Tarahumara language
Encyclopedia
The Tarahumara language (native name Rarámuri/Ralámuli ra'ícha, "people language") is a Mexican indigenous language of the Uto-Aztecan language family
spoken by around 70,000 Tarahumara
(Rarámuri/Ralámuli) people in the state of Chihuahua, according to an estimate by the government of Mexico.
. The closest linguistic relative is the Guarijío language
(Varihio, Huarijío), which is also spoken in the Sierra Madre Occidental.
The landscape of the area is dominated almost entirely by the Sierra Madre Occidental, a mountain range in the western part of Mexico. As of 2011, Ethnologue
splits Eastern into four dialects. The five total dialects recognized by Ethnologue, with Ethnologue's own current designations and population estimates, are Western (~40,000 speakers); Central (55,000, including 10,000 monolinguals); Northern (300); Southeastern (no estimate given); Southwestern (100). The figure of 40,000 is cited as an being official census figure from 1996.
and the glottal stop
. Phonemically, all plosive consonants are voiceless. There are four fricative phonemes, two voiced and two voiceless; but the voiced fricatives both have a plosive allophone: [b], and [ɡ], respectively. The phoneme /r/ has two allophones: a trilled and a forward-flapped variation. Both allophones occur phrase-initially, but the trilled allophone is much more common.
/t͡ʃ, ʃ, j, ʔ, h/ are spelled ⟨ch, sh/s, y, , j⟩. /s/ is spelled s/c
[ʃ] is an optional allophone of /s/ before [i, u], while [t͡s] is an optional allophone of /t͡ʃ/ before [a, o, u]. Some writers spell [s, ʃ] as 's, sh' respectively, while other writers spell them 'c, s' respectively.
Some important phonological rules:
In noun morphology, there are two cases: nominative and accusative. Both direct objects and indirect objects are marked with the suffix [-ʔt͡ʃi]. In addition to case marking, there are also the characteristic Uto-Aztecan "absolutive" suffixes, which appear when there is no other suffix. Variants of the absolutive include [-ʔt͡ʃi] [-ri]. Possessed nouns are marked in several different ways: verbal constructions, noun suffixing, or a combination of the two. In terms of noun suffixing, possessives are marked with [-ra].
Some nouns are not inflected for plurality, but noun phrases containing them will mark plurality by other means: quantity words will be added to the noun phrase; or words related to the head will be inflected for plurality.
Demonstratives mark for proximity/distance but not number. Given that Rarámuri is head final, demonstratives come before the noun. They can be used as both articles and pronouns, and can also be doubled. Storytellers will sometimes omit demonstratives in front of names of animals, showing that the animal is being ranked higher on the animacy scale and/or the animal name is being used as a proper noun.
There are several verbal suffixes for both the future and past tenses, with allomorphs of all three of the future tense suffix markers . The imperfect, conditional, passive voice, plural and singular imperative, and past participle are all marked for with suffixes as well. Interestingly, there are several suffixes that indicate different types of gerunds: past, singular, and plural.
Subject can be marked for in one of two ways. A pronoun coming before the verb can mark for 1, 2, 3 person singular and plural. Additionally, a suffix coming after the TAM marker can mark for the subject as well. In this way, subject marking is more flexible than marking for tense, aspect, and mood; however, subject pronouns cannot be used in conjunction with subject suffixes.
There are multiple suffixes that can change nouns to verbs. These suffixes cover a range of meanings, from "become" or "make" to "put on", "take off", and "have". In a similar suffix-adding process, adjectives can also become verbs. In fact, verbs can also take on suffixes to become other verbs, though noun to verb constructions are the most productive of these types of transformations.
Rarámuri utilizes valence changing processes that will most often transitivize verbs. This feature is widespread in Uto-Aztecan languages. To transitivize a verb, it is necessary to change the final vowel of the verb root. The process of applicativization involves a suffix and prefix, as well a change in voicing for the root-initial bilabial consonant. This process goes both ways: if a bilabial is [+voice], it will become [-voice] with the addition of these affixes, and vice versa.
Word order marking of focus and topicalization is heavily used. A sentence constituent may be topicalized by placing it at the beginning of the sentence. Topicalizatin of the verb requires "emphatic" words to indicate the subject. The OVS order is the order most prevalent in narratives.
There are "emphatic" morphemes. The particle [-ka] is added to subjects; the particle [-ʔe] to noun phrases filling any grammatical role, and the suffix [-ri] is an intensifier on nouns and verbs. To "emphasize" adverbs, the prefix [ʔ-] is added. Pronouns can be emphasized by by repeating them within the sentence. In order to add still more "emphasis" to a word that already has emphatic particles, the postposition /-pa/ can be added.
Rarámuri questions have the following constructions. Sentence initial question particles are necessary. Yes-no questions are marked with the sentence-initial question particle [-ta], which can sometimes be accompanied by rising intonation on the final syllable . Wh-questions are marked with a level or falling prosodic pitch on the last syllable. These words also share a similar phonetic characteristic in that they all contain the allomorph prefixes [t͡ʃi-] or [t͡ʃe-], with the exception of [kóe], "where", which, contains the same affix, only as a suffix instead of a prefix.
To form a relative clause in Rarámuri, speakers need only place a suffix, [-ame] on the verb of the relative clause in order to achieve grammaticality. Relative clauses can come before or after a head, with the difference only being in emphasis. Sometimes, heads to which relative clauses refer can be repeated. In such instances, the head will occur directly before and directly after the relative clause that belongs to it. There also exists a construction that masks itself as a relative clause, but is really a repetition of the subject of the sentence. Often, the second repetition of the subject will be amplified or expounded upon in some way. This syntactic style is not unique to Rarámuri, but rather, it can be found in many other Uto-Aztecan languages, notably Nawa.
's radio station XETAR, broadcasting from Guachochi
, Chihuahua.
— translated into Rarámuri.
Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
spoken by around 70,000 Tarahumara
Tarahumara
The Rarámuri or Tarahumara are a Native American people of northwestern Mexico who are renowned for their long-distance running ability...
(Rarámuri/Ralámuli) people in the state of Chihuahua, according to an estimate by the government of Mexico.
Genetic affiliation
Tarahumara belongs to the Taracahitic group of the Uto-Aztecan languagesUto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
. The closest linguistic relative is the Guarijío language
Guarijio language
Huarijio is an Uto-Aztecan language of the states of Chihuahua and Sonora in northwestern Mexico...
(Varihio, Huarijío), which is also spoken in the Sierra Madre Occidental.
Dialectology
Rarámuri is spoken by approximately 70,000 or more indigenous Mexicans living in the state of Chihuahua. There is no consensus among specialists on the number of dialects: competing proposals include two (named Western and Eastern); four (Western, Northern, Southern, Eastern); five, according to field surveys conducted in the 1990s by linguists working for the Mexican government and Ethnologue. Mexican researchers emphasize that the knowledge of Rarámuri dialects is still patchy and the declare there is the possibility that there are many more than five. The five divisions tentatively recognized by the Mexican government are not the same ones proposed by Ethnologue.The landscape of the area is dominated almost entirely by the Sierra Madre Occidental, a mountain range in the western part of Mexico. As of 2011, 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...
splits Eastern into four dialects. The five total dialects recognized by Ethnologue, with Ethnologue's own current designations and population estimates, are Western (~40,000 speakers); Central (55,000, including 10,000 monolinguals); Northern (300); Southeastern (no estimate given); Southwestern (100). The figure of 40,000 is cited as an being official census figure from 1996.
Roles in society
The language is used in primary schools and in local administration, as well as in the traditional religious practices and local business transactions. Spanish speakers who live near or among the Tarahumara will often use it in commerce as well. At the same time, Spanish is becoming ever more prevalent in indigenous communities. Currently, only one percent of the speakers are literate in their language, while 20 percent of them are literate in Spanish.Grammar of Western Rarámuri
The following description is based on Burgess (1984) unless where otherwise noted.Phonology
Rarámuri has five vowel phonemes: /a, e, i, o, u/. Additionally, [ə] occurs as an allophone of /a/ word-initially and between a stressed, close vowelClose 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...
and the 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...
. Phonemically, all plosive consonants are voiceless. There are four fricative phonemes, two voiced and two voiceless; but the voiced fricatives both have a plosive allophone: [b], and [ɡ], respectively. The phoneme /r/ has two allophones: a trilled and a forward-flapped variation. Both allophones occur phrase-initially, but the trilled allophone is much more common.
| 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... |
"Retroflexed alveolar" 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... |
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).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | ||||
| Plosive | p | t | k | ʔ | ||
| Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
[t͡s] [optional allophone of /t͡ʃ/] | t͡ʃ | ||||
| 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... |
β | s | ʃ (optional allophone of /s/) | ɣ | h | |
| 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... |
w | [ɽ] [ɭ] (has lateral and flap allophones) |
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 |
/t͡ʃ, ʃ, j, ʔ, h/ are spelled ⟨ch, sh/s, y, , j⟩. /s/ is spelled s/c
[ʃ] is an optional allophone of /s/ before [i, u], while [t͡s] is an optional allophone of /t͡ʃ/ before [a, o, u]. Some writers spell [s, ʃ] as 's, sh' respectively, while other writers spell them 'c, s' respectively.
Some important phonological rules:
- In phrase-initial syllables not followed immediately by a vowel, [h], or [ʔ], unstressed vowels acquire length.
- Stressed phrase- and word-final vowels can optionally acquire voiceless offglides. Word-final vowels, however, only receive offglides when preceding a stressed syllable-initial plosive or affricate.
- Word-initially, [a] → [ə] if between a stressed [+high] vowel and [ʔ].
- In unstressed, word-medial or –final syllables, [i] becomes allophonically less tense.
- In fast speech, vowels in unstressed syllables are frequently dropped.
- In unstressed, word-medial or –final syllables, all vowels are dropped when following a nasal and preceding a plosive.
Morphology
Affixes are almost always realized as suffixes, and clitics too come word finally. Nouns and verbs are semiagglutinating. Words and phrases are head initial. Adpositions can be prepositions or postpositions, and some are suffixed to nouns.In noun morphology, there are two cases: nominative and accusative. Both direct objects and indirect objects are marked with the suffix [-ʔt͡ʃi]. In addition to case marking, there are also the characteristic Uto-Aztecan "absolutive" suffixes, which appear when there is no other suffix. Variants of the absolutive include [-ʔt͡ʃi] [-ri]. Possessed nouns are marked in several different ways: verbal constructions, noun suffixing, or a combination of the two. In terms of noun suffixing, possessives are marked with [-ra].
Some nouns are not inflected for plurality, but noun phrases containing them will mark plurality by other means: quantity words will be added to the noun phrase; or words related to the head will be inflected for plurality.
Demonstratives mark for proximity/distance but not number. Given that Rarámuri is head final, demonstratives come before the noun. They can be used as both articles and pronouns, and can also be doubled. Storytellers will sometimes omit demonstratives in front of names of animals, showing that the animal is being ranked higher on the animacy scale and/or the animal name is being used as a proper noun.
There are several verbal suffixes for both the future and past tenses, with allomorphs of all three of the future tense suffix markers . The imperfect, conditional, passive voice, plural and singular imperative, and past participle are all marked for with suffixes as well. Interestingly, there are several suffixes that indicate different types of gerunds: past, singular, and plural.
Subject can be marked for in one of two ways. A pronoun coming before the verb can mark for 1, 2, 3 person singular and plural. Additionally, a suffix coming after the TAM marker can mark for the subject as well. In this way, subject marking is more flexible than marking for tense, aspect, and mood; however, subject pronouns cannot be used in conjunction with subject suffixes.
There are multiple suffixes that can change nouns to verbs. These suffixes cover a range of meanings, from "become" or "make" to "put on", "take off", and "have". In a similar suffix-adding process, adjectives can also become verbs. In fact, verbs can also take on suffixes to become other verbs, though noun to verb constructions are the most productive of these types of transformations.
Rarámuri utilizes valence changing processes that will most often transitivize verbs. This feature is widespread in Uto-Aztecan languages. To transitivize a verb, it is necessary to change the final vowel of the verb root. The process of applicativization involves a suffix and prefix, as well a change in voicing for the root-initial bilabial consonant. This process goes both ways: if a bilabial is [+voice], it will become [-voice] with the addition of these affixes, and vice versa.
Syntax
Rarámuri syntactic structure is fairly free, but it does, of course, have a least marked form. Like most other Uto-Aztecan languages, its default word order is SOV. If there are indirect objects, temporal makers, or locative markers, these typically come after the verb. In any case, the least marked syntax is not always found, as there are many exceptions.Word order marking of focus and topicalization is heavily used. A sentence constituent may be topicalized by placing it at the beginning of the sentence. Topicalizatin of the verb requires "emphatic" words to indicate the subject. The OVS order is the order most prevalent in narratives.
There are "emphatic" morphemes. The particle [-ka] is added to subjects; the particle [-ʔe] to noun phrases filling any grammatical role, and the suffix [-ri] is an intensifier on nouns and verbs. To "emphasize" adverbs, the prefix [ʔ-] is added. Pronouns can be emphasized by by repeating them within the sentence. In order to add still more "emphasis" to a word that already has emphatic particles, the postposition /-pa/ can be added.
Rarámuri questions have the following constructions. Sentence initial question particles are necessary. Yes-no questions are marked with the sentence-initial question particle [-ta], which can sometimes be accompanied by rising intonation on the final syllable . Wh-questions are marked with a level or falling prosodic pitch on the last syllable. These words also share a similar phonetic characteristic in that they all contain the allomorph prefixes [t͡ʃi-] or [t͡ʃe-], with the exception of [kóe], "where", which, contains the same affix, only as a suffix instead of a prefix.
To form a relative clause in Rarámuri, speakers need only place a suffix, [-ame] on the verb of the relative clause in order to achieve grammaticality. Relative clauses can come before or after a head, with the difference only being in emphasis. Sometimes, heads to which relative clauses refer can be repeated. In such instances, the head will occur directly before and directly after the relative clause that belongs to it. There also exists a construction that masks itself as a relative clause, but is really a repetition of the subject of the sentence. Often, the second repetition of the subject will be amplified or expounded upon in some way. This syntactic style is not unique to Rarámuri, but rather, it can be found in many other Uto-Aztecan languages, notably Nawa.
Mass media in Rarámuri
Rarámuri language programming is carried by the CDINational 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...
's radio station XETAR, broadcasting from Guachochi
Guachochi
Guachochi is a city in the south-western portion of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name.In the 2005 INEGI census, the city reported a total population of 12,385.-History:...
, Chihuahua.
Works cited
- Brambila, David. 1976. Diccionario Rarámuri-Castellano (Tarahumar).
- Burgess, Donald H. 1984. "Western Tarahumara," Studies in Uto-Aztecan grammar 4: Southern Uto-Aztecan grammatical sketches. Ed. Ronald W. Langacker. Summer Institute of Linguistics Publications in Linguistics 56. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. Pp. 1–149.
- Caballero, Gabriela. 2008. Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) Phonology and Morphology. Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley.
- Dakin, Karen. 2007. Final features and Proto-Uto-Aztecan: a contribution using morphological reconstruction. In Joe Salmons and Shannon Dubenion-Smith, eds., Historical linguistics 2005: selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. John Benjamins. pp. 295–310.
- Deimel, Claus. 2001. Nawésari: texte aus der Sierra Tarahumara. Berlin: D. Reimer.
- Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International
- Miller, Wick R. 1983. Uto-Aztecan languages. In Alfonso Ortiz, ed., Handbook of North American Indians, 10. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 113–124
Further reading
- Gorney, Cynthia. 2008. Tarahumara People. National Geographic, November 2008.
- Hilton, Kenneth Simon. Diccionario Tarahumara. Tucson, AZ: Instituto Linguistico de Verano, 1993.
- Zamarrón, Jose Luis and Hill, Jane H. Avances y balances de lenguas yutoaztecas. Cordoba: Colección Científica, 2001.
External links
Universal Declaration of Human RightsUniversal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly . The Declaration arose directly from the experience of the Second World War and represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled...
— translated into Rarámuri.