Texistepec language


Texistepec, commonly called either Texistepec Popoluca or Texistepec Zoque, is a Mixe–Zoquean language of the Zoquean branch spoken by a hundred indigenous Popoluca people in and around the town of Texistepec in Southern Veracruz, Mexico.
Within the Mixe–Zoquean family, Texistepec Popoluca is most closely related to Sierra Popoluca.
Texistepec Popoluca has been documented primarily in work by Søren Wichmann, a Danish anthropological and historical linguist and Ehren Reilly, a former graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. Reilly's work was a part of the larger , under the leadership of the University of Pittsburgh's Terrence Kaufman, and contributed to Kaufman's project of deciphering Epi-Olmec writing.
Less than 100 native speakers of Texistepec Popoluca remained when Søren Wichmann, Ehren Reilly, and Terrence Kaufman conducted their research between 1990 and 2002, and the language was moribund, with no new speakers acquiring the language natively, due to the prevalence of Spanish. Today, all remaining speakers, are elderly, if any survive at all.
However, according to a publication from the Program of Revitalization, Strengthening, and Development of the Languages of the Indigenous Nationals, in 2012 there was a recorded 238 speakers in Vercruz, Mexico.

Phonology

The phonemes /l/ and /r/ do not occur natively within the Texistepec language. These two phonemes are borrowed from Spanish phonology and have become integrated into Texistepec phonology.
According to early work conducted by Foster another "outstanding feature of Texistepec consonants is the strong development of voicing" especially with stops and . Below are his phonological rules of voicing.
/p/, /t/, and /s/ become voiced in the word-initial position.
→voiced/#__
becomes the voiced allophone after a nasal or between two vowels.
→/__ or /V_V
According to Wichmann "Stress is not distinctive in Texistepec Popoluca. Stress is assigned to:
1. the last heavy syllable of a lexical morpheme, where a heavy syllable is defined as containing a long vowel;
2. if not to the penultimate syllable of a lexical morpheme ;
3. if not to the only syllable of a phonological word;
4. if not to certain suffixes that are inherently specified for stress.
5. Stress assignment applies iteratively leftwards in a composite stem to produce secondary stresses
"

Consonants

Bilabials: stop- /p/, /b/ -nasal- /m/
Alveolar: stop- /t/, /d/ /dʲ/ -nasal- /n/ -lateral, trill- /l/, /r/
Palatal: nasal- /ɲ/ -affricates- /t͡s/ -fricatives-/s/
Velar: stop- /k/ -velar- /ɳ/
Glottal: stop- /ʔ/ -fricatives- /h/
BilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottal
Stop/p/, /b//t/, /d/ /dʲ/ /k//ʔ/
Nasal /m/ /n/ /ɲ/ /ɳ/
Lateral, Trill /l/, /r/
Affricates /t͡s//t͡ʃ
Fricatives /s//ʃ/ /h/

Vowels

The vowels in Texistepec can be counted as the five listed in Table 3, for the sake of simplification and consistency as presented by multiple sources. However it could potentially include six, or even twelve vowels if accounting for the contrast between long and short vowels. According to research by Wichmann and later modified by Reilly, the vowels of this language "have a non-phonemic nasal counterpart, usually only realized in the presence of an inflectional nasal autosegment...
Vowels
ɨ, u, ɛ, ɔ, a
VowelsFrontCentralBack
High /ɨ/ /u/
Mid-low/ɛ/ /ɔ/
Low /a/

Vowel Phonemes
Underspecifiedɛɨauo
high++
back+
round++

Fully Specifiedɛɨauo
high-+-+-
back-++++
round---++

"Long and short vowels are also contrastive in lexical representations as is evident from the following minimal pair:"

Morphology

From Reilly's research in his undergraduate thesis he tells us "the prefix j- indicates 3rd person in the imperfective aspect. This prefix is metathesized, presumably due to its high sonority. Third person is zero-marked in the perfective aspect". A few pages later we are informed that "palatalization regressively affects coronal consonants and progressively affects the high central vowel phoneme /ɨ/... TEX does not permit geminate onset consonants, and the onset is the only location where morphological rules could create the problematic /jj/". The table below demonstrates the problematic /jj/ in the word-initial position.
Morpho-Phonological Alterations

'key''candle''bean''go''honey'
UR:Nj-jaːpɛʔNj-dajNj-sɨkNj-dɨkNj-t͡ʃ_ːɲ
MetathesisNjjaːpɛʔNdjajNsjɨkNdjɨkNj-t͡ʃ_ːɲ
PalatalizationNdjaːpɛʔNdjajNʃjikNdjikNt͡ʃj_ːɲ
N-Spreadingɲaːpɛʔɲjajʒjikɲjiknd͡ʒj_ːɲ
Relinking————nd͡ʒjːŋ
j-Deletion——ʒikɲik—
Peak Filter————nd͡ʒiːɲ
SRɲaːpɛʔɲjajʒikɲiknd͡ʒiːɲ

"This inventory distinguishes nasal stops /m/ and /n/ from oral stops /b/ and /d/, respectively.../d/ and /b/ occur in complementary distribution with /n/ and /m/, with the oral stops appearing in onsets and the nasals appearing in the codas".
Nasalization Processes

X. /N-b/ →

Y. /N-p/ →

Palatalization Processes

A. /j-Ci/ → ,/Ci/ → elsewhere
B. /j-Cɨ/ →
C. /j-s/ →

D. /j-/ →

Aspect markers

"The use of a single marker... is sufficient to indicate the persons and grammatical functions... The GFM system in TEX always uses only a single prefix on a given verb." This shows a more complex pattern than a "simple accusative, ergative or aspect-split pattern.... Group X marks the A as Ergative but leaves P unmarked. Group Y marks the Past Absolutive but leaves the A unmarked. Group Z seems to be a separate and autonomous set. This pattern, where sometimes the P is marked and sometimes the A is marked, is called inverse alternation."
These patterns are clearly shown in The Complete Paradigm below which breaks down the two sets in which transitive and intransitives are marked with the Ergative/nominative split with the Absolutive in a separate grouping. For more comprehensive information on the split-ergativity of Texistepec language the reader should refer to Reilly’s publications in 2004 and 2007.
TransitiveIntransitive
ERG/NOMERG/NOMABS
Group X1›3N-1st PersonN-k-
Group X1in›3taN-1st Person ExclusivetaN-te-/ta-
Group X2›3Nj-2nd PersonNj-kj-
Group X3›3j-3rd Personj-Ø
ABS-----
Group Y3›1k----
Group Y3›1inte/ta----
Group Z1›2kN----
Group Z2›1kNj----

Comparison of personal marker contrast between Texistepec Popoluca speakers and other Zoque languages:
Personal aspect markers
“TEX has three aspects, Imperfective, Perfective and Future. ” Most of the information on aspect marking comes from Reilly’s research from his written works from 2002 and 2004. The following explanations may help to clarify the table below, which is an illustration of the person marking affixes used on the verbs in Texistepec. There are two ‘paradigms’ which represent the differences in the ergative-absolutive split observed in this language.
“Aspect marking occurs in the derivation process after the verb has been inflected to agree with the person a grammatical function of its arguments. Imperfective aspect is indicated by a proclitic ʔu, and Perfective aspect is indicated by a proclitic maʔ.”... “A third aspect functions very much like a future tense, indicated by a suffix –p” .” The future aspect “refers to all future events, and events with distinct beginnings in the present moment”. Perfective has a definite beginning and end, prior to the moment of utterance. Imperfective verbs are progressive or habitual.
“The cross-referencing of core arguments in Texistepec Popoluca employs a paradigm of affixes and a paradigm of clitics.... Also, cross-referencing for first and second persons always aligns with the verb stem, often at the expense of any third person argument in the clause. This is known as “inverse alignment”. In Texistepec Popoluca, inverse clauses... lack subject agreement. "
Cross-referencing morphology for all possible argument structures
Here are a couple of examples from Reilly that are supposed to demonstrate how these agreement markings grammatically change the sentence.
“inverse clauses lack subject agreement.
maʔ ʔɑ̃ʔm

maʔ ∅-ⁿʔaʔm

PERF 3B-1A-see

‘I saw him/her/it
maʔ kʔaʔm
maʔ k+ʔaʔm
PERF 1B+see
‘She/he/it saw me.’
Ergativity split in the Imperfective tense
ʔuw̃ɛ̃j

ʔu+ -wɛj

IMPFV+1A-howl

‘I am howling.’
maʔ kwɛj
maʔ # k+wɛj
PERF # 1B+howl
‘I howled.’
kwɛːjp
k+wɛj-p
1B+howl-FUT
‘I will howl.’
”

Numbers

Once believed that native words for many numbers had been lost with the assimilation of Spanish, a little-known word list compiled by Dr. Eustorjio Calderón in 1892 was lost for some time which now “provides comparative data for number systems used in Oluta, Sayula, and Texistepec, in southern Veracruz, Mexico. The data are surprisingly accurate, considering that they were collected by a medical doctor who made a hobby of collecting word lists of little-known languages. ”
NumbersCalderón’s notationsphonemic scriptClark's forms
1tumtumtum
2huisnawisnawɨsna
3tugunátugunátúguna
4bacsnábaksnábáksna
5bosnábosnábósna
6tujnátuhnátúhna
7huestujnáwestuhnáwɨstúhna’
8tugtujnátuhtuhnátuktúhna’
9bacstujnábakstuhnábakstúhna’
10bacnábaknábákna’
11bactumnábaktumnábaktúmna’
12bac’huisnábakwisnábakẃɨsna’
13bactugunábaktugunábaktúguna’
14bacbacsnábakbaksnábakbáksna’
15bacbosnábakbosná'
16bactujnábaktuhná'
17bac’huestujnábakwestuhná'
18bactujtujnábaktuhtuhná'
19bacbacstunjábakbakstuhná'
20ipxñáipšñáé'pšña’
21ipxtumnáipštumná'
30ipxcomocipškomok'
31ipxcomoctumnáipškomoktumná'
40vusskipxvuuskipš'
50vuuskipx comöcvusskipškomɨk'
60tuguipxtugu ipš'
70tuguipx comöctugu ipš komɨk'
80bac chipxbak čipš'
90bac chipx comöcbak čipš komɨk'
100boxbošboské'pš
400bacsnaboxbaksnabošbaksnaboš
1,000bacnaboxbaknabošbaknaboš

“Where I have not actually heard the forms but can reasonably reconstruct them from other data, these are included in the third column in parentheses. ”
Gender
“No distinction is made between male and female lines. No distinction as to sex is made except in reciprocal affinal terms. ”
Word order
Word order in this language is “essentially free, with the verb inflection being the sole indicator of the grammatical functions of the arguments of the verb. The variation between word order is typically used for pragmatic emphasis and focus... The influence of SVO Spanish grammar school education seems to have made SVO also the more socially elite word order, since only people who have attended school have been chastised for their ‘backwards’ VOS use. ”
Clauses, etc.'
Wichmann’s research 2000 determined that “Texistepec Popoluca makes little use of adjectives, conjoined phrases, passives, participles, or subordination”. Reilly mentions that “Texistepec has a class of modifiers whose status as either adjective or adverb is unclear, but which always show agreement with the subject of the clause... always uses Set A”.