¹ Part I: Phonology (Reme de Dialectologie Romane, 1909), §167.

² There are, of course, a few sporadic examples of syllabic consonants in standard French and Spanish in certain exclamations, such as French chut, pst, Spanish pst, Italian sst, and perhaps in a few of the monosyllabic expressions of approval or disapproval, etc., that are commonly heard in many languages but seldom recorded graphically.

³ In the study of comparative developments with Latin and other Italic languages I shall refer principally to Sommer, Handbuch der lateinischen Laut-und Formenlehre, Heidelberg, 1902, and Lindsay, The Latin Language, Oxford, 1894.

⁴ A map of the New Mexican Spanish territory covered by my investigations into New Mexican Spanish language and folklore is given in my Studies in New Mexican Spanish, Phonology, page 6. In general it may be said to cover all of New Mexico north of Socorro and all of Colorado south of Saguache and Pueblo.

⁵ For the symbols of the syllabic consonants I employ those used by Sommer, but their phonetic values are, of course, the ones established for New Mexico. The acute accent over the syllabic consonant is used to designate a long syllabic consonant and with stress accent, the grave accent to designate a short one with stress accent. The absence of both means a very short syllabic consonant and with no stress accent. In the phonetic transcriptions of other consonants (not the syllabic) and of the vowels, I employ the phonetic alphabet used by Tomás Navarro Tomás in his Manual de Pronunciación Española, 1st edition, Madrid, 1918, 2nd edition, 1921.

⁶ As is well known, Spanish has a very pronounced intensity stress or accent. The syllabic consonants have the same intensity stress as the accented vowels they absorb, and quantitatively they may be even longer. In the Germanic languages syllabic consonants are usually not accented.

⁷ Manual de Pronunciación Española, §87.

⁸ Navarro Tomás, Manual de Pronunciación Española, §116.

⁹ All the developments discussed are not general in New Mexican Spanish. All our examples are from notes that represent cases of actual current pronunciation, but this does not mean that the normal Spanish or almost normal pronunciation with no syllabic consonants is not often heard. In New Mexican Spanish, camita is often pronounced kamíta, lomita lomíta, etc. The problem of class distinction or education does not seem to enter here because most of my examples are taken from individuals of some education who speak and write Spanish well.

¹⁰ Studies in New Mexican Spanish, Part I, §100.

¹¹ Manual de Pronunciación Española, §90.

¹² These Latin examples are for the short syllabic . See K. Brugmann, Abregé de Grammaire Comparée des Langues Indo-Européenes, Paris, 1905, §192, Lindsay, Chapter IV, §81, and Sommer, §37.

¹³ Studies in New Mexican Spanish, Part I, §§36, 180.

¹⁴ Ibid., §§24, 32.

¹⁵ Ibid., Part I, §77.

¹⁶ Lindsay, Chapter II, §102. For many similar developments in Spanish and New Mexican Spanish, see Studies in New Mexican Spanish, Part I, §193.

¹⁷ Sommer, §35; Lindsay, Chapter IV, §92.

¹⁸ Studies in New Mexican Spanish, Part I, §193. Ingalaterra and coronica are frequent forms in Old Spanish. Parasitic vowels that break up the groups cl and gr are very common in Oscan, and it would be interesting to know if a primitive partial development of syllabic consonants was the real cause of their ultimate development. See Buck, Grammar of Oscan and Umbrian, Boston, 1904, §§79, 81.

¹⁹ Studies in New Mexican Spanish, Part I, §192.