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Dr. Pike 'e 8WIIll!lry is as followa:
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The phonetic dllta surrounding the
phoneme indicated by the s:yrnbol
11
J"
are more complicated then those
of any other in the language.
.A.t the beginning and middle of wordl
in Ecuador the phoneme
1s
a strcmg velar frica tive
like
SpBnish /
J/
so that the letter
"J"
is very appropriate for initial and medial
positions there •
.A.t
the e
nd of words in the Ecuadorean dialecto of
.A.gato and Colta, the sound becc.es much weaker, a very sof t velar
fricativa, or frequently (in free variation) slightly voiced•
.A.sswning that it is still a variant of the eame phoneme,
1t
wculd be
beet written consistently
"J"·
In .A.ncash, the medial sound is de–
cidedly fricativa but the initial one i s much less so and cnly oc–
casion&lly dces it heve velar friction cf ths weak type. The re–
mainder of ths time
1t
is (in free variation with the initial weak
fricativa and in conditioned variation with a strong medial friction)
a so-callad «glottal spirant
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(or phonetically a non-syllabic
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voice l ess vowel" with no strong local friction in the month). Thie
variant of the sound is very similar to English /h/.
In Cuzco, the
medial and final eound is a strong veJar fricativa like 15panish /
J/,
but the initial sound varias between a weak velar fricativa and the
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glott8l epirant". No minimal peirs ill Cuzoo or .A.ncash were shown me
either before the conference or during the conference to separata them
phonemically. On the contrery, it appeared that they were mutually
exclusive and to be joined together under "Premisa One
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as conditioned
variants of the Slllll& phoneme.
In this caee, the initial and medial
varieties would best be written by the aame aymbol.
The s;rmbol for
the medial sound would in ths opinion of the conference best be
"J"
and by extension therefore the initial sound aleo would best be
written
"J",
This decision
1s
further supported by the practical
situation, namely, that in the reading tests in Bolivia the
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j
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initia lly was easily re11d wi
th
the correct QUechua sound whereas
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h
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in the aallll pcsition tended to
be
omitted. The tests nsde i n front
of the conference in Cuzco did not give deciSiva resulta but were
rather divided between successful reading of "h" and
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j
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elthough
earl1er reading of Cuzco had agreed with the :aolivia conclusion.
The
situation in most of Bolivia is
like
that of Cuzco except thBt one
informant from Torotoro usad
e
ligjlt sound not only initially but
aleo Dlldially and finally, al though there was sorne tendency to slight
pharyngeal friction.
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The .A.ynsra was in general similar to Cuzco, except that one of the
infornsn te from one of the dialecto tended to heve some pharyngeal
friction as a free variant initially.
"Chenka had weaker pronunciations than Cuzco both il;litially and
medially.
Initially the sound tended to disappear cpmpletely in a
type of "dropped h". Medially
1t
was very rare and not very strong•
.A.part from the suggestion discussed in the preceding paragraph, of
ueing
"J"
for all the variante, the alternativa was d\scussed of
writing all of the variante as "h". This suggestion was basad on
the aame phonemic interpretation as the one just given¡ and on this
basis wae prsferred by the Chllnkll delegetion, who etated their
preference in a minority repcrt.
".A. third poeaibility for Cuzco and Bolivia waa basad upoh a phonemic
interpretation in which the weaker initial sound was considerad to be