Trique language

The Trique (or Triqui, pronounced /ˈtriːki/) language is an Oto-Manguean language of Mexico spoken by the Trique indigenous group of the state of Oaxaca and elsewhere (due to recent population movements). It belongs to the Mixtecan branch together with the Mixtec languages and Cuicatec.^[1]

Contents 1 Variants 2 Phonology and orthography 3 Morphology and syntax 4 Media 5 Notes 6 Bibliography

Variants

Ethnologue lists three major variants:

• Triqui de Copala spoken by 15,000 people (1990 census) in San Juan Copala, Oaxaca (and recently due to migrations in the San Quintín valley, Baja California).
• Triqui de San Andrés Chicahuaxtla spoken by 6,000 people in San Andrés Chicahuaxtla, Oaxaca.
• Triqui de San Martín Itunyoso spoken by 2,000 people (1983 survey) in San Martín Itunyoso, Oaxaca.

Mexico's federal agency for its indigenous languages, Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI), identifies four variants of Trique in its Catálogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales published in early 2008.^[2] The variants listed by INALI are:

Trique (triqui) language variants, per INALI^[3]

variant (name in Spanish)	autonym	localities
Triqui de San Juan Copala	xnánj nu’ a	Oaxaca: Santiago Juxtlahuaca
Triqui de la media	sná'ánj ni’	Oaxaca: San Martín Itunyoso
Triqui de la alta	rnu'a'n	Oaxaca: Putla Villa de Guerrero
Triqui de la baja	tnanj ni’inj	Oaxaca: Constancia del Rosario, Putla Villa de Guerrero

Phonology and orthography

All varieties of Trique are tonal and have complex phonologies. The tone system of Copala Trique is the best described, having eight tones ^[4].

Tones in Trique languages are typically written with superscript numbers ^[4], so that chraa⁵ 'river' indicates the syllable chraa with the highest (5) tone, while cha³na¹ 'woman' has the middle (3) tone on the first syllable and the lowest (1) tone on the second syllable.

Of the Trique dialects, the Copala dialect has undergone the most vowel loss, with many non-final syllables losing their vowels. The result of this, as in many other Oto-Manguean languages, is a complex set of consonant clusters. So, for instance, the word si⁵kuj⁵ 'cow' in Itunyoso Trique corresponds to skuj⁵ in Copala Trique.

Trique has been written in a number of different orthographies, depending on the intended audience. Linguists typically write the language with all tones fully marked and all phonemes represented. However, in works intended for native speakers of Trique, a practical orthography is often used with a somewhat simpler representation.

The following Copala Trique example is written in both the linguistic and the practical orthographies ^[5]:

Practical orthography	Me	síí	rihaan	a'mii	so'	ga
Linguistic	Me3	zii5	riaan32	a'mii32	zo'1	ga2
Gloss	wh	3rd person	to	speak	2nd person	interrogative

'Who are you speaking to?' (¿Con quién estas hablando?)

The tonal phonology of other Trique languages is more complex than Copala Trique. The tone system of Itunyoso Trique has nine tones ^[6]. The tone system of Chicahuaxtla Trique has at least 10 tones ^[7] but may have as many as 16 ^[8].

Morphology and syntax

Trique morphology is fairly limited. Verbs take a /k-/ prefix (spelled c- or qu-) to show completive aspect:

A'mii³² zo'¹. 'You are speaking'.

C-a'mii³² zo'¹. 'You spoke'.

The same /k-/ prefix plus a tonal change shows the potential aspect:

C-a'mii² zo'¹. 'You will speak.'

The tonal changes associated with the potential aspect are complex, but always involve lowering the tone of the root. (Hollenbach 1984.)

There are also complex phonological processes that are triggered by the presence of root-final clitic pronouns. These pronouns (especially the 1st and 2nd person singular) may change the shape of the stem or alter its tone.

Copala Trique is a has Verb-Subject-Object (VSO) word order, as in the following example:

A’nii5	Mariia4	chraa3	raa4	yoo4	a32.
put	Maria	tortilla	in	tenate	declarative

'Maria put the tortilla in the tenate.'

Copala Triqui has an accusative marker maa³ or man³ which is obligatory for animate pronominal objects, but is optional in other circumstances, as in the following example:

Quene'e3	Mariia4	(maa3)	chraa4	a32.
saw	Maria	acc	tortilla	declarative

'Maria saw the tortilla.'

Quene'e3	Mariia4	*(maa3)	zo'1	a32.
saw	Maria	acc	you	declarative

'Maria saw you.'

This use of the accusative before some objects and not others is what is called differential object marking.

The following example (repeated from above) shows a Copala Trique question:

Me3	zii5	riaan32	a'mii32	zo'1	ga2
wh	3rd person	to	speak	2nd person	interrogative

'Who are you speaking to?' (¿Con quién estas hablando?)

As this example shows, Copala Trique has wh-movement and pied-piping with inversion.

Copala Trique syntax is described in Hollenbach (1992).

Trique is also interesting for having toggle processes. Under the scope of negation, a completive aspect prefix signifies the negative potential. A potential aspect prefix in the same context signifies the negative completive.

As a language sub-family, Trique is interesting for having a large tonal inventory, complex morphophonology, and interesting syntactic phenomena (much of which has yet to be described).

Media

Trique-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio stations XEQIN-AM, based in San Quintín, Baja California, and XETLA, based in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca.

Notes

Bibliography

• DiCanio, Christian. 2008. The Phonetics and Phonology of San Martín Itunyoso Trique. Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Berkeley.
• Good, Claude. 1979. Diccionario Triqui, volume 20 of Serie de Vocabularios Indigenas. Summer Institute of Linguistics, Mexico.
• Hollenbach, Barbara. 1977. El origen del sol y de la luna – cuatro versiones en el trique de Copala, Tlalocan 7:123-70.
• Hollenbach, Barbara. 1984. The phonology and morphology of tone and laryngeals in Copala Trique. Ph.D. thesis, University of Arizona.
• Hollenbach, Barbara, 1988. Three Trique myths of San Juan Copala. Mexico City: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
• Hollenbach, Barbara. 1992. A syntactic sketch of Copala Trique. in C. Henry Bradley & Barbara E. Hollenbach, eds. Studies in the syntax of Mixtecan languages, vol. 4, pp. 173-431. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
• Hollenbach, Barbara. 2005. Vocabulario breve del triqui de San Juan Copala. (Available at [1])
• Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas [INALI] (14 January, 2008). "Catálogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales: Variantes lingüísticas de México con sus autodenominaciones y referencias geoestadísticas" (PDF online reproduction). Diario Oficial de la Federación (México, D.F.: Imprenta del Gobierno Federal, SEGOB) 652 (9): 22–78 (first section),1–96 (second section),1-112 (third section). OCLC 46461036. http://www.inali.gob.mx/catalogo2007/index.html.  (Spanish)
• Longacre, Robert E. 1957. Proto-Mixtecan.‭ International Journal of American Linguistics 23(4).