West Central Quiché

West Central Quiché

Infobox Language
name=West Central Quiché
nativename=K'iche'
pronunciation=/kʼiʧeʔ/
states=Guatemala
region=Central highlands
speakers=250,000
familycolor=American
fam1=Mayan
fam2=Quichean-Mamean
fam3=Greater Quichean
fam4=Quichean
fam5=Quiché-Achi
iso2=myn|iso3=qut

West Central Quiché (K'iche') is a Mayan language spoken by approximately 250,000 people in the western highlands of Guatemala. It is sometimes considered a dialect of a larger Quiché language, as many forms of Quiché are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. The Quichéan languages are the most widely-spoken indigenous language group in Guatemala, with approximately one million native speakers.

Phonology

A table of the phoneme inventory of West Central Quiché is provided below, as transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Selected allophones have been included in parentheses.

Verbs

Verbs are highly morphologically complex, and can take numerous prefixes and suffixes serving both inflectional and derivational purposes. Verbs are inflected to agree with the subject and object. As with other Mayan languages, agreement with intransitive subjects and transitive objects is marked on the verb with the corresponding absolutive marker, while agreement with the transitive subject is marked on the verb with the corresponding ergative marker. The ergative and absolutive markers are shown in the table below. When two forms are given for the ergative marker, the first form occurs preconsonantally and the second for occurs prevocalically.

yntax

As with all Mayan languages, West Central Quiché has an ergative pattern of verb agreement, and often uses VSO word order. Most modern speakers of West Central Quiché use SOV, SVO, and VSO word orders interchangeably. Language purists have tried to preserve the traditional verb-initial word order, while influence from Spanish (an SVO language) promotes a subject-initial order.

References

*Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.


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