Taramara (language)

The Taraumara language belongs to the Uto-Aztec family of Indian languages, the southern (Sonor-Astek) subfamily-Tarakait branch, the Taramara group. The closest relative is the language guarihio . Native speakers, the people of Taraumara , live in northern Mexico, in the highlands of the Sierra Taraumara (also called the Copper Canyon) in Chihuahua. 90% are concentrated in the municipalities of Bokoina , Urique , Guachochi , Batopilas , Carici , Balles , Guadalupe-i-Calvo and Nonoava . Large groups live in the major cities of Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez, in the states of Baja California, Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa, Sonora and Tamaulipas.

About 70,000 people of the same name speak the language of Taraumara. During the Spanish colonization (XVII-XVIII century) of Taramara, settled on the plains, were driven into the mountains.

In accordance with the different natural conditions, they are divided into 3 sub-ethnic groups: pagotames - most of the tarahumara living on mountain slopes, whitewash - in canyons and hentes - in hard-to-reach highland areas.

Taraumara engaged in farming (corn, potatoes, beans, pumpkin) and cattle breeding (pigs; small cattle, mostly goats; cattle contained for reasons of prestige), bred poultry, are hired on plantations and logging. Ceramic production is developed, among women weaving on a primitive horizontal machine, weaving baskets and mats.

The settlements comprise from 5 to 20 families. The estate consists of one rectangular stone or log dwelling, covered with shingles, and 1-2 barns surrounding the inner courtyard.

Men's clothing consists of a loincloth (tagore) or trousers, a long shirt made of coarse cotton or woolen fabric and a cape. Hair tied with a tape or a scarf. Women wear an unstitched blouse from a whole cloth, one or several woolen zapashny skirts, a cape. Almost everyone goes barefoot.

The main food is corn chowder (quill), potatoes, beans, on holidays - meat, corn beer (tesguino).

The family handles land plots, often remote from the village, migrating to more sheltered areas in winter. Preserved community self-government, the practice of mutual aid (Korima). Each district has a center (pueblo), managed by a leader (Siriame).

Traditional beliefs - the cult of the spirits, shamanism ; holidays with dances and competitions in running.

The language of Taraumara is spoken in primary school and local administration, as well as in traditional religious practices and local business. Spanish speakers who live among or alongside Taraumara often use the Taraumara language in commerce. However, Spanish is increasingly spreading in indigenous communities. Currently, only 1% of native speakers are literate in their native language, while 20% are competently written in Spanish.

The alphabet of the central dialect from the 1948 edition: a, b, č, e, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, w, y, aˀ ^[1] .

Type of expression of grammatical meanings

Taraumara is a language of synthetic type . The primary means of expressing grammatical meanings is suffixing:

1. ne mi mé-r-ti-ma
   1sgN 2sgA win-Caus-Caus-Fut: sg
   "I will make you win"
2. ne mi wasará-n-ki-ra na'í
   1sgN 2sgA plow-Appl-Appl-Pot here
   "I can plow the land for you here."
3. ne mi rimé-n-ki-mo rá
   1sgN 2sgA make: tortillas-Appl-Appl-Fut: sg Cer
   "I will make you a cake"
4. uku-méa '
   rain: intr-fut: sg
   "It will be raining"

Character boundary between morphemes

Taraumara is an agglutinative language. Basically, the boundaries of morphemes are unambiguous - often each morpheme has its own meaning. Nevertheless, there are some deviations from prototypical agglutination: the boundaries of morphemes are not always transparent, there is a fusion of the indicators closest to the base.

Marking Type

• The predicate represents vertex marking :

1. nihé ma = mi ihá-ni-ri napači
   1sgN already = 2sgA scatter-Tr-Pst blouses
   “I scattered your blouses”
2. nihé ko á kahé pák-si-ni-ma
   1sgN Emph Aff coffee brew-Mot-Desid-Fut: sg
   "I agree to make coffee"
3. ne mi ba'wí rata-bá -! - ki-ra? 1sgN 2sgA water heat-Inch-Tr-Appl-Pot
   "Should I warm the water for you?"

• In the nominal group with passive constructions zero marking:

1. čona eči na eči rihói bitériči
   there dem prox dem man house
   "And then everyone arrived there at that man's house."
2. ma kosúrti kosúritirono + répi-ri mono
   already left leg + prune-Pst doll
   "The left foot of the doll has already fallen off . "

Role Coding Type

Active role coding, that is, agents of transitional and intransitive verbs are marked in one way, and otherwise, transitional verb patients.

Basic word order

The basic word order in a sentence, as in most other Yuto-Aztec languages, is SOV:

ne mi biné-ri-ma wikará
1sgN 2sgA learn-Caus-Fut: sg sing
"I will teach you to sing . "

Indirect additions, tense or locative markers are usually placed after verbs.

The order of OSV is also possible, which is common in narrations and serves for emphaticization.

The phonological system of the Taraumara language is characterized by a small inventory of phonemes (14 consonants and 5 vowels) and a simple syllable structure.

The language is a complex system of allophones. Many cases of variation of all phones are optional.

Vowels

In the language of the tarahumara there are 5 vowel phonemes: / a, e, i, o, u / Also, the phoneme allophone / a / appears [ə] in the position of the beginning of the word and between the shock closed vowel and the guttural bow. There is no contrast in longitude. Only vowels of the back row are rounded.

There are diphthongs, which are divided into descending - ei , oi , ui , ai - and ascending - ia , io . Descending diphthongs are found both within the code morpheme and on the intermormorphic boundaries. Rising - are in the unstressed position at the end of the word.

semé-i ' play. cello - Impf '
makói ten
sikúi aunt
kainá-niri exit. harvest - Desid

a.tí.si-a sneeze - Prog
si.rú-n.-si-o to hunt - Appl-Mot-Ep

Consonants

All explosive consonants are deaf.

There are four fricative consonants in the language - 2 deaf and 2 voiced. There are almost no restrictions on clusters of consonants .

In the taraumara there are palatal and semi-vowy labie-velor — j (always in the middle of the word) and w :

• kijóči "fox";
• kojá "burrow";
• najú "to be sick";
• kuwé "drought";
• aríwi "in the evening";
• kawi "mountain".

Consonant system:

Story structure and stress

The most common syllable structure is CV . Syllable structures V, CV ', V' are also possible . The only possible code is a guttural bow. A syllable can begin with any consonant, with the exception of the guttural stitches.

There is a limit on the place of stress in a word — it can only fall on one of the three first syllables. The language has a tonal contrast.

The most important phonological rules

1. In the beginner phrase syllables, after which the vowel, [h] , or [ʔ] does not follow, vowels acquire longitude.
2. Final vowels in a word that carry phrasal stress can optionally attach off-glides. However, the final vowels get off-glide only if the previous stressed syllable begins with explosive or affricate.
3. At the beginning of the word [a] → [ə] , if it is between the stressed vowel and [ʔ] .
4. In unstressed non-initial syllables [i] becomes less stressful.
5. In quick speech, vowels in unstressed syllables often fall out.
6. In unstressed non-initial syllables, all vowels fall out if they are between explosive (previous) and nasal (subsequent).

The basic way of affixing is suffixing. Clitics are also placed after the words. Nouns and verbs are semi-agglutinative. There are prepositions in the language as well as postpositions. Most of the roots in the language of Taraumara two - (47%) or trisyllabic (40%). 10% of the roots consist of 4 roots. Most suffixes are monosyllabic, but there are a small number of spiritually complex ones: deziderative - -nale , habitual passive - -riwa , future tense, single number - -méa , evidentiality - -čane , indirect causative - -nura .

Name

Nouns have two forms - nominative and accusative. Both indirect and direct objects are marked with the suffix [-ʔt͡ʃi]. In addition to case marking, there are also characteristic Uto-Aztec “absolutive” suffixes that appear in the absence of other suffixes. One of these “absolutive” suffixes is the suffix [-ʔt͡ʃi] [-ri].

Possessive nouns have several different ways of marking: verbal constructions, suffixes, combinations of two suffixes.

Incorporation is common in the language, nouns are often formed from verbs.
Demonstrative pronouns indicate the proximity / remoteness of an object, but not its number. Pronouns stand before nouns. They can simultaneously function as pronouns and as articles, they can also double.

Verb

• Verb roots are divided into 3 classes depending on the stress and underlying vowels. First of all, verb roots can be characterized as shock and unstressed. In stressed syllables, there are no shifts in accent or alternation of vowels. Words with unaccented roots, in turn, may shift the stress by one syllable to the right in certain morphological contexts.

Example of the impact root: rimú-ri , rimú-ra , rimú-bo , rimú-sa - in all forms the stress falls on the second syllable.
Unstressed root: sukú-ri sukú-ra suku-bó suku-sa ' - in some forms the stress is shifted by the syllable to the right.

The suffixes that cause the stress shift are the following:

-nare (desiderative) suku-náre
-ru (past passive) suku-rú

-ta (potential) suku-tá
-méa / -ma (future sg) suku-méa
-me (motion imperative) suku-me

Unstressed roots are further divided into 2 classes: 1) roots with a fully-defined unchanged vowel 2) roots with an indefinite final vowel.

1) kur u -kur u -kur u

2) ra'r v -ra'r i ra'r a

In addition, unstressed roots can participate in the allomorph-based system, marking the predicate valence. There are 3 types of bases: intransitive, transitional and applicative.

Intransitive
nihé ma noko-méa
1sgN already move: intr-fut: sg
'I will move'

Transitive
ma rará-ki
buy now: Tr-Pst: 1
'(He) already bought it

Applicative
nihé mi troka noké-ri
1sgN 2sgA truck move: Appl-Pst
'I will move the truck for you'

• The well-known feature of the Uto-Aztec languages ​​is the presence of instrumental prefixes marking the instrument with which the transitional action was performed, or how the activity is carried out.

• Taraumara demonstrates limited resources of the expression of multiplicity. As in most of the Yuto-Aztec languages, Taraumara has suppositive plural forms for some verbal roots:

units the number is asi- , pl. number - močí- "sit."

In addition to suppletivism, there is another, less productive, way of expressing a verb number in language. The first is used only for verb roots and marks the subject's number according to an accusative pattern. When the subject is one, the prefix ni- is added or prefixing does not occur at all, the prefix na- is used to mark the subject's multiplicity .

• Suffixation is common in verbal word formation.

Verb suffixes:

• There is a hierarchy of verb suffixes in the language. The suffixes closest to the base reflect less characteristic of morphemes.

There are 5 zones of the verb, following the inner basis: derivative basis, syntactic basis, species basis, finite level, dependent verb level.

Verb stem levels:

• Caballero, Gabriela . 2008. Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) Phonology and Morphology . Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley.
• Hilton, Kenneth S. et al. Diccionario tarahumara de Samachique, Chihuahua, México