Totonacan languages Totally Explained

Everything about the Totonacan Languages totally explained

The Totonacan Languages are a family of closely-related languages spoken by approximately 200,000 Totonac and Tepehua people in the states of Veracruz, Puebla, and Hidalgo in Mexico. The Totonacan languages are not demonstrably related to any other languages, although they share numerous areal features with other languages of the Mesoamerican sprachbund such as the Mayan languages and Nahuatl.

Divisions

Although the family is traditionally divided into two languages, Totonac and Tepehua, the various dialects thereof are not mutually intelligible and thus Totonac and Tepehua are better characterized as families in themselves. The following classification is the one made by the Ethnologue - although some of these groups can probably be seen as forming subgroups of their own. Standard terminology is used for the dialects that the Ethnologue names differently from published scholarly works for example "Upper Necaxa Totonac" instead of "Totonac of Patla-Chicontla".

Language	ISO-Code	Where spoken	Number of speakers
Totonac of Coyutla	toc	Coyutla, Puebla	48,062 (2000 WCD)
Totonac of Filomena Mata-Coahuitlán	tlp	the Town of Filomena-Mata, Highland Veracruz, surrounded by Highland Totonac	15,108 (2000 WCD)
Highland Totonac	tos	Around Zacatlán, Puebla, and Veracruz	120,000
Totonac of Ozumatlán	tqt	Northern Puebla: Ozumatlán, Tepetzintla, Tlapehuala, San Agustín	4,000 (1990 census).
Papantla Totonac	top	Around Papantla, central lowland Veracruz	80,000 (1982 SIL).
Upper Necaxa Totonac	tot	Northeastern Puebla, Patla, Chicontla, Tecpatlán	6,000 (1990 census)
Totonac de Xicotepec	too	In 30 Villages around Xicotepec de Juárez northern sierra de Puebla and Veracruz	3,000
Misantla Totonac	tlc	Yecuatla and Misantla in southern Veracruz	<500

Tepehua ~10,000>

Language	ISO-Code	Where spoken	Number of speakers
Tepehua of Huehuetla	tee	Northeastern Hidalgo, Huehuetla, and half the town of Mecapalapa in Puebla.	3,000 (1982 SIL)
Tepehua of Pisaflores	tpp	Around the town of Pisaflores Veracruz	4,000 (1990 census).
Tepehua of Tlachichilco	tpt	Tlachichilco, Vera Cruz	3,000 (1990 SIL).

This classification will likely evolve as more reconstructive work is done on the family.
Like many indigenous languages of Mexico, these languages are slowly giving way to Spanish. Of them, however, only Misantla Totonac is in immediate danger of extinction; the rest appear to be spoken in viable language communities.

Tepehua

Tepehua is spoken across a number of central Mexican states by the Tepehua ethnic group. It isn't to be confused with the language called Tepehuán which is Uto-Aztecan. Tepehua is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits which define the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.

Totonac

Phonology

There is some variation between the phoneme inventories of the different dialects of Totonac and Tepehua, but the following phonome inventory which is reconstructed as proto-Totonacan by Arana (1953) can be considered a prototypical totonacan inventory.

Consonants

Table of Totonacan consonants

	Labial	Alveolar		Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
	Labial	central	lateral	Palatal	Velar	Uvular
Nasal	m	n
Plosive	p	t			k	q
Affricate		ts	tɬ	tʃ
Fricative		s	ɬ	ʃ	x		h
Approximant			l	j	w

Vowels

Totonacan vowels>

	Front		Central		Back
	creaky	plain	creaky	plain	creaky	plain
Close	ḭ	i			ṵ	u
Open			a̰	a

Grammatical traits

Like many American Indian languages, the Totonacan languages are highly agglutinative and polysynthetic. Furthermore, they exhibit many features of the Mesoamerican areal type, such as a preference for verb-initial order, head-marking, and extensive use of body part roots in metaphorical and locative constructions.
Two features distinctive of Totonacan are worth mentioning in further detail: first, the comitative construction, and secondly body-part incorporation. Most of the examples that follow are taken from Misantla Totonac, but illustrate processes found in all the Totonacan languages.

The Comitative Construction

Languages of the family in have a comitative construction in which both an actor and a co-actor of a verb are specified. For instance, a verb like 'go' can take a comitative prefix to form a verb meaning 'go with someone', someone being the co-actor. In some of the languages of the family, these constructions specify the co-actor as an object:
� Upper Necaxa Totonac

   ikta:a'na:n � ik–ta:–a'n–a:–n

   1sg.sub–COM–go–IMPF–2obj � "I go with you"

In other languages, the co-actor can be inflected as a second subject. For example, a verb "run" may be inflected with both 1st person and 2nd person subject affixes simultaneously to give a sentence meaning "You and I run", "You run with me", or "I run with you". � Iklaatsaa'layaa'n.

   Ik-laa-tsaa'la-yaa-'-na � 1s-COM-run-imperf-2s-COM

   "You and I run".

Body-Part Incorporation

The Totonacan languages exhibit noun incorporation, but only special prefixing combing forms of body-part roots may be incorporated. When these roots are incorporated, they serve to delimit the verb's the locus of affect -- that is, they indicate which part of the subject or object is affected by the action. � Ikintsuu'ksaan.

   Ik-kin-tsuu'ks-yaa-na � 1s-nose-kiss-imperf-2o

   "I kiss your nose. (Lit: "I nose-kiss you.") � Tuuxqatka'n.

   tuu-xqat-kan-' � foot-wash-REFL-2s

   "You wash your foot/feet" (Lit: "You foot-wash yourself".)
   A body-part root acting as a non-agentive subject may also be incorporated. � Ikaa'ka'tsan.

   Ik-kaa'k-ka'tsan � 1s-head-hurt

   "My head hurts." (Lit: "I head-hurt".)
   It is worthwhile to note that Totonacan noun incorporation never decreases the valency of the verb, making Totonacan very typologically unusual. The lack of valency-reducing noun incorporation, which is the cross-linguistically the most common type, may well be due to the very tight semantic restrictions on incorporable nouns.

Sound Symbolism

A prominent feature of Totonacan languages is the presence of sound symbolism. Through this trait the meaning of words can be altered slightly by substituting a consonant for another, for example indicating intensification or size.

Media

Totonacan-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XECTZ-AM, broadcasting from Cuetzalan, Puebla.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Totonacan Languages'.

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