Kaqchikel language

Infobox Language
name=Kaqchikel (Cakchiquel)
nativename=Kaqchikel Ch'ab'äl
states=Guatemala
region=Central Highlands
speakers=approx. 500,000
familycolor=American
fam1=Mayan
fam2=Quichean-Mamean
fam3=Greater Quichean
fam4=Quichean
iso2=myn
iso3=cak
lc1=cak|ld1=Central|ll1=none
lc2=cke|ld2=Eastern|ll2=none
lc3=ckw|ld3=Western|ll3=none
lc4=ckd|ld4=South Central|ll4=none
lc5=ckf|ld5=Southern|ll5=none
lc6=ckc|ld6=Northern|ll6=none
lc7=cki|ld7=Santa María de Jesús|ll7=none
lc8=ckj|ld8=Santo Domingo Xenacoj|ll8=none
lc9=cbm|ld9=Yepocapa Southwestern|ll9=none
lc10=ckk|ld10=Akatenango Southwestern|ll10=noneThe Kaqchikel, or Kaqchiquel, language (in modern orthography; formerly also spelled Cakchiquel or Cakchiquiel) is an indigenous Mesoamerican language and a member of the Quichean-Mamean branch of the Mayan languages family. It is spoken by the indigenous Kaqchikel people in central Guatemala. It is closely related to the K'iche' (Quiché) and Tz'utujil languages.

Phonology

In the charts below, each of the Kaqchikel phonemes is represented by the character or set of characters that denote it in the standard orthography developed by the Guatemalan Academy of Mayan Languages (ALMG) and sanctioned by the Guatemalan government.Where different, the corresponding symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet appears in brackets.

Vowels

Kaqchikel dialects differ somewhat in their vowels.Each dialect has a set of five tense vowels and either one, two, four, or five lax vowels. [Patal Majzul et al., 2000, pp. 34ff.] The chart below shows all the possible vowels that can occur in dialects of Kaqchikel. While the dialect of Sololá uses the maximal, ten-vowel system with all the vowels except schwa IPA|/ə/, the dialects of San Juan Sacatepéquez and San Andrés Semetabaj only use the five tense vowels and schwa.

And before a vowel, these are found:

When the ergative forms are being used to denote the subject of a transitive verb, some of the forms differ. Before consonants, first person singular "nu-" becomes "in-" and third person singular "ru-" becomes "u-". Before vowels, first person singular "w-" becomes "inw-", third person singular "u-" becomes "ur-", first person plural "qa-" becomes "w-", and third person plural "ki-" becomes "kiw-".

The third person singular of the ergative is variable in its phonology, and the initial /r/ is often omitted, with variability among the different dialects of Kaqchikel.Absolutive agreement has three functions: its marks the subject of an intransitive verb, the subject of a non-verbal predicate, and the object of a transitive verb. Unlike ergative agreement, it has only one set of forms, which are used before both consonants and vowels.

Note that the third person singular is unmarked. In some dialects, an epenthetic vowel is inserted between a marker of the incompletive or potential states and the base, in the space which would be occupied by the absolutive prefix. However, this is not an allophone of the absolutive third person singular marker, but rather a phonetic addition which is not related to the case marking system.

Also, it is important to note that marking of subjects and objects occurs only on the verb, not on any nouns which may fill those roles as constituents. Agreement can take the place of pronouns, thus the language has pro-drop.

Word order

Kaqchikel has a word order in which the head of a phrase usually comes before any other element of the phrase. The following sentences show examples of the order of sentences, determiner phrases (DP), noun phrases (NP), prepositional phrases (PP), and quantifier phrases (QP):
*1) X-u-pax-ij ri achin ri b’ojoy
com-3sE-break-tr the man the pot
‘The man broke the pot’

*2) [_DP Ru-tz’e’ [_NP a Xwan] x-u-k’ux ri ak’wal. 3sErg-dog cl Juan com-3sErg-bite the child
‘Juan’s dog bit the child.’

*3) K’o jun ch’oy [_PP chrij ri chak’at] . exist a mouse behind:3sErg the chair
‘ There is a mouse behind the chair.’


*4) A Xwan x-u-tij [_QP r-onojel ri kinäq] .

*4) A Xwan x-u-tij [_QP r-onojel ri kinäq] . cl Juan com-3sErg-eat 3sErg-all the bean
‘Juan ate all the beans.’

Sentences show considerable variability in their word order. The syntactic function of words is determined not only by their position at the beginning, middle or end of a sentence, but also by their definiteness, level of animation and potency, and a logical analysis of what role each word can play in the sentence. (For example, the verb "to throw" with the nouns "child" and "stone" can only have one logical ordering, regardless of the position of the nouns with respect to the verb. For this reason, an inanimate constituent cannot be the subject if the other constituent is animate.). Due to these conditions, Kaqchikel word order is relatively free and various orderings can be seen without there being any confusion or lack of understanding.

Possible word orders that can occur in Kaqchikel are verb-first orders (VSO, VOS) and subject-first orders (SVO, SOV). (V: verb, S: subject, O: object)
*Verb-first orders (VSO, VOS). When the verb occurs first and only one constituent is definte, then that constituent functions as the subject. If both constituents are definite, then the one closest to the verb (the first constituent) is the subject; if both constituents are indefinite, then the subject is the latter of the two.
*Subject-first orders (SVO, SOV). The subject can come first only if it is animate and the object is not. In this case, the definiteness of the two constituents does not matter; that is to say, the subject can be either definite or indefinite, so long as it is animate and occurs first. The order of the verb and object is unimportant.

The following sentences show examples of Kaqchikel word order:

Other constituents of a sentence, such as dative, comitative, agentive, and adverbial phrases, tend to come first in the sentence. However, they can also come after the nucleus of the sentence, the predicate.

Reduplication

An interesting morphological process occurs in Kaqchikel to make up for the lack of a word meaning "very". For example, the Kaqchikel word for "large" is IPA|/nim/; to say that something is "very large", the adjectival form is reduplicated as IPA|/nim nim/. This form is not a single word but two separate words which, when combined, add the meaning of "very" to the reduplicated adjective.

Linguistic Relations

In Joseph Greenberg's Amerind hypothesis, Kaqchikel is classified as a member of the Penutian stock, in the Mayan branch of the Mexican family within that stock. This means that, according to Greenberg's hypothesis, Kaqchikel is related not only to other languages of the Yucatan Peninsula and nearby areas of Mexico and Central America, but also to languages in the southeastern United States, California and the Pacific Northwest, and as far away as northern British Columbia.

Greenberg's hypothesis has received huge amounts of negative criticism from many important linguists ever since it was first published in 1987. In Greenberg's etymological dictionary of Amerind, Kaqchikel words are found in 5 entries. Four of the entries are unremarkable; but the fifth uses two words, "a-ĉin" and "iŝ-tan", as examples of a protophoneme "*t'ina / t'ana / t'una", meaning "son/child/daughter" despite the fact that "a-ĉin" was already used in the dictionary to mean "elder". This is an example of a commonly-cited flaw in the work, which is that Greenberg reaches too far in search of evidence. In general, the documentation of Kaqchikel in the Amerind etymological dictionary serves to highlight the problems with the hypothesis more than it helps Greenberg's cause.

Notes

References

:cite book
author = aut|Brown, R. McKenna
coauthors =aut|Judith M. Maxwell, and aut|Walter E. Little
year= 2006
title = ¿La ütz awäch? Introduction to Kaqchikel Maya Language
others = Angelika Bauer (illus.)
publisher = University of Texas Press
location = Austin
isbn = 0-292-71460-2
oclc =71238541 :cite book
author = aut|Cojti Macario, Narciso
coauthors = aut|Martín Chacäch Cutzal, and aut|Marcos Armando Cali
year = 1998
title = Diccionario del idioma Kaqchikel. Kaqchikel-Español
publisher = Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín
location = Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala
oclc= 41572509 :cite book
author = aut|García Matzar, Pedro Oscar
coauthors = aut|Valerio Toj Cotzajay, and aut|Domingo Coc Tuiz
year = 1992
title = Gramática del idioma Kaqchikel
others = Nora C. England (advisor), Vitalino Pérez Martínez (coord.)
publisher = Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín (PLFM)
location = Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala
oclc= 30474328 es icon:cite book
author = aut|Herbruger Jr., Alfredo
year = 1956
coauthors =and aut|Eduardo Diaz Barrios
title = Método para aprender a hablar, leer y escribir la lengua cakchiquel
location = Guatemala City, Guatemala
publisher = Talleres de la Tipografía Nacional de Guatemala
oclc= 150441108 es icon:cite book
author=aut|Patal Majzul, Filiberto
coauthors=aut|Pedro Oscar García Matzar, and aut|Carmelina Espantzay Serech
year= 2000
title= Rujunamaxik ri Kaqchikel Chi' = Variación dialectal en Kaqchikel
publisher= Proyecto de Investigación Lingüística de Oxlajuuj Keej Maya’ Ajtz’iib’ (OKMA); Editorial Cholsamaj
location = Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala
isbn=99922-53-13-4
oclc=46849157

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=92230 Kaqchikel language family tree] , per Ethnologue
* [http://www.mayan.ku.edu/ University of Kansas Kaqchikel Mayan Resource Center]