Purépecha language

Purépecha AKA P'urhépecha [pʰuˈɽepet͡ʃa] (Phorhé, Phorhépecha), also known as Tarascan (Spanish Tarasco), is a language isolate or small language family spoken by a quarter million P'urhépecha people in the highlands of the Mexican state of Michoacán. Even though it is spoken within the boundaries of Mesoamerica, P'urhépecha does not share many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area, probably due to a long adherence to an isolationist policy.

P'urhépecha was the main language of the pre-Columbian Tarascan state and became widespread in northwestern Mexico during its heyday in the late post-classic period (~ 1400-1521).

Classification

P'urhépecha has long been classified as a language isolate, unrelated to any other known language. This judgement is repeated in Campbell's authoritative classification.^[3] Greenberg assigned it to the Chibchan language family,^[4] but this proposal was rejected by specialists.^[3] Statistical studies by Swadesh have suggested relationships to Zuni, Quechua, Mayan and Aymara, but these conclusions remain unproven.^[5][6]

There are a number of dialects,^[7] which SIL divides into two languages, but Campbell (1997) considers P'urhépecha to be a single language.

Demography

The P'urhépecha language is mostly spoken in rural communities in the highlands of Michoacán. The former center of the P'urhepecha state was around Lake Pátzcuaro and this remains an important center of the P'urhépecha community. Ethnologue counts P'urhépecha as two languages: a central language spoken by approximately 40,000 people (2005) around Pátzcuaro, and a western highland language spoken by 135,00 speakers (2005) around Zamora, Los Reyes de Salgado, Paracho, and Pamatácuaro, all of which are in the vicinity of the Paricutín volcano. Due to recent migration, there are also communities of speakers in the cities of Guadalajara, Tijuana and Mexico City and in the United States. The total population of speakers is rising (from 58,299 in 1960 to 96,016 in 1990 and 121,409 in 2000^[8]), but the percentage of speakers relative to non-speakers is falling, and the degree of bilingualism is rising - making the language endangered. Today the percentage of monolingual speakers is below 10%.^[8]

History

A bilingual P'urhépecha/Spanish school in the P'urhépecha community of Janitzio, Michoacán. Following Mexico's 2000 indigenous language law, indigenous languages, including P'urhépecha, share the same status as Spanish in the areas where they are spoken, and many schools offer curriculum in indigenous languages.

The P'úrhépecha are not known to have migrated from elsewhere to their current location, even though their tradition includes stories of having traveled from the Pacific Ocean to their current locations. Ethnohistorical accounts mention them as a people dwelling in the same region of Michoacán inhabited by them today as early as the 13th century CE. According to the Relación de Michoacán the communities around Lake Pátzcuaro were gathered into one strong state by the leader of the Uacúsecha group of P'urhépecha speakers, Tariácuri. Around 1300, he undertook the first conquests of other and installed his sons Hiripan and Tangáxoan as lords of Ihuatzio and Tzintzuntzan respectively, while he himself ruled from Pátzcuaro city. By the time of the death of Taríacuri (around 1350), his lineage was in control of all the major centers around Lake Pátzcuaro. His son Hiripan continued the expansion into the area surrounding Lake Cuitzeo. In 1460 the Tarascan state reached the Pacific coast at Zacatula, advanced into the valley of Toluca, and also, on the northern rim, reached into the present-day state of Guanajuato. In the 15th century the Tarascan state was at war with the Aztecs. Many Nahua speakers who had until then lived side by side with P'urhépecha speakers were relocated outside of the Tarascan frontiers, whereas speakers of Otomí, fleeing the Aztec expansion, resettled on the border between the two polities. This created a fairly homogeneous area of P'urhépecha speakers with no other languages spoken in the core area around Lake Pátzcuaro.Pollard (1993)

With the Spanish conquest, the Tarascan state was at first peacefully incorporated into the realm of New Spain, but with the killing of Cazonci Tangaxuán II by Nuño de Guzmán the relation became one of Spanish dominance by force. Exceptions to this were the Hospital communities of Vasco de Quiroga, such as Santa Fé de la Laguna, where P'urhépecha could live with a degree of protection from Spanish domination. Through Spanish friars, the P'urhépecha learned to write in the Latin script, and P'urhépecha became a literary language in the early colonial period. There is a body of written sources in P'urhépecha from this period, including several dictionaries, confessionaries, and land titles. Among the most important colonial works are the grammar (1558)^[9] and dictionary (1559)^[10] of Fray Maturino Gilberti, and the grammar and dictionary (1574) by Juan Baptista de Lagunas ^[11] From ca. 1700 the status of P'urhépecha changed, and throughout the twentieth century the Mexican state pursued a policy of castellanización, under which speakers of indigenous languages were actively encouraged to abandon their languages in favor of Spanish. However, in accord with international changes in favor of recognizing the linguistic rights of indigenous peoples and promoting multiculturalism in colonial states, in 2003 the Mexican Congress approved the General Law of Linguistic Rights of Indigenous Peoples, giving P'urhépecha and Mexico's other indigenous languages official status as national languages.

Orthography

The official alphabet is the P’URHEPECHA JIMBO KARARAKUECHA (P'urhépecha Alphabet):

a b ch ch' d e g i ï j k k' m n nh o p p' r rh s t t' ts ts' u x.^[12][13]

The three letters b, d, g occur in spelling only after the nasal letters m, n: mb, nd, ng. Their use is not consistent with orthography on the phonemic principle, because the sounds /p, t, k/ are automatically voiced, shifting in pronunciation to [b, d, ɡ] respectively, after a nasal consonant.

Phonology

In all dialects of P'urhépecha, stress accent is phonemic. As in Spanish orthography, the stressed syllable is indicated by the acute accent. Examples of minimal pairs are:

karáni 'write' — kárani 'fly'

p'amáni 'wrap it' — p'ámani 'touch a liquid'

Usually the second syllable of the word is stressed, occasionally the first.

The phonemic inventory of the Tarécuato dialect is presented below.^[14] The Tarécuato dialect differs from other dialects in having a velar nasal phoneme. The table of phonemes uses International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and also gives the alphabet equivalents (enclosed in parentheses) in nonobvious cases.

Vowels

The two mid vowels /e, o/ are uncommon; /o/ is especially rare.

The high central vowel occurs almost exclusively after /s/ or /ts/, and is almost a predictible allophone of /i/ in that position.

The final vowel of a word is usually whispered or deleted, unless the word is at the end of a phrase or sentence.

Sequences of vowels do occur, but are very rare except for sequences generated by adding grammatical suffixes such as the pluralizers -echa or -icha, the copula -i, or the genitive -iri; and a sequence of vowels (sounds, not letters) virtually never occurs as the first two sounds of a word.

Consonants

P'urhépecha is one of the minority of languages in the Mesoamerican region which do not have a phonemic glottal stop (a distinction shared by the Huave language and by some dialects of Nahuatl). It lacks any laterals ('l'-sounds). However, in the speech of many young speakers, the retroflex rhotic has been replaced by [l], due to Spanish influence.^[15] There are distinct series of nonaspirated and aspirated plosives and affricates; aspiration is spelled with an apostrophe. There are two rhotics ('r'-sounds; one of them retroflex).

The official orthography does not have distinct representations for the four phonemes /kʷ/, /kʷʰ/, /w/, /j/. It uses the letter 'i' for both the phonemes /i, j/ and the letter 'u' for both of the phonemes /u, w/ (These two semivowels are fairly rare). When k and k' are followed by u and another vowel this virtually always represents the labio-velar phonemes.

Intervocally, the aspirated consonants become pre-aspirated; when following nasals, they lose their aspiration entirely. The unaspirated consonants become voiced when following nasals.

Grammar

Typology

The P'urhépecha language is agglutinating, although phonetic erosion has led to a certain degree of fusion. It is sometimes considered polysynthetic due to the complex morphology and often long words.^[16] Unlike most other languages considered polysynthetic, it has no noun compounding or incorporation. The language is exclusively suffixing and has a large number of suffixes (as many as 160^[17]) and clitics. The verb distinguishes thirteen aspects and six modes. The language is double-marking in the typology of Johanna Nichols, meaning that it marks grammatical relations on both the dependent phrases and phrasal heads.

The language has both case, and postpositions. The case system distinguishes among nominative, accusative, genitive, comitative, instrumental and locative cases, but there are also a large number of nominal derivational affixes. Word order is flexible and the basic word order has been described as either SVO,^[18] or SOV,^[19] but both authors note that other word orders are frequently used for pragmatic purposes such as focus or topic tracking.^[20]

The Noun

Nouns are inflected on the basic formula Noun + Number + Case.

The grammar distinguishes between plural and unspecified numbers, having no dedicated singular form.^[21]

Plural of a noun is formed by a suffix -echa/-icha or -cha.

kúmi-wátsï 'fox' - kúmi-wátsïcha 'foxes'

iréta 'town' - irétaacha 'towns'

warhíticha tepharicha maru 'some fat women' (lit. women-PL fat-PL some).

The nominative case is unmarked. The accusative case (also called objective case) is used to mark direct and sometimes indirect objects, is marked by a suffix -ni:

Pedrú pyásti tsúntsuni 'Pedro bought the pot'

Pedrú pyá-s-ti tsúntsu-ni

Pedro buy-PRF–3P pot-ACC

The genitive case is marked by -ri -eri:

imá wárhitiri wíchu 'that woman's dog'

imá wárhiti-ri wíchu

that woman-GEN dog

The locative case is marked by -rhu, -o

kúntaati Maríao 'He'll meet him at María's place'

ku-nta-a-ti María-o

meet-ITER–FUT–3IND Maria-LOC^[22]

The instrumental case is marked by the particle jimpó or the suffix -mpu

jiríkurhniniksï tsakápu k'éri má jimpó 'They hid behind some big rocks'

jiríkurhi-ni=ksï tsakápu k'éri má jimpó

hide-INF–3PL rock big one INS^[23]

ampémpori ánchikuarhiwa 'What will he/she work with?'

ampé-mpu=ri anchikuarhi-wa-Ø

what-INS work-future tense–3SG^[24]

The comitative case is marked by the particle jinkóni or the suffix -nkuni

apóntini warhíti má jinkóni 'to sleep with a woman'

apónti-ni wárhiti má jinkóni

Sleep-INF woman one COM^[25]

xi niwákani imánkuni 'I'll go with him/her'

xi ni-wa-ka-=ni imá-nkuni

I go-FUT-1st/2nd-1P DEM–COM^[26]

Discourse-pragmatic focus on a noun or noun phrase is indicated by the clitic -sï.^[18]

Ampésï arhá Pedrú? 'What did Pedro eat?'

ampé-sï arh-∅-∅-á Pedrú

what-FOC eat-PRF–INT Pedro

kurúchasï atí. 'he ate fish' (i.e., 'fish is what he ate')

Kurúcha-sï a-∅-tí

fish-FOC eat-PRF–3P

The Verb

The P'urhépecha verb inflects for aspects and modes, as well as for person and number of subject and object. There are also a number of suffixes expressing shape, position or body parts affecting or affected by the verbal action.^[27][28][29]

Transitivity is manipulated by suffixes forming transitive verbs with applicative or causative meaning or intransitives with passive or inchoative meanings.

Media

P'urhépecha-language programming is broadcast by radio station XEPUR-AM, based in Cherán, Michoacán. This radio station is an enterprise of the CDI.

Notes

References

External links

Purépecha language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Purepecha Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Field recordings of P'urhépecha carried out by linguist William Shipley, archived at the Berkeley Language Center
• The P'urhépecha WEB page From Michoacán, México. (In Spanish)

Languages of Mexico Official languages Spanish Nahuatl Yucatec Maya Mixtec Zapotec Tzeltal Tzotzil Otomi Totonac Mazatec Chol Huastec Chinantec Mixe Tlapanec Mazahua Tarascan Tarahumara Amuzgo Chatino Tojolabal Mayo Trique Tepehuan Huichol Kekchi Tepehua Yaqui Popoloca Quiche Chichimeca Jonaz Cora Guarijio Lacandon Chocho Seri Pima Bajo Chuj Cocopah Paipai Matlatzinca Mam Kickapoo Huave Cuicatec Tlahuica Papago Tipai Ixil Kiliwa Awakatek Other languages spoken in Mexico Plautdietsch Venetian English French Basque Catalan Hebrew Arabic Chinese Mocho’ Note: The list of official languages is ordered by decreasing size of population.

Indigenous peoples of the Americas Pre-history Paleo-Indians Pre-Columbian era Classification Archaeology Genetics Mythology/Religion Mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas‎ - (Native American religion) Mesoamerican mythology - (Mesoamerican religion) European colonization European colonization Population history Columbian Exchange Modern societies by country North America Dominica Greenland Canada United States Jamaica Mexico Central America El Salvador Costa Rica West Indies Panama South America Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Ecuador Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela Related topics Indigenous American studies Indigenous languages Indigenous Movements Indigenous art Artists Writers Category Portal