon two major factors, the sound which begins the contracted syllable, and the stress of the syllable. In order for a syllable to be contracted, it must begin with a [+sonorant] consonant, that is, a voiced sound with a relatively free passage of air. In Yuchi, this includes sounds such as (where  indicates a glottallized sound), the fricative, and. A syllable must also be unstressed in order to contract.

Contraction causes phonetic changes in the vowels directly preceding the deleted syllable. In order for Yuchi speakers to understand the grammatical features of the words being used in contracted forms, vowel features alternate to match the deleted sounds. So, for example, if the morpheme was contracted, the vowel preceding it would become nasalized to indicate that a nasal sound has been lost.

Contraction must necessarily come before the phonetic change in vowels. For example, consider the following word:

– 'Did you look in the box?'

can contract here because it is an unstressed syllable beginning with a sonorant:. CCC clusters are relatively rare, occurring in only six variations as noted by Wolff, four of them beginning with fricatives; such a construction as above would therefore likely be odd to speakers of Yuchi.

Contractions take on several forms and occur in many other environments. Those seeking additional information about the many kinds of contraction in Yuchi are advised to seek out Dr. Mary Linn's “A Grammar of Euchee.”

A list of the most commonly contracted morphemes is below, along with their grammatical function.

ne- : 2nd-person singular actor

we-: 3rd-person non-Yuchi actor or patient, singular or plural

'o-: 3rd-person plural Yuchi actor or patient (women's speech)

hi-: 3rd-person inanimate patient, singular or plural

ho-: 3rd-person inanimate patient and participant, singular or plural

'yu-: verb root

-ne-: habitual aspect

-e: active verbalizer