Highland Oaxaca Chontal

Last updated
Highland Oaxaca Chontal
Slijuala xanuk
Native to Mexico
Region Oaxaca
Ethnicity Oaxaca Chontal
Native speakers
4,394 (2010 census) [1]
Hokan  ?
Language codes
ISO 639-3 chd
Glottolog high1242
ELP Highland Chontal

Highland Oaxaca Chontal, or Chontal de la Sierra de Oaxaca, is one of the Chontal languages of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is sometimes called Tequistlatec, but is not the same as Tequistlatec proper, which is extinct.

Contents

Background

Highland Oaxaca Chontal (or Chontal de la Sierra de Oaxaca) is one of three Tequistlatecan languages family groups. The other two are Huamelultec (Lowland Oaxaca Chontal) and Tequistlatec (extinct). They are spoken or once spoken by the Chontal people of Oaxaca State, Mexico. Tequistlatecan language is also referred to as the Chontal of Oaxaca. The distinct breakdown in the dialect of the Chontal of Oaxaca is as follows: Highland Chontal (the mountainous terrain) and Lowland Chontal (of Pacific coast).

It was spoken by 4,400 people in 2010.

Phonology

Consonants

Highland Chontal has a medium-sized inventory of 23 native consonants, along with four borrowed consonants from Spanish /β ð ɾ r/. It distinguishes ejective consonants, including the cross-linguistically unusual ejective labiodental fricative /f'/.

Labial Alveolar Palato-
(-alveolar)
Velar Glottal
or placeless
Central Lateral
Stop Plain p t k ʔ
Voiced b d g
Ejective
Affricate Plain ts
Ejective tsʼ tɬʼ tʃʼ
Fricative Plain f ɬ ʃ x ~ h
Ejective
Voiced ( β )( ð )
Nasal m n ɴ̥
Glide j w
Tap ( ɾ )
Trill ( r )

Turner (1966) transcribes the ejective lateral affricate [tɬʼ] as an ejective fricative /ɬʼ/. [2] It is not clear whether the ejective labiodental fricative // might likewise be a phonetic affricate [p̪fʼ] or similar.

The placeless voiceless nasal /ɴ̥/ assimilates to the place of articulation of the consonant following it, e.g. /ɴ̥t/ > [n̥t]. Thus it has four allophones [m̥ n̥ ɲ̊ ŋ̊]. Its place of articulation before glottal consonants, vowels or pause is unclear, if it occurs in these environments at all.

Highland Chontal Glottalized Phonemes: [3]
BilabialLabiodentalAlveolarPalato AlveolarVelar
Ejective Stopk'
Ejective Affricativests'tʃ'
Glottalized Fricativesf'
Glottalized Nasalsm'n'ŋ’
Glottalized Lateral Fricativesɫ’
Highland Chontal Non-Glottalized consonant Phonemes: [3]
BilabialLabio-dentalAlveolarPalato-AlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Plosivesp, bt, dk, gʔ
Affricatests
Fricativesfsʃ
Nasalsmnɲŋ
Lateral fricativesɫ
Lateral Approximantsl
Trillr
Central Approximantsʍ, w

Vowels

Highland Chontal has an inventory of five vowels, an arrangement similar to Spanish and many other world languages:

Front Central Back
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a

The distinction between /e/ and /a/ is neutralized before /j/.

There is no vowel hiatus (since all syllables begin with a consonant), nor any phonemic diphthongs.

In the Highland Chontal also has stressed vowels which are /í é á ó ú/.

Orthography

In Highland Chontal, phonemes correspond to orthographic conventions which are in angled brackets <>. [4]

pt, c <ts>č <ch>k <c, qu/_i, e>
f'c' <ts'>č' <ch'>k'<c' q' u/_i, e>ʔ <h>t'
fs.N<jn>š <x>W<ju>h <j>t
bdg
mnyŋ wl

Syntax

The structure for highland Chontal is formatted but, not limited to: Verb-Subject-Object or VSO, another order is SVO. Rules for prefixes depend on the tense used,

Example: in the first-person plural for an object, if it is present in a sentence, it does not allow subject prefix. The order for certain words like adjectives and nouns can change, the examples below can be used for reference: [5]

la-pin-jla

1S.OBJ-give-NM.IMP

ijle

DEM

l-ipa

LIM-flower

alfujka,

white

iya

1S

ka-pina-m-u

1S.NPAST-give-FUT-2S.OBJ

lumshali

red

k-ipa

LIM-flower

la-pin-jla ijle l-ipa alfujka, iya ka-pina-m-u lumshali k-ipa

1S.OBJ-give-NM.IMP DEM LIM-flower white 1S 1S.NPAST-give-FUT-2S.OBJ red LIM-flower

‘Give me the white flower and I will give you the red flower.’

[5]

Suffixes

Identifying a singular person object in a sentence is marked by a suffix, plural objects in sentences are always suffixes. [5]

Morphemes

The morpheme in the sentence structure determines which roots are used by verb stems. Readers can identify nouns in sentences by "limiters", these are described as prefixes. Limiters can be in a sentence structures as initial words and also be present if possession prefixes are present. [5]

The Highland Chontal of Tequistlatecan has a complex system of verbal prefix system. [6] According to Gregory Richter, the author of "Highland Chontal Morphology: Some New Perspectives", the current morphological structure for Highland Chontal is that there are distinct verb classes and they each have a set of corresponding prefixes. [6] Highland Chontal can be differentiated from Lowland with its tense and subject prefixes, the sets of rules for prefixes in highland is not found with lowland chontal. [5]

singularplural
1st person

l-ayn-inu-ba

when-1SG-run-RCT

l-ayn-inu-ba

when-1SG-run-RCT

"when I ran"

l-al-inul-ba

when-1PL-run-RCT

l-al-inul-ba

when-1PL-run-RCT

"when we ran"

2nd person

l-om-inu-ba

when-2SG-run-RCT

l-om-inu-ba

when-2SG-run-RCT

"when you ran"

l-ol-inul-ba

when-2PL-run-RCT

l-ol-inul-ba

when-2PL-run-RCT

"when you ran"

3nd person

l-inu-ba

when-run-RCT

l-inu-ba

when-run-RCT

"when he ran"

l-inul-ba

when-run=PL-RCT

l-inul-ba

when-run=PL-RCT

"when they ran"

Morphological Structure for Run
Recent indicativePresent Indicative
1sgn-inu-bag-inu
2sgm-inu-bad-a-ynu
3sginu-bad-inu
1pll-inul-bal-inul-yi
2plol-inul-bad-ul-inul-yi
3plinul-bad-inul-yi

Morphological structure: VERB--> (NPST-) (PREFIX-) ROOT (-SUFFIX) [6]

The tables above show the one to one correspondence between segments of a prefix and its underlying representation. [6]

The table shows the changes in the paradigm of /inu/ (run) when appended to the particle /l/ (when).with yes/no are used by rising the pitch of speech in speaking.[ clarification needed ] Examples: [5]

inu

hot

gal-tejua?

LIM-food

inu gal-tejua?

hot LIM-food

‘Is the food hot?’

o-tsewoh-ma

2S-go-IMPF

al-plaza?

LIM-plaza

o-tsewoh-ma al-plaza?

2S-go-IMPF LIM-plaza

‘Did you go to the plaza?’

o-shim-pa

2S-see-PAST

jiwa

ahead

jl-unga?

LIM-fire

o-shim-pa jiwa jl-unga?

2S-see-PAST ahead LIM-fire

‘Did you see the fire up ahead?’

[5]

Particles

Highland Chontal contains three main interrogative particles for inquiring more information, the particles are:

be- ‘where’, nai- ‘who’, and te ‘what’ [5]

nai-li-shim-p-o

who-3P.PAST-see-PAST-2S.OBJ

nai-li-shim-p-o

who-3P.PAST-see-PAST-2S.OBJ

‘Who saw you?’

nai-ko-shim-pa?

who-2S.PAST-see-PAST

nai-ko-shim-pa?

who-2S.PAST-see-PAST

‘Who did you see?’

te-ko-na-juohma

what-2S.PAST-buy-RCT.PAST

te-ko-na-juohma

what-2S.PAST-buy-RCT.PAST

‘What did you buy?’

be-go-paha

where-2S.PAST-be

be-go-paha

where-2S.PAST-be

‘Where are you?’

[5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tigrinya language</span> Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea

Tigrinya, sometimes spelled Tigrigna, is an Ethio-Semitic language commonly spoken in Eritrea and in northern Ethiopia's Tigray Region by the Tigrinya and Tigrayan peoples respectively. It is also spoken by the global diaspora of these regions.

Ubykh, an extinct Northwest Caucasian language, has the largest consonant inventory of all documented languages that do not use clicks, and also has the most disproportional ratio of phonemic consonants to vowels. It has consonants in at least eight, perhaps nine, basic places of articulation and 29 distinct fricatives, 27 sibilants, and 20 uvulars, more than any other documented language. Some Khoisan languages, such as Taa, may have larger consonant inventories due to their extensive use of click consonants, although some analyses view a large proportion of the clicks in these languages as clusters, which would bring them closer into line with the Caucasian languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Choctaw language</span> Muskogean language spoken in US

The Choctaw language, spoken by the Choctaw, an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, US, is a member of the Muskogean language family. Chickasaw is a separate but closely related language to Choctaw.

The Tagoi language is a Kordofanian language, closely related to Tegali, spoken near the town of Rashad in southern Kordofan in Sudan, about 12 N, 31 E. Unlike Tegali, it has a complex noun class system, which appears to have been borrowed from more typical Niger–Congo languages. It has several dialects, including Umali (Tumale), Goy, Moreb, and Orig. Villages are Moreb, Tagoi, Tukum, Tuling, Tumale, Turjok, and Turum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muscogee language</span> Indigenous American language

The Muscogee language, previously referred to by its exonym, Creek, is a Muskogean language spoken by Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole people, primarily in the US states of Oklahoma and Florida. Along with Mikasuki, when it is spoken by the Seminole, it is known as Seminole.

Yaqui, locally known as Yoeme or Yoem Noki, is a Native American language of the Uto-Aztecan family. It is spoken by about 20,000 Yaqui people in the Mexican state of Sonora and across the border in Arizona in the United States. It is partially intelligible with the Mayo language, also spoken in Sonora, and together they are called Cahitan languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Koasati language</span> Muskogean language of Louisiana

Koasati is a Native American language of Muskogean origin. The language is spoken by the Coushatta people, most of whom live in Allen Parish north of the town of Elton, Louisiana, though a smaller number share a reservation near Livingston, Texas, with the Alabama people. In 1991, linguist Geoffrey Kimball estimated the number of speakers of the language at around 400 people, of whom approximately 350 live in Louisiana. The exact number of current speakers is unclear, but Coushatta Tribe officials claim that most tribe members over 20 speak Koasati. In 2007, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, in collaboration with McNeese State University and the College of William and Mary, began the Koasati (Coushatta) Language Project as a part of broader language revitalization efforts with National Science Foundation grant money under the Documenting Endangered Languages program.

The phonology of the Persian language varies between regional dialects, standard varieties, and even from older varieties of Persian. Persian is a pluricentric language and countries that have Persian as an official language have separate standard varieties, namely: Standard Dari (Afghanistan), Standard Iranian Persian (Iran) and Standard Tajik (Tajikistan). The most significant differences between standard varieties of Persian are their vowel systems. Standard varieties of Persian have anywhere from 6 to 8 vowel distinctions, and similar vowels may be pronounced differently between standards. However, there are not many notable differences when comparing consonants, as all standard varieties have a similar number of consonant sounds. Though, colloquial varieties generally have more differences than their standard counterparts. Most dialects feature contrastive stress and syllable-final consonant clusters. Linguists tend to focus on Iranian Persian, so this article may contain less adequate information regarding other varieties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tuscarora language</span> Extinct language

Tuscarora, sometimes called Skarò˙rə̨ˀ, is the Iroquoian language of the Tuscarora people, spoken in southern Ontario, Canada, North Carolina and northwestern New York around Niagara Falls, in the United States before becoming extinct in late 2020. The historic homeland of the Tuscarora was in eastern North Carolina, in and around the Goldsboro, Kinston, and Smithfield areas.

The Yimas language is spoken by the Yimas people, who populate the Sepik River Basin region of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken primarily in Yimas village, Karawari Rural LLG, East Sepik Province. It is a member of the Lower-Sepik language family. All 250-300 speakers of Yimas live in two villages along the lower reaches of the Arafundi River, which stems from a tributary of the Sepik River known as the Karawari River.

The phonology of Sesotho and those of the other Sotho–Tswana languages are radically different from those of "older" or more "stereotypical" Bantu languages. Modern Sesotho in particular has very mixed origins inheriting many words and idioms from non-Sotho–Tswana languages.

Arbore is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken by the Arbore people in southern Ethiopia in a few settlements of Hamer woreda near Lake Chew Bahir.

The most thorough treatment of the Kiowa sound system is by Laurel Watkins in a generative framework. A consideration of prosodic phenomena with acoustic analysis is in Sivertsen (1956). Earlier discussions of phonemics are Trager (1960), Merrifield (1959), Wonderly et al. (1954), and Harrington (1928).

This article is about the sound system of the Navajo language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of word stems. In stem-final position and in prefixes, the number of contrasts is drastically reduced. Similarly, vowel contrasts found outside of the stem are significantly neutralized. For details about the morphology of Navajo, see Navajo grammar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tundra Nenets language</span> Samoyedic language

Tundra Nenets is a Uralic language spoken in European Russia and North-Western Siberia. It is the largest and best-preserved language in the Samoyedic group.

Maia is a Papuan language spoken in the Madang Province of Papua New Guinea, and is a member of the Trans-New Guinea language family. It has a language endangerment status of 6a, which means that it is a vigorous and sustainable language spoken by all generations. According to a 2000 census, there are approximately 4,500 living speakers of the language, who are split between twenty-two villages in the Almani district of the Bogia sub-district.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ute dialect</span> Colorado River Numic dialect used in the US

Ute is a dialect of the Colorado River Numic language, spoken by the Ute people. Speakers primarily live on three reservations: Uintah-Ouray in northeastern Utah, Southern Ute in southwestern Colorado, and Ute Mountain in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. Ute is part of the Numic branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Other dialects in this dialect chain are Chemehuevi and Southern Paiute. As of 2010, there were 1,640 speakers combined of all three dialects Colorado River Numic. Ute's parent language, Colorado River Numic, is classified as a threatened language, although there are tribally-sponsored language revitalization programs for the dialect.

Mekéns (Mekem), or Amniapé, is a nearly extinct Tupian language of the state of Rondônia, in the Amazon region of Brazil.

Navajo is a "verb-heavy" language – it has a great preponderance of verbs but relatively few nouns. In addition to verbs and nouns, Navajo has other elements such as pronouns, clitics of various functions, demonstratives, numerals, postpositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, among others. Harry Hoijer grouped all of the above into a word-class he called particles. Navajo has no words that would correspond to adjectives in English grammar: verbs provide the adjectival functionality.

Swahili is a Bantu language which is native to or mainly spoken in the East African region. It has a grammatical structure that is typical for Bantu languages, bearing all the hallmarks of this language family. These include agglutinativity, a rich array of noun classes, extensive inflection for person, tense, aspect and mood, and generally a subject–verb–object word order.

References

  1. INALI (2012) México: Lenguas indígenas nacionales
  2. Turner, Paul Raymond (1966). Highland Chontal Grammar. University of Chicago.
  3. 1 2 Sonnenschein, Aaron. (Unpublished/pending). In Mesoamerican Languages Handbook. (Tentative title). S. Wichmann (ed). Mouton DeGruyer. (Invited Chapter).
  4. Langdon, Margaret (1996). "Notes on Highland Chontal Internal Reconstruction". UC Berkeley:Department of Linguistics.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Sonnenschein, Aaron. The Chontal Language Family. Unpublished Manuscript- Pending. p. 20.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Richter, Gregory C. (October 1982). "Highland Chontal Morphology: Some New Perspectives". International Journal of American Linguistics. 48 (4): 472–476. doi:10.1086/465757. ISSN   0020-7071. S2CID   145685745.