Trique language Totally Explained

Everything about Trique Language totally explained

The Trique or Triqui language is an Oto-Manguean language of Mexico spoken by the Trique indigenous group of the state of Oaxaca. It belongs to the Mixtecan branch together with the Mixtec languages and Cuicatec.

Variants

Ethnologue counts three variants.

Trique 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.

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 (Hollenbach, 1984).
   Tones in Trique languages are typically written with superscript numbers (Hollenbach 1984), 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 (Hollenbach 2005):

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 (DiCanio, 2006). The tone system of Chicahuaxtla Trique has at least 10 tones (Good (1979)) but may have as many as 16 (Longacre, 1957).

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.'
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.

Bibliography

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 and 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 (External Link

))Further Information

Get more info on 'Trique Language'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://trique_language.totallyexplained.com">Trique language Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.