TheTriqui (/ˈtriːki/), orTrique, languages are a family ofOto-Manguean spoken by 30,000Trique people of the Mexican states ofOaxaca and the state ofBaja California in 2007 (due to recent population movements). They are also spoken by 5,000 immigrants to the United States. Triqui languages belong to theMixtecan branch together with theMixtec languages andCuicatec.[2]
Mexico's federal agency for its indigenous languages,Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas (INALI), identifies four varieties of Trique in itsCatálogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales published in early 2008.[3] The variants listed by INALI are:
As of 2012, theNatividad Medical Center ofSalinas, California, was training medical interpreters bilingual in one of theOaxacan languages (including Trique,Mixteco, orZapotec), as well as in Spanish.[5] 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, andChatino.[6]
All varieties of Triqui aretonal and have complex phonologies. The tone system of Copala Triqui is the best described and has eight tones.[10]
Tones in Triqui languages are typically written with superscript numbers,[10] so thatchraa⁵ 'river' indicates the syllablechraa with the highest (5) tone, whilecha³na¹ '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 wordsi⁵kuj⁵ 'cow' in Itunyoso Triqui corresponds toskuj⁵ 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.[9] The tone system of Chicahuaxtla Triqui has at least 10 tones[11] but may have as many as 16.[12]
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.[13]
Triquibound morphology is fairly limited. Verbs take a /k-/ prefix (spelledc- orqu-) 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.
^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'sofficial gazette, theDiario 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.
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