Neha Patil (Editor)

Uspantek language

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Native to
  
Guatemala

Ethnicity
  
Uspantek

ISO 639-3
  
usp

Region
  
Quiché (department)

Native speakers
  
2,000 (2013)

Language family
  
MayanQuichean–MameanGreater QuicheanUspantek

The Uspanteko (Uspanteco, Uspanteko, Uspantec) is a Mayan language of Guatemala, closely related to K'iche'. It is spoken in the Uspantán and Playa Grande Ixcán[1] municipios, in the Department El Quiché. It is also one of only three Mayan languages to have developed contrastive tone (the others being Yukatek and one dialect of Tzotzil). It distinguishes between vowels with high tone and vowels with low tone.

Contents

Tone

Uspantek has two phonemic tones, high and falling (Can Pixabaj 2007:39). In writing, the high tone is represented by an acute accent mark on the vowel (e.g., ráqan 'my foot'), while the falling tone is represented by an acute accent mark on the first vowel followed by an unmarked vowel (e.g., júun 'one').

The high tone occurs in penultimate syllables when the final syllable contains a short vowel. Additionally, it occurs the following contexts (Can Pixabaj 2007).

  • Possessive forms of inalienable nouns, although exceptions abound
  • Bisyllabic single morphemes, especially those with short /a/ or /i/ in the final syllable
  • Intransitive verbs with the suffix -ik
  • Words with three syllables, with some exceptions
  • Loanwords

    • The following types of words do not have tone.

  • Words with CV'C structure do not add tone to penultimate syllables when affixes are added.
  • Monosyllabic words with long vowels that have no tone do not add tone to penultimate syllables when affixes are added.

    • The falling tone occurs in long vowels, and in the following contexts (Can Pixabaj 2007).

  • Monosyllabic words
  • Final syllable of a polysyllabic word

    • Phonotactics

    The main types of syllable structures in Uspantek are CVC, CV, and CCVC (Can Pixabaj 2007:50).

    References

    Uspantek language Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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