San Juan Quiahije Chatino: A look at tone Free

San Juan Quiahije (SJQ) Chatino is an under-documented indigenous language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico, by some 3000 speakers. Like other members of the Eastern Chatino branch, SJQ has a complex tonal system—in particular, four tone levels and 11 lexical tones (14 when considering sandhi contexts). Excellent linguistic investigations of SJQ phonology (Cruz 2004, 2011) and discourse analysis (Cruz & Woodbury 2014, Cruz 2014) exist, but there is virtually no empirical phonetic work. We present exploratory and descriptive investigation of the tones of San Juan Quiahije Chatino. Data from one female native speaker largely align with the tonal description provided in Cruz (2011): our findings confirm the presence of a multitude of tones, and reveal that several lexical tones are merged in isolation. Furthermore, while depressor consonant effects—wherein tonal targets are lower after voiced obstruents than after voiceless obstruents—have traditionally been discussed primarily in the context of African languages (Bradshaw 1999), we discover a consistent lowering of tone by approximately 25 Hz after voiced consonants. The effect is present in both low and high tone contexts and perseverates throughout the vowel.