Choguita Rarámuri - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

25) Pre-tonic nominal root shortening:
a. "ame+répi-ma
/"améka+repu-ma/
‘tongue+cut-Fut:sg’
‘It will severe its own tongue’
‘Se va a cortar la lengua (de tajo)’ [SF 07 1:187/Elicit]
b. "ere+bíwi-ma
/"eréwa+bi’wá-ma/
‘sweat+clean-Fut:sg’
‘He’s going to clean his sweat’
‘Va a limpiar el sudor’ [SF 07 1:187/Elicit]
c. sipu-tá-ma
/sipú!a-tá-ma/
‘skirt-Fact-Fut:sg’
‘She will put on the skirt’
‘Se va a poner la falda’ [LEL 06 4:185/Elicit]
d. komá-ti-ma
/komáre-ta-ma/
‘comadre-Fact-Fut:sg’
‘She’ll make her her comadre’
‘La va a hacer su comadre’ [LEL 06 4:185/Elicit]
As we have seen in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, truncation in noun incorporation and
denominal constructions is enforced by the overarching prosodic restriction imposed by
the three-syllable stress window and, in the case of incorporated forms, by a
morphological stress rule that assigns stress to the first syllable of the construction’s
head, the verbal root (cf. §3.4.3, §4.3.2).
There are thus several morphological and prosodic environments that condition
syllable truncation in roots. However, these contexts are very specific and do not match
the environments where short allomorphs of suffixes are found. Consider, for instance,
the forms in (26). In (26a) and (26c), a root with pre-final stress adds a short allomorph
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