- Cora language
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Cora naáyarite Spoken in Mexico: Nayarit, Jalisco, Durango Native speakers 8,000 (date missing) Language family Uto-aztecan- Corachol
- Cora
Official status Official language in None Regulated by Secretaría de Educación Pública Language codes ISO 639-3 crn This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. The Cora language is an indigenous language of Mexico of the Uto-Aztecan language family. It is spoken by the ethnic group that is widely known as the Cora but who refer to themselves as Naáyarite. The Cora inhabit the northern sierra of the Mexican state Nayarit which is named after its indigenous inhabitants. Cora is a Mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. Under the "Law of Linguistic Rights" it is recognized as a "national language" along with 62 other indigenous languages and Spanish which have the same "validity" in Mexico [1].
Contents
Geographic distribution
There are two main variants of Cora. One is that spoken in the Sierra de Nayarit ranges of Jalisco, called Cora del Nayar or Cora Meseño, with approximately 9,000 speakers (1993 census). The other variant is called Cora de Santa Teresa and is spoken by approximately 7,000 people (1993 census) in north-central Nayarit. Cora de Santa Teresa has such a low degree of mutual intelligibility with other Cora speech communities that Ethnologue considers it a separate variety. Due to recent migrations a small community of Coras exists in the United States in western Colorado.
Genealogy
The closest relatives of the Cora language is the Huichol language together with which it forms the Coracholan subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan languages. The Taracahitan group of languages containing among others the languages Tarahumara, Yaqui and Mayo is also related to Cora.
- General Uto-Aztecan
- Coracholan branch
- Huichol language
- Cora languages
- Cora (also called Cora of Nayar or Cora Meseño)
- Santa Teresa Cora
- Coracholan branch
Phonology
The phonology of Cora is typical of southern Uto-aztecan languages with five vowels and a relatively simple consonant inventory. However atypically of Uto-aztecan languages Cora has developed a simple tonal system or pitch accent with an harmonic accent taking high falling tone.
Consonants
Bilabial Alveolar Palatal / Retroflex Velar Glottal Plosives p/b pʷ t k kʷ ʔ Fricatives s ʂ x h Affricates ts tʃ Liquids l ɽ Nasals m mʷ n Semivowels w j Vowels
Front Central Back Close
(high)i ʉ u Mid ɛ Open
(low)ɑ Grammar
Cora is a verb-initial language; its grammar is agglutinative and polysynthetic, particularly inflecting verbs with many affixes and clitics. There are a number of adpositional clitics that can also be used as relational nouns.
Nominal morphology
Nouns are marked for possession and exhibit several different plural patterns.
Pluralization
Different classes of nouns mark the plural in different manners. The most common way is by means of suffixes - The suffixes used for pluralization are the following: -te, -mwa, -mwa'a, -tse, -tsi, -kʉ, -sʉ, -se, -si, -ri and -i. Other ways to form the plural is by reduplication of the final vowel of a noun stem or by shifting the accent from one syllable to the other. Another class of works form their plurals by suppletion.
Possession
Possessed nouns are marked with a prefix expressing the person and number of their possessor. The forms of the prefix expressing first person singular is ne-, na-, or ni-, for second person singular it is a-, mwa'a-, a'a-. The third person singular is marked by the prefix ru-. A first person plural possessor is marked by the prefix ta-, second person plural by ha'amwa- and third person plural by wa'a-. Furthermore there are two suffixes. One, -ra'an is used to mark an obviative or fourth person possessor. The other is -me'en used to mark a plural possessum of a singular possessor.
Possessive paradigm Number/person of Possessor Singular Plural 1. person nechi'i "my house" tachi'i "our house" 2. person achi'i "your house" há'amwachi'i "Your (pl.) house" 3. person ruchi'i "his/her own house" wa'áchi'i "Their house" 4. person chí'ira'an "the house of the other" pl. possessum + 3.p.sg. possessor chí'imeen "his/her houses" Verbal morphology
Verbs are inflected for person and number of subject and direct object and object prefixes for 3rd person inanimate objects also show the basic shape of the object. Verbs are also inflected for location and direction.
Syntax
Typologically Cora is interesting because it is a VSO language but also has postpositions, a trait that is rare cross-linguistically but does occur in a few Uto-Aztecan languages (Papago, Tepehuán, and some dialects of Nahuatl).
Media
Cora-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEJMN-AM, broadcasting from Jesús María, Nayarit.
References
- Preuss, Konrad Theodor: Grammatik der Cora-Sprache, Columbia, New York 1932
- Miller, Wick. (1983). Uto-Aztecan languages. In W. C. Sturtevant (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 10, pp. 113–124). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.
- McMahon, Ambrosio & Maria Aiton de McMahon. (1959) Vocabulario Cora. Serie de Vocabularios Indigenas Mariano Silva y Aceves. SIL.
- Casad, Eugene H.. 2001. "Cora: a no longer unknown Southern Uto-Aztecan language." In José Luis Moctezuma Zamarrón and Jane H. Hill (eds), Avances y balances de lenguas yutoaztecas; homenaje a Wick R. Miller p. 109-122. Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia.
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AwakatekOther languages spoken in MexicoCategories:- Language articles with undated speaker data
- Agglutinative languages
- Indigenous languages of Mexico
- Mesoamerican languages
- Uto-Aztecan languages
- Endangered Uto-Aztecan languages
- VSO languages
- Corachol
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