Languages where phonation type and tone are contrastive make use of extremely fine and controlled actions of laryngeal structures; hence, there is little opportunity to variation in either phonation or pitch. Nonetheless, many American Indian languages have contrastive nonmodal phonation, which, moreover, is subject to a great deal of variation. There are a few studies addressing the phonetics of nonmodal phonation in American Indian languages, and little is known about the phonetics/phonology interface of laryngeal features within the sound patterns of these languages. This article aims to contribute to the knowledge of nonmodal phonation through the detailed study of the phenomenon in Yalalag Zapotec (YZ) and American Indian language. A series of spectral and electrophysiological analyses contribute to the description of YZ nonmodal phonation and its variability across gender. It is argued that the temporal patterns in realization of laryngealization are a property of YZ speaker's grammar.
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