Ixcatec (in Ixcatec: or ) is a language spoken by the people of the Mexican village of Santa María Ixcatlan, in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca. The Ixcatec language belongs to the Popolocan branch of the Oto-Manguean language family. It is believed to have been the second language to branch off from the others within the Popolocan subgroup, though there is a small debate over the relation it has to them.Fernandez de Miranda, Maria Teresa. (1956). Glotocronologia de la familiar popoloca. Mexico, DF: Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH)
According to the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, there were only 8 speakers of the language in 2008.Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, "SÓLO QUEDAN OCHO HABLANTES DE XWJA O IXCATECO EN SANTA MARÍA IXCATLÁN, OAXACA", Press Release, May 27, 2008 In 2010, 190 speakers of Ixcatec were registered. In 2020, 195 people reported speaking the language. The small number of current speakers is the result of a steady decline over the last 60 years, which can be attributed to anti-illiteracy campaigns by the Mexican government that discouraged the use of indigenous languages, migration from the area to the cities, and the small initial population of speakers of the language.Monaghan, John D. and Jeffrey Cohen, "30 Years of Oaxacan Ethnography," in "Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 6: Ethnology," Victoria R. Bricker, John D. Monaghan, Eds. University of Texas Press, 2000.
Despite the lack of historical documentation in Ixcatec, written speech has been observed to use Latin script following the arrival of the Spaniards.Evangelia Adamou. The Popolocan languages. Soeren Wichmann. Languages and Linguistics of Mexico and Northern Central America: A Comprehensive Guide, Mouton de Gruyter, In press. ⟨halshs-03153566⟩ The earliest document written in Ixcatec is from 1939, when native speaker Doroteo Jiménez wrote a letter to Lázaro Cárdenas, the president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.Swanton, Michael. (2008). La escritura indigena como "material linguistico". Una carta en lengua ixcateca al presidente Lazaro Cardenas. In van Doesburg, Sebastian (ed), Pictografia y escritura alfabetica en Oaxaca, 353-387. Oaxaca: Instituto Estatal de Educacion Publica de Oaxaca Later on, an orthography for the language had begun development in the 1950s with reliance on the Spanish alphabet when necessary.
Ixcatec derives its name from the Nahuatl word meaning 'cotton'. In Spanish it can be referred to by the term , in which the added on suffix -teco stems from the Nahuatl suffixes -teca/-tecatl which means 'inhabitant of a place', especially one with a name ending in -tlan or -lan. This term can be traced back to the eighteenth century.Evangelia Adamou. The Popolocan languages. Soeren Wichmann. Languages and Linguistics of Mexico and Northern Central America: A Comprehensive Guide, Mouton de Gruyter, In press. ⟨halshs-03153566⟩ p. 3
Classification The Ixcatec language belongs to the Oto-Manguean language family, and to the Popolocan branch. The closest languages to Ixcatec, genetically speaking, are Mazatec, Chocholtec and Popolocan.
Characteristics Like other Oto-Manguean languages, Ixcatec is a tonal language and it distinguishes between long and short vowels. Due to the low number of speakers, Ixcatec is considered a language with a high risk of disappearing.
Phonology
Consonants The following table presents the consonants of Ixcatec. Plosives can be voiceless or voiced (the second row contains the voiceless plosives while the third contains the voiced ones) as well as affricates. The voiceless bilabial stop /p/ and the trill /rr/ are the only consonants to be borrowed from Spanish (though there is only one case in which /p/ possibly was not: ʔu2ča1pi1 [ʔu2ša1pi1] 'cenzontle'.Fernandez Carrillo, Maria Teresa. “FONEMICA DEL IXCATECO.” Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1950.
+Ixcatec ConsonantsLabialDentalAlveolarAlveopalatalVelarGlottalPlosivevoiceless voiced Fricative Affricatevoiceless voiced Nasal Approximant LateralRhotictrill flap
Most consonant groupings contain one of the following consonants: /ʔ/, /h/, and /n/. /ʔ/ and /h/ occur in the final position of a grouping, but precede nasals and /j/ whereas /n/ usually precedes a voiced consonant: /mb/, /nd/, /nd͡ʒ/, /ŋg/, etc.Veerman-Leichsenring, A. (2001). Ixcateco: La Frase Nominal. Anales de Antropología, 35, 323–358., p. 327
Vowels There are five oral and five nasal vowels in the Ixcatec inventory. The following table presents the pairs of vowels with the oral one preceding the nasalized version. FrontCentralBackClose Mid Open Vowels are grouped into diphthongs or non-diphthongs. A diphthong contains the vowel /i/ or /u/ (or their nasal counterparts) followed by a different vowel.Veerman-Leichsenring, A. (2001). Ixcateco: La Frase Nominal. Anales de Antropología, 35, 323–358, p. 326 However, both components of the diphthong must have the same manner of articulation (oral or nasal). Diphthongs generally appear in inflectional forms of stems ending in /i/ or /u/, or their nasalized versions, and are represented with one tone.
Additionally, vowels can be distinguished by length. A long vowel is composed of two of the same vowels with identical tones. It is represented with two vowels and a single tone (e.g. cee2 'do', ce2 'moss'). A word-final long vowel can also be the result of suffixation. For example, the word ra2te3 'sandal' followed by the suffix that indicates third-person possession creates ra2tee3 'his/her sandal'.
Phonological alternations A change in context influences the sound of the consonant /h/. /h/ is pronounced as a glottal fricative [h] in a nasal context and when it is near a consonant other than [r]. Some examples include thi2 'cane' [thi2] and nĩ1he˜2 'three' [nĩ1he˜2]. However, in an oral context and when following an /r/, it becomes velarized, as is the case with si1hi3 '''foot' [si1xi3].
Tone There are three tones in Ixcatec. They are represented by superscript numbers following vowels, which are the main carriers of tone. They are as follows: 1 indicates a high tone, 2 indicates a medium tone, and 3 indicates a low tone. The distinction between tones is greatest between stressed syllables since they lose most of their distinctive value in syllables that precede a stressed one. Tones may undergo changes due to the influence of adjacent tones and morphological processes.
There are nine possible combinations of tones within disyllabic words according to Fernandez (1950):Fernandez Carrillo, Maria Teresa. “FONEMICA DEL IXCATECO.” Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1950. p.30 +Disyllabic Tone CombinationsCombinationExample1-1/ tíjé /ti1ye1 'black'1-2/ t͡sútxē /cu1txe2 'trash'1-3/ kwátè /kwa1te3 'short'2-1/ nāʔmí /na2ʔmi1 'cure'2-2/ tʲūsī /tyu2si2 'lemon'2-3/ ʃāxù /ša2xu3 'dew'3-1/ ʃìkéː /ši1ke3e3 'his/her herb'3-2/ jàʃwī /ya3šwi2 'stick'3-3/ kànè /ka3ne3 'boiled maize dish' Fernandez (1950) also proposed twenty-six hypothetical combinations of tones within trisyllabic words.Fernandez Carrillo, Maria Teresa. “FONEMICA DEL IXCATECO.” Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1950. p.30-32
Syllable structure The maximal syllable structure in Ixcatec is CCV,Veerman-Leichsenring, A. (2001). Ixcateco: La Frase Nominal. Anales de Antropología, 35, 323–358, p. 327 where ‹C› represents any consonant. There are no coda consonants, so that words like ť̌u2škũ2 /tʲūʃkũ̄/ and u2hñu3/ūhɲù/ are syllabified as /tʲū.ʃkũ̄/ and /ū.hɲù/, respectively. Syllables that begin with a vowel only appear in a non-initial position. The initial consonant can also be the voiceless glottal stop, /ʔ/, but it does not occur when it directly precedes a vowel. V can be a simple vowel, a long vowel, or a diphthong. Disyllabic words are composed of two different tones.
Although stress is difficult to perceive in most words, it is believed that it falls on the penultimate syllable. The stress causes a prolonged articulation, slightly or prominently, on the consonant or group of consonants that follow it. The stress is clearly shown in the inflected forms, where it is displaced as a result of suffixing a syllable of the CVT type. For example, the form of the word ra2te3 'sandal' is pronounced [ra2tte3] with the /t/ slightly lengthened. However, in the form ra2te3ni1 'our sandals', the stress moves towards the penultimate syllable where it is expressed by lengthening the consonant /n/: [ra2te3nni1].
Morphology
Processes The most general morphological process in Ixcatec is affixation. However, one known account of complete reduplication occurs when the adjective ʔi1 'small' becomes ʔi1ʔi1 when pluralized.Fernandez Carrillo, Maria Teresa. “FONEMICA DEL IXCATECO.” Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1950. p. 58
Another morphological process is tonal change. In almost all the verbs and some nouns, tonal change indicates past or future tense. PastFuturekwa1te3 'to have cut'kwa3te3 'to cut'kwa2cu3ndu2 'night'kwa1cu2nda2 'night' When there is a vowel /i/ in the last two syllables of a disyllabic or trisyllabic noun, and the possessive suffixes of the second and third persons are added, the final /i/ becomes lowered and centralized. For example, nǰi2xi3 'pasture' becomes nǰi2xe3e3 'his pasture'.Fernandez Carrillo, Maria Teresa. “FONEMICA DEL IXCATECO.” Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1950. p. 59
Regressive assimilation occurs in disyllabic words that have an /a/ in each syllable separated by the glottal stop /ʔ/. To form the possessive of the third person singular and plural, the first vowel assimilates to the one in the suffix. For instance, na2ʔa1 'mother' becomes ne2ʔe1e1 'her mother'.
Grammatical persons The nominal phrase has at least a noun or a pronoun that frequently precedes an article and one or more adjectives. The subject of possession is expressed within the noun by the addition of an ending.Veerman-Leichsenring, A. (2001). Ixcateco: La Frase Nominal. Anales de Antropología, 35, 323–358, p. 329
There are four inflected forms for the first person, second person, third person, and collective subjects. Personal pronouns are optionally used to emphasize the person of the subject, or to avoid confusion between subjects. The pronouns that correspond to the four grammatical persons are i2na1na3 (first person), i2la3 (second person), su2wa2 (third person), and i2ni1 (first person plural).
Respect shown towards a second-person subject is expressed by adding the enclitic ri1 to the end of the second-person pronoun: i2la3ri1 ('you' formal, equivalent to in Spanish). The third-person pronoun is commonly followed by a coreferential pronoun indicating the gender or plurality of the third person. This pronoun corresponds to an antecedent noun: su2wa2da3 'he/him', su2wa2kua3 'she/her', su2wa2ba3 'it' (as with animals), and su2wa2ma3 'them'.
Nouns Nouns can be either subjects or sentence complements. Most of the multisyllabic nouns in this language are compounds. The first component is generally a morpheme that classifies the noun in one of various generic classes, which includes trees, animals, flowers, people, etc. These classifying prefixes correspond to nouns with a particular generic class. For instance, the noun u2 'animal' is used as a classifying prefix u2- in the names of animals. The second component of nouns does not have any significant meaning and thus cannot function on its own.Veerman-Leichsenring, A. (2001). Ixcateco: La Frase Nominal. Anales de Antropología, 35, 323–358, p. 330
Some nouns that are used most frequently as classifiers in noun compounds are:Veerman-Leichsenring, A. (2001). Ixcateco: La Frase Nominal. Anales de Antropología, 35, 323–358, pp. 330-31 ClassExamples/u2/, animalAnimals: u2-u2ni2ña3 'dog'