The Triqui (/ˈtriːki/), or Trique, languages are a family of Oto-Manguean spoken by 30,000 Trique people of the Mexican states of Oaxaca and the state of Baja California in 2007 (due to recent population movements). They are also spoken by 5,000 immigrants to the United States. Triqui languages belong to the Mixtecan branch together with the Mixtec languages and Cuicatec.[2]
Mexico's federal agency for its indigenous languages, Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI), identifies four varieties of Trique in its Catálogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales published in early 2008.[3] The variants listed by INALI are:
Itunyoso Triqui may tend to have ten geminated consonants; /mː, βː, tː, nː, lː, tːʃ, jː, ʈːʂ, kː, kːʷ/.[5][6]
Tones
All varieties of Triqui are tonal and have complex phonologies. The tone system of Copala Triqui is the best described and has eight tones.[6]
Tones in Triqui languages are typically written with superscript numbers,[6] so that chraa⁵ 'river' indicates the syllable chraa with the highest (5) tone, while cha³na¹ 'woman' has the middle (3) tone on the first syllable and the lowest (1) tone on the second syllable.
Of the Triqui languages, the Copala dialect has undergone the most vowel loss, with many non-final syllables losing their vowels. The result, as in many other Oto-Manguean languages, is a complex set of consonant clusters. So, for instance, the word si⁵kuj⁵ 'cow' in Itunyoso Triqui corresponds to skuj⁵ in Copala Triqui.
The tonal phonology of other Triqui languages is more complex than Copala Triqui. The tone system of Itunyoso Triqui has nine tones.[5] The tone system of Chicahuaxtla Triqui has at least 10 tones [7] but may have as many as 16.[8]
Orthography
Triqui has been written in a number of different orthographies, depending on the intended audience. Linguists typically write the language with all tones fully marked and all phonemes represented. However, in works intended for native speakers of Triqui, a practical orthography is often used with a somewhat simpler representation.
The following Copala Triqui example is written in both the practical (first line) and the linguistic (second line) orthographies:[9]
Me
Me³
WH
síí
zii⁵
3
rihaan
riaan³²
to
aꞌmii
aꞌmii³²
speak
so̱ꞌ
zoꞌ¹
2
ga̱
ga²
INTERR
Me síí rihaan aꞌmii so̱ꞌ ga̱
Me³ zii⁵ riaan³² aꞌmii³² zoꞌ¹ ga²
WH 3 to speak 2 INTERR
'To whom are you speaking?' (¿Con quién estás hablando?)
Morphology
Triqui bound morphology is fairly limited. Verbs take a /k-/ prefix (spelled c- or qu-) to show completive aspect:
Aꞌmiie³² izoꞌ¹.
'You are speaking'.
C-aꞌmii³² zoꞌ¹.
'You spoke'.
The same /k-/ prefix plus a tonal change shows the potential aspect:
C-aꞌmii² zoꞌ¹.
'You will speak.'
The tonal changes associated with the potential aspect are complex but always involve lowering the tone of the root (Hollenbach 1984).
There are also complex phonological processes that are triggered by the presence of root-final clitic pronouns. These pronouns (especially the first- and the second-person singular) may change the shape of the stem or alter its tone.
As a language subfamily, Triqui is interesting for having a large tonal inventory, complex morphophonology, and interesting syntactic phenomena, much of which has yet to be described.
Copala Triqui syntax is described in Hollenbach (1992).
Triqui is interesting for having toggle processes as well. For negation, a completive aspect prefix signifies the negative potential. A potential aspect prefix in the same context signifies the negative completive.
Sample text
The following is a sample of Copala Triqui taken from a legend about the Sun and the Moon.[10] The first column is Copala Triqui, the second is a Spanish translation, and the third is an English translation.
Copala Triqui:
Spanish:
English:
(1) Niánj me ꞌo̱ nana̱ maa ga̱a naá ca̱ta̱j riaan zoj riaan zo̱ꞌ riaan me maꞌa̱n ze co̱no̱ maa niánj ne̱
(2) ꞌO̱chrej me ze güii a̱ güii caꞌngaa, [neꞌé] zo̱ꞌ, chumii̱ taj nii me ze ñáán, [neꞌé] zo̱ꞌ, ꞌo̱ xcuaꞌánꞌ ꞌna̱j Caꞌaj ne̱
(3) Ñáán, [neꞌé] zo̱, xcuaꞌánꞌ Caꞌaj me ze me ndo rá yoꞌ ga̱ taꞌníí ne̱
(4) Me ndo rá ga̱ taꞌníí ne̱ za̱ a ne̱ tiempó yoꞌ ga̱a ne̱ tiempó xrmi̱ꞌ me ne̱
(5) Navij rá, [neꞌé] zo̱ꞌ, navij rá xcuaꞌánꞌ Caꞌaj.
(6) Ga̱a ne̱ "Vaa nica̱j" taj ne̱
(1) Esta es una historia antigua que les voy a relatar a ustedes, para tí, para cualquier persona que pueda escuchar esto.
(2) Erase una vez, cuando nació el universo, una abuela que se llamaba Ca'aj.
(3) Vivía la abuela Ca’aj, quien deseaba mucho tener hijos.
(4) Deseaba mucho tener hijos, pero aquel tiempo era tiempo de tinieblas.
(5) Se preocupó, se preocupó la abuela Ca’aj.
(6) Entonces ella dijo, “Tengo esposo!”
(1) Here is an ancient legend that I am going to tell you all, you, and anyone who can hear this.
(2) Once upon a time, when the universe was born, they say that there lived a grandmother named Ca’aj.
(3) There lived our Grandmother Ca’aj, who wanted to have children very much.
(4) She wanted to have children very much, but that time was a time of darkness.
As of 2012, the Natividad Medical Center of Salinas, California, was training medical interpreters bilingual in one of the Oaxacan languages (including Trique, Mixteco, or Zapotec), as well as in Spanish.[11] In March 2014, Natividad Medical Foundation launched Indigenous Interpreting+, "a community and medical interpreting business specializing in indigenous languages from Mexico and Central and South America," including Trique, Mixteco, Zapotec, and Chatino.[12]
^The proposal to group Mixtec, Trique and Cuicatec into a single family (none more closely related to one than to the other) was made by Longacre (1957) with convincing evidence.
^The catalogue is the result of a project completed by INALI in 2007 in fulfillment of its obligations under Mexican federal law to document and enumerate the indigenous languages of Mexico. The catalogue was published in the federal government's official gazette, the Diario Oficial de la Federación (DOF).
^Table data source: see "triqui" , online extract reproduced from Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (2008), p.5 [third section/Tercera Sección].
^ abcHollenbach, Barbara. The Phonology and Morphology of Tone and Laryngeals in Copala Trique. Ph.D Thesis, University of Arizona. 1984
^Good, Claude. Diccionario Triqui, volume 20 of Serie de Vocabularios Indigenas. Summer Institute of Linguistics, Mexico. 1979.
^Longacre, Robert E. Proto-Mixtecan. In Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, volume 5. Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, Bloomington. 1957
^Hollenbach, Barbara. Vocabulario breve del triqui de San Juan Copala. 2005
Broadwell, George A., Kosuke Matsukawa, Edgar Martín del Campo, Ruth Scipione and Susan Perdomo. 2009. The Origin of the Sun and Moon: A Copala Triqui Legend. Munich: LINCOM Europa.
Elliott, A. Raymond, Jerold A. Edmondson, and Fausto Sandoval Cruz. 2016. “Chicahuaxtla Triqui.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association, February, 1–15. doi:10.1017/S0025100315000389.
Elliott, A. Raymond, Fulgencio Sandoval Cruz, and Felipe Santiago Rojas. 2012. “Notes from the Field: Chicahuaxtla Triqui Digital Wordlist and Preliminary Observations” 6: 208–36.
Good, Claude. 1979. Diccionario Triqui, volume 20 of Serie de Vocabularios Indigenas. Summer Institute of Linguistics, Mexico.
Hollenbach, Barbara. 1977. El origen del sol y de la luna – cuatro versiones en el trique de Copala, Tlalocan 7:123-70.
Hollenbach, Barbara. 1984. The phonology and morphology of tone and laryngeals in Copala Trique. Ph.D. thesis, University of Arizona.
Hollenbach, Barbara, 1988. Three Trique myths of San Juan Copala. Mexico City: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Hollenbach, Barbara. 1992. A syntactic sketch of Copala Trique. in C. Henry Bradley & Barbara E. Hollenbach, eds. Studies in the syntax of Mixtecan languages, vol. 4, pp. 173–431. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Hollenbach, Barbara. 2005. Vocabulario breve del triqui de San Juan Copala. (Available at [1])
Matsukawa, Kosuke. 2008. Reconstruction of Proto-Trique Phonemes. U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics 14(1):269-281. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
