P'urhépecha language
Encyclopedia
P'urhépecha is a language isolate
or small language family
spoken by more than 100,000 P'urhépecha
people in the highlands of the Mexican state of Michoacán
. Even though it is spoken within the boundaries of Mesoamerica
P'urhépecha does not share many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area
, probably due to a long adherence to an isolationist policy.
P'urhépecha was the main language of the pre-Columbian Tarascan state
and became widespread in north western Mexico during the height of the Tarascan state.
The P'urhépecha language is mostly spoken in rural communities in the highlands of Michoacán
. The former center of the Tarascan state
was around lake Pátzcuaro
and this remains an important center of the P'urhépecha community. The Ethnologue
counts two variants of P'urhépecha: the central dialect spoken by approximately 120,000 people (1990) around Pátzcuaro and the western highland variety spoken around Zamora
, Los Reyes de Salgado
, Paracho
, and Pamatácuaro, all of which are in the vicinity of the Paricutín
volcano.
. This judgement is repeated in Campbell
's authoritative classification (Campbell 1997). Greenberg
assigned it to the Chibchan language family, but this proposal was rejected by specialists. Statistical studies by Swadesh
have suggested relationships to Zuñi, Quechua, Mayan and Aymara, but these conclusions remain unproven.
The three letters < b, d, g > occur in spelling only after the nasal letters < m, n >: < mb, nd, ng >. Their use is not consistent with orthography on the phonemic principle, because the sounds [p, t, k] are automatically voiced, shifting in pronunciation to [b, d, g] respectively, after a nasal consonant.
Usually the second syllable of the word is stressed, occasionally the first.
The phonemic inventory of the Tarécuato dialect is presented below. The Tarécuato dialect differs from other dialects in having a velar nasal phoneme. The table of phonemes uses International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and also gives the alphabet equivalents (enclosed in parentheses) in nonobvious cases.
The two mid vowels /e, o/ are uncommon; /o/ is especially rare.
The high central vowel occurs almost exclusively after /s/ or /ts/, and is almost a predictible allophone
of /i/ in that position.
The final vowel of a word is usually whispered or deleted, unless the word is at the end of a phrase or sentence.
Sequences of vowels do occur, but are very rare except for sequences generated by adding grammatical suffixes such as the pluralizers -echa or -icha, the copula -i, or the genitive -iri; and a sequence of vowels (sounds, not letters) virtually never occurs as the first two sounds of a word.
glottal stop
(a distinction shared by the Huave language
and by some dialects of Nahuatl
). On a worldwide scale, it is very unusual in lacking any laterals
('l'-sounds). (However, in the speech of many young speakers, the retroflex rhotic has been replaced by [l], due to Spanish influence.) There are distinct series of nonaspirated and aspirated plosives and affricates; aspiration is spelled with an apostrophe. There are two rhotics
('r'-sounds; one of them retroflex
).
The official orthography does not have distinct representations for the four phonemes /kʷ/, /kʷʰ/, /w/, /j/. It uses the letter 'i' for both the phonemes /i, j/ and the letter 'u' for both of the phonemes /u, w/ (These two semivowels are fairly rare). When k and k' are followed by u and another vowel this virtually always represents the labio-velar phonemes.
Intervocally, the aspirated consonants become pre-aspirated
; when following nasals, they lose their aspiration entirely. The unaspirated consonants become voiced when following nasals.
s. It has no noun compounding or incorporation. The verb distinguishes thirteen aspects and six modes. It has a nominal case system distinguishing nominative
, accusative
, genitive
, comitative
, instrumental
and locative
case
s, but also a large number of nominal derivational affixes. Basic word order is SVO, but other word orders are commonly used for pragmatic purposes.
kúmi-wátsï "fox" - kúmi-wátsïcha "foxes"
iréta "town" - irétaacha "towns"
warhíticha tepharicha maru "some fat women (lit. women fat some)"
The nominative case is unmarked. The accusative case (also called objective case), used to mark direct and sometimes indirect objects, is marked by a suffix -ni:
The genitive is marked by -ri -eri:
Discourse-pragmatic focus on a noun or noun phrase is indicated by the clitic
-sï.
s and modes. There are also a number of suffixes expressing position or body parts affecting or affected by the verbal action. Transitivity
is manipulated by suffixes forming transitive verbs with applicative or causative
meaning or intransitives
with passive or inchoative
meanings.
, based in Cherán, Michoacán. This radio station is an enterprise of the CDI
.
Language isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
or small language family
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
spoken by more than 100,000 P'urhépecha
P'urhépecha
The P'urhépecha, normally spelled Purépecha in Spanish and in English and traditionally referred to as Tarascans, are an indigenous people centered in the northwestern region of the Mexican state of Michoacán, principally in the area of the cities of Uruapan and Pátzcuaro...
people in the highlands of the Mexican state of Michoacán
Michoacán
Michoacán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 113 municipalities and its capital city is Morelia...
. Even though it is spoken within the boundaries of Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
P'urhépecha does not share many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area
Mesoamerican Linguistic Area
The Mesoamerican Linguistic Area is a sprachbund containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethnolinguistic traits found in the languages of...
, probably due to a long adherence to an isolationist policy.
P'urhépecha was the main language of the pre-Columbian Tarascan state
Tarascan state
The Tarascan state was a state in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, roughly covering the geographic area of the present-day Mexican state of Michoacán. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico it was the second-largest state in Mexico. The state was founded in the early 14th century and lost its...
and became widespread in north western Mexico during the height of the Tarascan state.
Geographical extension
Michoacán
Michoacán officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Michoacán de Ocampo is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 113 municipalities and its capital city is Morelia...
. The former center of the Tarascan state
Tarascan state
The Tarascan state was a state in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, roughly covering the geographic area of the present-day Mexican state of Michoacán. At the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico it was the second-largest state in Mexico. The state was founded in the early 14th century and lost its...
was around lake Pátzcuaro
Pátzcuaro
Pátzcuaro is a large town and municipality located in the state of Michoacán. The town was founded sometime in the 1320s, at first becoming the capital of the Tarascan state and later its ceremonial center...
and this remains an important center of the P'urhépecha community. The Ethnologue
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
counts two variants of P'urhépecha: the central dialect spoken by approximately 120,000 people (1990) around Pátzcuaro and the western highland variety spoken around Zamora
Zamora, Michoacán
Zamora de Hidalgo, is a city in the Mexican state of Michoacán. The 2010 census population was 141,627. making it the third largest city in the state. The city is the municipal seat of Zamora Municipality, which has an area of 330.97 km² and includes many other smaller communities, the largest of...
, Los Reyes de Salgado
Los Reyes, Michoacán
Los Reyes is a municipality in the western part of the Mexican state of Michoacán. The municipality has an area of 480.09 square kilometres and is bordered to the north by the municipality of Tangancícuaro, to the east by Charapan, to the southeast by Uruapan, to the south by Peribán, to the...
, Paracho
Paracho
Paracho de Verduzco is a small city located in Michoacán, Mexico. Located at , about 100 kilometers west of state capital Morelia, it serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of Paracho. It has a population of some 16,500...
, and Pamatácuaro, all of which are in the vicinity of the Paricutín
Paricutín
Parícutin is a cinder cone volcano in the Mexican state of Michoacán, close to a lava-covered village of the same name. It appears on many versions of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World...
volcano.
Classification
P'urhépecha has long been classified as a language isolateLanguage isolate
A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...
. This judgement is repeated in Campbell
Lyle Campbell
Lyle Richard Campbell is a linguist and leading expert on indigenous American languages—especially those of Mesoamerica—and on historical linguistics in general. He also has expertise in Uralic languages. He is presently Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.-Life and...
's authoritative classification (Campbell 1997). Greenberg
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
assigned it to the Chibchan language family, but this proposal was rejected by specialists. Statistical studies by Swadesh
Morris Swadesh
Morris Swadesh was an influential and controversial American linguist. In his work, he applied basic concepts in historical linguistics to the Indigenous languages of the Americas...
have suggested relationships to Zuñi, Quechua, Mayan and Aymara, but these conclusions remain unproven.
Orthography
The official alphabet is the P’URHEPECHA JIMBO KARARAKUECHA (P'urhépecha Alphabet):- a b ch ch' d e g i ï j k k' m n nh o p p' r rh s t t' ts ts' u x.
The three letters < b, d, g > occur in spelling only after the nasal letters < m, n >: < mb, nd, ng >. Their use is not consistent with orthography on the phonemic principle, because the sounds [p, t, k] are automatically voiced, shifting in pronunciation to [b, d, g] respectively, after a nasal consonant.
Phonology
In all dialects of P'urhépecha, stress accent is phonemic. As in Spanish orthography, the stressed syllable is indicated by the acute accent. Examples of minimal pairs are:- karáni 'write' — kárani 'fly'
- p'amáni 'wrap it' — p'ámani 'touch a liquid'
Usually the second syllable of the word is stressed, occasionally the first.
The phonemic inventory of the Tarécuato dialect is presented below. The Tarécuato dialect differs from other dialects in having a velar nasal phoneme. The table of phonemes uses International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and also gives the alphabet equivalents (enclosed in parentheses) in nonobvious cases.
Vowels
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i | ɨ ( ï ) | u |
| Mid Mid vowel A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel... |
e | o | |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
ɑ |
The two mid vowels /e, o/ are uncommon; /o/ is especially rare.
The high central vowel occurs almost exclusively after /s/ or /ts/, and is almost a predictible allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
of /i/ in that position.
The final vowel of a word is usually whispered or deleted, unless the word is at the end of a phrase or sentence.
Sequences of vowels do occur, but are very rare except for sequences generated by adding grammatical suffixes such as the pluralizers -echa or -icha, the copula -i, or the genitive -iri; and a sequence of vowels (sounds, not letters) virtually never occurs as the first two sounds of a word.
Consonants
P'urhépecha is one of the minority of languages in the Mesoamerican region which do not have a phonemicPhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
(a distinction shared by the Huave language
Huave language
Huave is a language isolate spoken by the indigenous Huave people on the Pacific coast of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The language is spoken in four villages on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the southeast of the state, by around 18,000 people...
and by some dialects of Nahuatl
Nahuatl dialects
The many dialects of the Nahuatl language belong to the Nahuan branch of the Uto-Aztecan language family, and form a group of linguistic varieties spoken in central Mexico...
). On a worldwide scale, it is very unusual in lacking any laterals
Lateral consonant
A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth....
('l'-sounds). (However, in the speech of many young speakers, the retroflex rhotic has been replaced by [l], due to Spanish influence.) There are distinct series of nonaspirated and aspirated plosives and affricates; aspiration is spelled with an apostrophe. There are two rhotics
Rhotic consonant
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet...
('r'-sounds; one of them retroflex
Retroflex consonant
A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology...
).
| Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... or palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Labio- velar |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m | n | ŋ (nh) | |||
| Plosive | plain | p | t | k | kʷ (ku) | |
| aspirated | pʰ (p') | tʰ (t') | kʰ (k') | kʷʰ (k'u) | ||
| Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
plain | ts (ts) | tʃ (ch) | |||
| aspirated | tsʰ (ts') | tʃʰ (ch') | ||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
s | ʃ (x) | x (j) | |||
| Rhotic Rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, also called tremulants or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including "R, r" from the Roman alphabet and "Р, p" from the Cyrillic alphabet... |
r | ɽ (rh) | ||||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
j (i) | w (u) | ||||
The official orthography does not have distinct representations for the four phonemes /kʷ/, /kʷʰ/, /w/, /j/. It uses the letter 'i' for both the phonemes /i, j/ and the letter 'u' for both of the phonemes /u, w/ (These two semivowels are fairly rare). When k and k' are followed by u and another vowel this virtually always represents the labio-velar phonemes.
Intervocally, the aspirated consonants become pre-aspirated
Preaspiration
In phonetics, preaspiration is a period of voicelessness or aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the obstruent. In other words, when an obstruent is preaspirated, the glottis is opened for some time before the obstruent closure...
; when following nasals, they lose their aspiration entirely. The unaspirated consonants become voiced when following nasals.
Grammar
The P'urhépecha language is agglutinating and exclusively suffixing and has a large number of suffixes (as many as 160) and cliticClitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s. It has no noun compounding or incorporation. The verb distinguishes thirteen aspects and six modes. It has a nominal case system distinguishing nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
, accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
, genitive
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
, comitative
Comitative case
The comitative case , also known as the associative case , is a grammatical case that denotes companionship, and is used where English would use "in company with" or "together with"...
, instrumental
Instrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
and locative
Locative case
Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"...
case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
s, but also a large number of nominal derivational affixes. Basic word order is SVO, but other word orders are commonly used for pragmatic purposes.
The Noun
Plural of a noun is formed by a suffix -echa/-icha or -cha.kúmi-wátsï "fox" - kúmi-wátsïcha "foxes"
iréta "town" - irétaacha "towns"
warhíticha tepharicha maru "some fat women (lit. women fat some)"
The nominative case is unmarked. The accusative case (also called objective case), used to mark direct and sometimes indirect objects, is marked by a suffix -ni:
-
- Pedrú pyásti tsúntsuni "Pedro bought the pot"
- Pedrú pyá-s-ti tsúntsu-ni
- Pedro buy-PRF-3ind pot-ACC
The genitive is marked by -ri -eri:
-
- imá wárhitiri wíchu "that woman's dog"
- imá wárhiti-ri wíchu
- that woman-GEN dog
Discourse-pragmatic focus on a noun or noun phrase is indicated by the clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
-sï.
-
- Ampésï arhá Pedrú? "What did Pedro eat?"
- ampé-sï arh-∅-∅-á Pedrú
- what-FOC eat-PRF-INT Pedro
-
- kurúchasï atí. "he ate fish" (i.e., fish is what he ate)
- Kurúcha-sï a-∅-tí
- fish-FOC eat-PRF-3IND
The Verb
The P'urhépecha verb inflects for aspectGrammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
s and modes. There are also a number of suffixes expressing position or body parts affecting or affected by the verbal action. Transitivity
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
is manipulated by suffixes forming transitive verbs with applicative or causative
Causative
In linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event....
meaning or intransitives
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
with passive or inchoative
Inchoative
Inchoative aspect is a grammatical aspect, referring to the beginning of an action or state. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages such as Latin and Lithuanian, and also in Finnic languages. It should not be confused with the prospective, which denotes actions that are about to...
meanings.
Media
P'urhépecha-language programming is broadcast by radio station XEPUR-AMXEPUR-AM
XEPUR-AM is an indigenous community radio stationthat broadcasts in Spanish and Purepecha from Cherán in the Mexican state of Michoacán....
, based in Cherán, Michoacán. This radio station is an enterprise of the CDI
National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples
The National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples is a decentralized agency of the Mexican Federal Public Administration. It was founded in 2003 as a replacement for the National Indigenist Institute . It has its headquarters in Mexico City and, since 15 December 2006, has been...
.
External links
- Purepecha Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
- Field recordings of P'urhépecha carried out by linguist William ShipleyWilliam Shipley (linguist)William F. Shipley was a linguist and speaker of the Maidu language of Northern California.Shipley was a student of anthropologist and linguist Alfred Kroeber, and linguist Mary Haas at UC Berkeley...
, archived at the Berkeley Language Center - The P'urhépecha WEB page From Michoacán, México. (In Spanish)