| Zacatepec Chatino | |
| Also Known As: | Chatino de San Marcos Zacatepec |
| Nativename: | Cha’ jna’a |
| States: | Mexico |
| Region: | Oaxaca, Southern Central Mexico |
| Speakers: | 300 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| Familycolor: | American |
| Fam1: | Oto-Manguean |
| Fam2: | Zapotecan |
| Fam3: | Chatino |
| Fam4: | Eastern Chatino |
| Iso3: | ctz |
| Glotto: | zaca1242 |
| Glottoname: | Zacatepec Chatino |
Zacatepec Chatino is an indigenous Mesoamerican language, a dialect of Eastern Chatino of the Oto-Manguean language family. It is often referred to as Chaqꟳ tinyaᴶ Kichenᴬ tziꟲ, Spanish; Castilian: Chatino de San Marcos Zacatepec, or Spanish; Castilian: Chatino de Zacatepec as it is distinct from other Eastern Chatino dialects in the region. Zacatepec Chatino is spoken in the town of San Marcos Zacatepec, a town of approximately 1,000 people and inhabited by the Chatino people. The language was once spoken in the village of Juquila, but is now virtually extinct there with only two surviving speakers in the area (Villard 2015).
Zacatepec Chatino is a highly endangered language as it is spoken by about 300 Chatinos whom are all above 50 years of age.
Chatino refers to three closely related modern languages; the three being Eastern Chatino, Tataltepec Chatino, and Zenzontepec Chatino of the Zapotecan branch. Zacatepec Chatino falls under the Eastern Chatino branch.
Zacatepec Chatino, being part of Chatino language family, has shallow orthography. It is more conservative than many other varieties of Eastern Chatino as it conserves many non-final unstressed vowels which have been lost in other varieties.
Little is known about the history of Zacatepec Chatino but according to Stéphanie Villard who studied and presented her thesis on the language, it has been on a decline for the past 40 years as natives continue to expand their ties with non-Chatino communities. With the help of the Zacatepec Chatino Documentation Project, Villard has uncovered some of the remnants of the language with the help of many natives from the area. The project includes visits in 2005 and 2006 by Hilaria Cruz, Emiliana Cruz, Megan Crowhurst as well as preliminary analysis of tones in H. Cruz y Woodbury in 2006. It also includes intensive work since 2006 by Stéphanie Villard, including 150 hours of audio, a sketch, papers on sandhi and inflection and grammar as well as short visits concentrating on textual documentation, tone, & morphology
Although Spanish is the official language in San Marcos Zacatepec, Oaxaca, many government officials communicate in Zacatepec Chatino. A study conducted by Villard revealed that majority of the younger population are monolingual Spanish speakers.
Zacatepec Chatino is only spoken in San Marcos Zacatepec, Oaxaca in the Sierra Madre region of Mexico.
Since Zacatepec Chatino is unintelligible with other Chatino varieties, it does not have any other dialects or varieties associated with it.
There are nine vowel sounds both oral and nasal:
| Front | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | ||
| Close | i | ɪ̃ | u | ũ | |
| Mid | e | ɛ̃ | o | ||
| Open | a | ɑ̃ | |||
| Bilabial | Dental/ Alveolar | Laminal- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | |||||||
| Plosive | p, (b) | t, (d) | t̻ | k | kʷ | ʔ | ||
| Affricate | t͡s | t͡ʃ | ||||||
| Fricative | s | ʃ | h | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | n̻ | (ŋ) | ||||
| Rhotic | (ɾ, r̥) | |||||||
| Approximant | l | l̻ | j | w | ||||
Villard (2015) reports that Zacatepec Chatino presents voicing of non-continuant after nasals, vowel harmony, and contrastive nasal vowels. It also lacks labial phonemes and has 4 levels of pitch ranging from low to high. It also presents 15 specific tonal sequences that can define 15 Lexical classes.
Its phonology presents a rich tonal system with a large inventory of phonemic tonal sequences as well as intricate sandhi patterns.
The vowels in Zacatepec Chatino are pronounced as //i e a o u// and may be oral or nasal.
pronounced as //a// does not present any restrictions in its distribution. pronounced as //a// is pronounced pronounced as /[a]/ and may be slightly nasalized. Here are some examples:
n'''ǎ''' pronounced as /[na]/ thing
p'''a̋''' pronounced as /[pa]/ dad
kw'''ā ́''' pronounced as /[kwa]/ already
mp'''aà''' ̋ pronounced as /[mbaː]/ godfather
Wy'''àa̋''' pronounced as /[bjaː]/ Santos Reyes Nopala, Oaxaca
ch'''ǎ'''ʔ pronounced as /[t͜ʃaʔ]/ word
pronounced as //e// does not occur after the nasal stop pronounced as //n//. pronounced as //e// can be long in final syllables and short in non final syllables. Here are some examples:
traʔw'''ē ́''' pronounced as /[traʔwe]/ middle
tik'''è'''ʔ pronounced as /[tikeʔ'']/ aroused
siy'''ě'''ʔ pronounced as /[sijeʔ]/ dressed up
tsaʔw'''ě''' pronounced as /[t͜saʔwe]/ good
nkyas'''e'''ʔ pronounced as /[ŋgjaseʔ]/ it got deflated
nkyan'''è''' pronounced as /[ŋgjanɛ]̃/ he/she sprayed it
nkyaʔw'''è''' pronounced as /[ŋgjaʔwe]/ it got split
pronounced as //i// occurs in final as well as non-final syllables of roots followed by a pronounced as //ʔ//. It is slightly restricted in its distribution. Here are some examples:
p'''i̋''' pronounced as /[pi]/ poult
p'''ì'''i̋ pronounced as /[piː]/ fair skinned, pale
ly'''i'''ʔ̋ pronounced as /[li̻ʔ]/ parrot
mp'''i'''ʔ̋ pronounced as /[mbiʔ]/ dram
ki'''i'''ʔ pronounced as /[kiːʔ]/ fire
The distribution of pronounced as //u// is highly restricted. pronounced as //u// in monosyllabic words is rare. pronounced as //u// can be long in final syllables but is always short in non-final syllables. Here are some examples:
x'''ǔ'''ʔ pronounced as /[ʃuʔ]/ oldster
ch'''ūú''' pronounced as /[t͜ʃuː]/ Jesus
s'''ù'''nt'''ū ̋''' pronounced as /[suntu]/ issue (from Spa. asunto)
b'''ù'''rr'''ū ̋''' pronounced as /[bur̥u]/ donkey (from Spa. burro)
k'''u'''ʔwǐ pronounced as /[kuʔwi]/ drunk
s'''u'''ti pronounced as /[suti]/ his/her father
t'''u'''ʔwa pronounced as /[tuʔwa]/ his/her mouth
pronounced as //o// is restricted as well. It does not occur after the nasal stop pronounced as //n// and similarly to pronounced as //u//, pronounced as //o// does not occur after the labiovelars pronounced as //kʷ// or pronounced as //w//. Here are some examples
Ty'''ò''' ̋ pronounced as /[to̻]/ Pedro
k'''ōō''' pronounced as /[koː]/ fog
y'''o''' pronounced as /[jo]/ guy
y'''oo''' pronounced as /[joː]/ soil
pìx'''ō''' ̋ pronounced as /[piʃo]/ peso
| Tonal Representation | Marking | Realization | |
|---|---|---|---|
| X(toneless) | a | Low falling | |
| L(ow) | à | Low falling | |
| M(id) | ā | Mid level | |
| H(igh) | á | High level | |
| LH | â | Low to high rising | |
| LS | a̋ | Low to super-high rising |
San Marcos Zacatepec is considered a head-marking language as it is synthetic and analytic. Some functions are the language are mixed; for example, person marking can be signaled through tone contrast and/or nasalization, encliticization, or also by a separate word.
Its verbal morphology features a large inventory of allomorphs of its aspectual morphemes, which makes its verbal paradigms appear extremely irregular.
The sequence classes are "morphological"—some are specialized by part-of-speech, by inflectional category, or loan provenance, while others are open-ended and general.
The basic word order is VSO but there are other orders present. Here is an example of the Chatino Language VSO:
Some morphemes, such as the marker ʔin have various functions in the grammar as it is a dative marker. The dative marker introduces human direct objects, indirect objects, and also marks alienable possession.
Compounding patterns play an important role and word formation. the use of combinations of "light nouns" or semantically poor nouns and semantically rich adjectives (or nouns, although very rarely) is very prolific in the language. Villard provides us with an example of such formations: the light noun nu 'the one who', often occurs as a head noun in noun phrases, as in nu kīʔyó 'man' (the one who is male) or nu kunāʔán 'woman' (the one who is female).
There are 15 lexical tone classes defined by 15 tone sequences. The sequences pertain to any noncompound stem but have different realizations depending on the number of moras in the stem. The sequence classes are "morphological"—some are specialized by part-of-speech, by inflectional category, or loan provenance, while others are open ended and general. Sequence class identity—not tones—determines tonal ablaut behavior and tonal inflectional classes. The progressive aspect is associated with an M tone which generates composed sequences beyond the original 15 [1]