| Oaxacan Mixe | |
|---|---|
| Ayuujk | |
| Ethnicity: | Mixe people |
| Geographic distribution: |
Oaxaca, Mexico |
| Linguistic classification: | Mixe–Zoquean
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| Subdivisions: | |
The Mixe region within the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico
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The Mixe languages are languages of the Mixean branch of the Mixe–Zoquean language family indigenous to southern Mexico. According to a 1995 classification, there are seven of them (including one that is extinct). The four that are spoken in Oaxaca are commonly called Mixe while their two relatives spoken in Veracruz are commonly called "Popoluca", but sometimes also Mixe (these are "Oluta Popoluca" or "Olutec Mixe" and "Sayula Popoluca" or "Sayultec Mixe"). This article is about the Oaxaca Mixe languages, which their speakers call Ayuujk, Ayüük or Ayuhk.
Oaxaca Mixe languages are spoken in the Sierra Mixe of eastern Oaxaca by around 188,000 indigenous Mixe people. These four languages are: North Highland Mixe, spoken around Totontepec (the most divergent); South Highland Mixe, spoken around Santa María Tlahuitoltepec, Ayutla and Tamazulapan); Midland Mixe, spoken around Juquila and Zacatepec; and Lowland Mixe, spoken in San Juan Guichicovi (this language is also known as "Isthmus Mixe").
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Mixe phonology is complicated and little documented. There is a palatalized series of all consonant phonemes (as in Russian, Polish, or Gaelic) and possibly a fortis/lenis distinction in the stop series, the recognition of which however is obscured by a tendency of allophonic voicing of consonants in voiced environments. Syllable nuclei are notoriously complex in Mixe, varying in length and phonation. Most descriptions report three contrastive vowel lengths. There are multiple values of phonation, one being the typical one (what some phoneticians call "modal voicing"). The other types of phonation have been variously termed checked vowels, creaky voice, vowels and breathy voice vowels. Some Mixe variants are vowel innovative and some, notably North Highland Mixe, have complicated umlaut systems raising vowel qualities in certain phonological environments.
The morphosyntactic alignment of Mixe is ergative and it also has an obviative system which serves to distinguish between verb participants in reference to its direct–inverse system. The Mixe verb is complex and inflects for many categories and also shows a lot of derivational morphology. One of the parameters of verb inflection is whether a verb occurs in an independent or dependent clause; this distinction is marked by both differential affixation and stem ablaut. Unlike Sayultec Mixe[1] (spoken in the neighboring state of Veracruz), Mixe languages of Oaxaca only mark one argument on the verb: either the object or the subject of the verb depending on whether the verb is in the direct or inverse form. Mixe shows a wide variety of possibilities for noun incorporation.
The Mixe noun does not normally inflect, except that human nouns inflect for plural. Noun compounding is a very productive process, and the profuse derivational morphology allows for creation of new nouns both from verbs and other nouns.
Mixe languages are have SOV constituent order, prepositions and genitives precede the noun. But relative clauses follow the noun.
The example below is from Lowland Mixe.[2]
| Orthography: pwes hadu'n idaa yɨyoop jɨyäj idaa aldeano mɨɨt ytöxyijk ytɨkoy yɨ mɨkü |
| Pronunciation: [ pwes haduʔn ʔidaː ʲ-ʔɨjoːb hɨjaʔaj ʔidaː ʔaldeano mɨːd ʲ-toʔoʃʲɨʰk ʲtɨɡoˑjʲ jɨ mɨkuʔu ] |
| Gloss: Well there this 3p-poor person this ranch hand with 3p.poss-woman 3p-CAUS/PAS-lose-DEP the devil |
| Translation : "Well that's how this poor person, this ranch hand with his wife, made the devil lose" |
Mixe-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEGLO, based in Guelatao de Juárez, Oaxaca.
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