Ch’ol language

Chol
Ch'ol
Native to Mexico
Region North Central Chiapas Tabasco
Native speakers
 212,117 (2010 census)[1]
Mayan
Early form
Language codes
ISO 639-3 ctu
Glottolog chol1282[2]

The Ch'ol (Chol) language is a member of the western branch of the Mayan language family used by the Ch'ol people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. There are two main dialects:

  • Ch'ol of Tila spoken by 43,870 people of whom 10,000 are monolinguals in the villages of Tila, Vicente Guerrero, Chivalito and Limar in Chiapas.
  • Ch'ol of Tumbalá spoken by 90,000 people of whom 30,000 are monolinguals in the villages of Tumbalá, Sabanilla, Misijá, Limar, Chivalita and Vicente Guerrero.

The Cholan branch of the Mayan languages is considered to be particularly conservative and Ch'ol along with its two closest relatives the Ch'orti' language of Guatemala and Honduras, and the Chontal Maya language of Tabasco are believed to be the modern languages that best reflect their relationship with the Classic Maya language.[3]

Ch'ol-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEXPUJ-AM, broadcasting from Xpujil, Campeche.

Morphosyntax

The basic word order is VOS. However, word order varies and VOS is not always grammatical: factors including animacy, definiteness, topicalization and focus contribute to determining which word order is appropriate. [4]

Ch'ol is a split ergative language: its morphosyntactic alignment varies according to aspect. With perfective aspect, ergative-absolutive alignment is used, whereas with imperfective aspect, we rather observe nominative-accusative.[5]

Numeral classifiers are obligatorily included in noun phrases containing numerals. They occur between the numeral and the noun. The classifiers vary according to semantic properties of the noun: -tyikil is used for persons, -tyejk for trees, etc. [6]

Phonology

Below is the consonant and vowel inventory of Ch'ol.[7]

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
StopsVoiced b
Voiceless p tʲ k ʔ
Ejective p' tʲ' k'
Fricative s ʃ x
AffricatesVoiceless ts tʃ
Ejective ts' tʃ'
Nasals m ɲ
Laterals l
Trills r
Glides w j
Front Central Back
High i ɨ u
Mid e o
Low a

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ INALI (2012) México: Lenguas indígenas nacionales
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Chol". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Houston, S., O. Chinchilla, Stuart D. "The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing", U. of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
  4. ↑ Vázquez Álvarez, Juan Jesús. A Grammar of Chol, a Mayan Language. Austin, Texas: University of Texas at Austin, 2011; pp.21-22
  5. ↑ Vázquez Álvarez, Juan Jesús. A Grammar of Chol, a Mayan Language. Austin, Texas: University of Texas at Austin, 2011; pp.177-178
  6. ↑ Vázquez Álvarez, Juan Jesús. A Grammar of Chol, a Mayan Language. Austin, Texas: University of Texas at Austin, 2011; p.160
  7. ↑ Vázquez Álvarez, Juan Jesús. A Grammar of Chol, a Mayan Language. Austin, Texas: University of Texas at Austin, 2011; p.35

References

Aulie, H. Wilbur; Evelyn W. Aulie, eds. (1998) [1978]. Diccionario Ch'ol de Tumbalá, Chiapas, con variaciones dialectales de Tila y Sabanilla [Ch'ol Dictionary of Tumbalá, Chiapas with dialectal variations from Tila and Sabanilla]. Serie de vocabularios y diccionarios indígenas "Mariano Silva y Aceves", No. 121. Emily Stairs (electronic reproduction with March 2005 corrections, 2nd ed.). Coyoacán, D.F.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. ISBN 968-31-0291-3. OCLC 42692322.
Coon, Jessica (2010). "Complementation in Chol (Mayan): A Theory of Split Ergativity" (electronic version). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2010-07-15. [includes a grammatical sketch of the language]
Schumann, Otto Gálvez (1973). La lengua Chol de Tila (Chiapas). UNAM. .
Warkentin, Viola; Ruby Scott (1980). Gramática Ch'ol. Summer Institute of Linguistics.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.