Chatino

This dissertation is a description of aspects of the phonetics, phonology and morphology of Teotepec Chatino (ISO 639-3 identifier: cya; here abbreviated as TEO), an indigenous language spoken by approximately 3800 people in the Sierra Madre del Sur, Oaxaca, Mexico. This work presents a synchronic description of the language based on data collected in the eld over the course of six eld trips totaling eighteen months. This investigation is based on a corpus of thirty hours of transcribed and analyzed texts of naturally occurring speech, narratives, data gathered during elicitation sessions, and an expansion of my earlier grammatical sketch (2011). The final result is a description of the phonology and phonetics of tone and some of the morphological processes that exist in the grammar. The focus of this work is to describe the structure of the language produced by native Teotepec speakers and how it is used in an array of contexts. This is reflected in a rich body of procedural texts, conversations, speeches, rants, polemics, prayers, and narratives. These texts are the basis for the description of how the language encodes speakers' knowledge about the world and their greater context. This work arrives at a description of the details of the language while also making broader generalizations about these details. It is not possible that this work cover all aspects of the phonology, phonetics, morphology and so part of the focus has been to capture particular facets of the language and explain them in a way that is detailed while broad enough to be useful to as many as audiences as possible. This includes scholars interested in typology, tone languages, historical linguistics of Otomanguean, linguistic anthropology, anthropology, and the history and culture of the Chatinos, southern Oaxaca and Mesoamerica. The dissertation is written in English; however, I often create grammatical write-ups and practical pedagogical materials for a Spanish literate audience. Materials for TEO have been and will continue to be made available to Spanish and English speakers in order to reach an audience that includes, but is not limited to, members of the community, local and regional educators and literacy efforts, and scholars engaged in the study of Chatino language and linguistics. The approach to this work is data-driven and text-based. It is written in basic descriptive terms, as outlined in Payne (1997); Shopen (2007); Dixon (2010), and Haspelmath (2010). In this way the writing is carried out with fewer aprioristic notions about the language. The goal is to describe the language in its own terms. Thus the researcher is open to discover completely new, unexpected phenomena, can be guided by the data and their own thinking (Haspelmath, 2010).

In this dissertation I address the timing of and interrelatedness between initial Early Formative period (2000–1500 BCE) transitions in residential mobility, subsistence, and social organization in Mesoamerica. I approach these topics using evidence from the La Consentida Archaeological Project (LCAP), a multi-season field and laboratory investigation of the site of La Consentida on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Based on six radiocarbon dates (1947–1530 cal B.C.), La Consentida represents the earliest village site ever discovered in coastal Oaxaca, and likely in much of Pacific coastal Mexico. According to these dates, the site has produced some of the earliest ceramics and mounded earthen architecture known in Mesoamerica. In this dissertation, I argue on the basis of changes over time in earthen architecture, ground stone tools, and house construction that the community grew more sedentary over the course of site occupation. Based on studies of faunal remains, human dental pathologies, isotopic indicators, and food processing technology, I conclude that the community ate a broad diet but consumed more maize than did contemporaneous groups in other Early Formative period occupation areas, such as the Soconusco region of Chiapas and Guatemala. Culinary preferences may have changed at La Consentida, however, with a shift over time from consuming maize in beverage form to processing flour on stone mills that prompted increasing dental attrition. Anthropomorphic ceramic figurines from the site demonstrate a diversity of social roles, suggesting that the community was heterarchically complex from very early in its history. Obsidian sourcing and evidence of ceramic formal and decorative styles similar to those from other Formative period sites in West Mexico, the Valley of Oaxaca, and Central Mexico indicate La Consentida’s broad interaction sphere. The very early dates associated with ceramic vessel fragments from La Consentida may complicate current models for the adoption of ceramic technology in Mesoamerica by suggesting an early tradition developing along the western Pacific coast that was contemporaneous with the Soconusco region’s Barra phase (1900–1700 cal B.C.). These various lines of evidence demonstrate that La Consentida was a community in transformation during one of the most fundamental moments of socioeconomic change in the ancient Americas. Research at La Consentida is relevant to key archaeological debates concerning Archaic to Formative period transitions in settlement, subsistence, and social organization. Evidence from the site is beginning to support arguments for gradual adoption of sedentism, early consumption of significant quantities of maize, and the importance of heterarchical distinctions in the birth of Mesoamerican social complexity.

El “pueblo de indios” fue la organización sociopolítica, religiosa y territorial en que se transformaron los asentamientos indígenas durante el régimen novohispano. Su traza se distribuyó con frecuencia a lo largo de un río y a un lado de los cerros de la sacralidad
prehispánica, según se aprecia en las pinturas
que los representaron y que eran, a la vez,
paisajes, vistas, planos y mapas. Los pueblos de indios fueron fundados en los alrededores de las villas y ciudades de españoles, y también en las vastas serranías de la Nueva España. En este libro se aborda su representación paisajística y cartográfica en un estudio introductorio y una serie de casos. Tres de ellos datan del período novohispano: la pintura de 1579 de Metztitlán (estado de Hidalgo) y la de 1580 de Teozacoalco (estado de Oaxaca), así como el mapa de 1754 de Zacualpan (hoy Emiliano Zapata, estado de
Morelos). Los otros tres capítulos abordan temas del México independiente: uno sobre la representación gráfica del pueblo de indios durante el siglo XIX en diversas fuentes, y los otros dos corresponden a los casos del pueblo chatino de San Juan Quiahije (estado
de Oaxaca) en un plano de 1863 y del paisaje ritual contemporáneo de la comunidad nahua de Acatlán (estado de Guerrero).

We describe our own experience of linguist-community collaboration over the last ten years in our Chatino Language Documentation Project, focused on the Chatino languages (Otomanguean; Oaxaca, Mexico). We relate episodes in the emergence and evolution of the collaboration between ourselves, and of the collaboration among ourselves and the Chatino communities with which we have worked. Our experience has several special features. First, our own collaboration began as native Chatino-speaking Ph.D. student and her teacher in a program focused on training speakers of Latin American indigenous languages in linguistics and anthropology, and developed into a larger collaboration among students and faculty where the student had a major leadership role. Second, our approach was documentary-descriptive and comparative, but it was also socially engaged or ‘activist,’, in that we sought to promote interest, awareness, and respect for the Chatino languages, to teach and support Chatino literacy, and to preserve and offer access to spoken Chatino, especially traditional verbal art. Our approach had synergies with local interests in writing and in honoring traditional speech ways, but it also led to conflicts over our roles as social actors, and the traditionally activist roles of indigenous teachers. Third, we experienced plasticity in the collaborative roles we played. Between ourselves, we were student and teacher, but also initiator and follower as we became engaged in revitalization. At the same time, the native speaker linguist found herself occupying a range of positions along a continuum from “insider” to “outsider” respect to her own community.

Tómas Cruz Lorenzo (1950-1989) fue un activista chatino que perteneció a esa generación de pensadores de la organización comunal surgidos de los pueblos originarios, entre los que se encuentran Floriberto Díaz y Jaime Martínez Luna. Sus reflexiones, de tintes anarquistas, son un claro llamado a la defensa de la cultura, la lengua, la autonomía y el territorio chatinos, que se extienden desde la costa hasta las tierras altas de la sierra en el suroeste de Oaxaca. Asesinado en 1989, este libro recoge sus escritos y establece un diálogo con la nueva generación chatina que retoma y desborda su pensamiento, en un homenaje que actualiza la lucha y la resistencia en ámbitos como el feminismo, la educación nutricional y la salud vinculada a prácticas tradicionales, la migración y la defensa del territorio frente prácticas extractivas. 

Emiliana Cruz (Ed.)

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La igualdad de género sigue siendo un reto para el mundo, especialmente en aquellos contextos donde la división sexual del trabajo y de la vivencia de los espacios sociales colectivos es más evidente. Por esto, se precisan investigaciones que evidencien las dinámicas de esta discriminación desde una perspectiva feminista y de la respuesta de las mujeres a dicha situación. Con esta investigación quiero analizar la relación entre cooperativismo bottom-up femenino y empoderamiento de las mujeres, tomando como estudio de caso dos realidades (una cooperativa y una asociación) de mujeres en el sector pesquero. El incremento de empleo femenino en este sector, en aumento gracias al creciente número de cooperativas femeninas, permite a las mujeres acceder al mercado laboral, feminizar nuevos espacios y lograr un pleno empoderamiento frente a ellas mismas, sus familias y a la sociedad en que viven, fomentando así el cambio social y hasta cultural.

This paper draws on both elicited and conversational data to present the range of  grammatical devices for marking agency and verb valence in Lachixío Zapotec, a West Zapotec language. In addition to syntactic valence related to the number of arguments taken by a verb as part of its argument structure, and the intransitive/ transitive pairing of predicates related to causation, morphophonological and pronominal alternations in the language are shown to mark agency, defined as how active a subject is in producing an event or its outcome. This marking appeared invariant when elicited, but is shown to be varied creatively in conversational interaction.

Proceedings of the Workshop on the Sound Systems of Mexico and Central America. Universidad de Yale, 2015.

La nasalidad, entendida como un rasgo fonológico distintivo, es un fenómeno lingüístico especialmente interesante en las lenguas del tronco otomangue debido a su gran difusión y variedad de contrastes. En este trabajo, se revisarán, desde un punto de vista tipológico, las consonantes nasales y los segmentos prenasalizados de diferentes lenguas otomangues, así como el contraste de vocales orales versus nasales, incluyendo la distribución de la nasalidad y los timbres vocálicos, y distintos grados de nasalidad en vocales. En resumen se analizarán las posibilidades contrastivas del rasgo [+nasal] en las lenguas otomangues, y la implementación fonética de estas distinciones.

This paper outlines the major factors contributing to deforestation in the Sierra Chatina
of Oaxaca, Mexico and examines the role played by neo-liberal restructuring in these
processes. The last 25 years of rural development in the Sierra Chatino has been
accompanied by increasingly large-scale environmental changes. The most obvious
outcome has been the loss of 40 percent of the areas natural vegetation. Deforestation has
accelerated and exacerbated flooding and climate changes in the region as witnessed by
the effects of El Niño driven storms such as Hurricane Pauline. This paper will focus on
these processes of deforestation in the region. In this paper, we argue that the Mexican government’s neo-liberal policies have encouraged the commoditization of the Sierra
Chatina forests at the expense of long-term ecological sustainability. Since 1992, Mexico
has moved toward privatization of forests by removing the legal roadblocks to leasing of
ejido and communal lands. Moreover, as neo-liberal policies have devalued the currency,
eliminated subsidies, the Chatino have been pushed deeper into poverty, and into
unsustainable uses of their forests. Thus, we contend that transformations of land-use
patterns seen in these coastal mountains are part of a fundamental shift in local livelihoods
from subsistence to cash-based strategies.

Este papel traza los factores principales que contribuyen a la deforestación en la Sierra
Chatina de Oaxaca, México y examina el papel desempeñado por la restructuración neoliberal
en estos procesos. Los últimos 25 años del desarrollo rural en la sierra Chatino han
sido acompañados por los cambios tremendas ambientales. El resultado más obvio ha sido
la pérdida del 40 por ciento de la vegetación natural de la área. La deforestación ha
acelerado las inudaciones y cambios del clima exacerbados en la región como es
atestiguado por los efectos de las tormentas conducidas por el Niño, tales como el huracán
Pauline. Este papel enforcará en estos procesos de la deforestación en la región. En este
papel, discutimos que las políticas neo-liberales del gobierno Mexicano han alientado el
comoditización de las bosques de la sierra Chatina a costa de la sosteniblidad ecológica a
largo plazo. Desde 1992, México ha optado por la privatización de bosques y lo ha logrado
quitando los obstaculos legales para alquilar con los ejidos y las tierras comunales. Por
otra parte, a consequencia de las políticas neo-liberales que han devaluado la moneda y
eliminado los subsidios, los Chatinos han sido empujados más a la pobreza, y forzados a
hacer usos insostenibles de sus bosques. Así afirmamos que las transformaciones de los
modelos de uso de tierras considerados en estas montañas costeras son parte de una
cambio fundamental en sustentos locales de la subsistencia a las estrategias monetarias.

Cet article expose les facteurs majeurs qui contribuent à la déforestation dans la Sierra
Chatina, Oaxaca, Mexique et examine le rôle de la restructuration néo-libérale dans ces
processus. Les vingt cinq années dernières de développement rural dans la Sierra Chatina
ont été accompagnées par des changements environnementaux continus et d'une grande
importance. Le résultat le plus évident est la perte de 40% de la végétation naturelle de la
région. La déforestation a été accélérée et a exaspéré les inondations et les changements
climatiques dans la région comme démontrent les effets d’El Nino et les tempêtes qu'il a
causé tel que la tempête Pauline. Cet article examine les processus de déforestation dans la
région. Dans cet article on argumente que les politiques néo-libérales du gouvernement
mexicain ont encouragé la commercialisation des forêts de Sierra Chatina au dépit d'une écologie durable à longue terme. Depuis 1992, le Mexique s'est orienté vers la
privatisation des forêts par l'abolition d'obstacles légaux qui contrôlaient les crédits-bails
d'ejido et des terres communales. En outre, comme les politiques néo-libérales ont
dévalué la monnaie, élimine les subventions de l'état, les Chatinos ont été encore plus
appauvrit et ont été poussé à des usages non-durables de leur forêts. Donc, on peut
conclure que les transformations de l'usage des terres qu'on a observé dans les montagnes
du littoral font parti d'un changement fondamental dans les moyens d'existence locaux qui
consiste en un mouvement d'une stratégie de subsistance à d'autres basées sur des activités
génératrices de revenues.

In the Chatino languages (Otomanguean; Oaxaca, Mexico), verbs show two independent patterns of conjugational classification in marking aspect and mood, one based on prefixation and the other based on tonal ablaut. I term this CONJUGATIONAL DOUBLE-CLASSIFICATION. Each pattern determines its own conjugational classification of verb stems: verbs fall into several aspect/mood prefix conjugation classes that depend partly on their segmental structure and transitivity; and they simultaneously fall into several largely orthogonal tone ablaut conjugation classes that depend partly on the tonal characteristics of the stem. A Chatino child therefore must learn both the prefix conjugation class and the tone-ablaut conjugation class of every verb s/he learns. Furthermore, it is shown that diachronically, the prefix classes and the tone-ablaut classes have had independent LIFE CYCLES: in San Marcos Zacatepec Eastern Chatino (ctz), both systems are largely intact; in Zenzontepec Chatino (czn), the prefixation classes are intact but the tone ablaut classes have eroded through tonal simplification; and in San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino (ctp), the prefixation classes have eroded through initial syllable loss while the tone ablaut classes are intact. It is suggested that autosegmental phonology and morphology, when placed in diachronic perspective, easily allow such conjugational double classification when tone and segmental prefixation occupy distinct autosegmental tiers and when prefixes are largely non-tone bearing.

Abstract: La nasalidad, entendida como un rasgo fonológico distintivo, es un fenómeno lingüístico especialmente interesante en las lenguas del tronco otomangue debido a su gran difusión y variedad de contrastes. En este trabajo, se revisarán, desde un punto de vista tipológico, las consonantes nasales y los segmentos prenasalizados de diferentes lenguas otomangues, así como el contraste de vocales orales versus nasales, incluyendo la distribución de la nasalidad y los timbres vocálicos, y distintos grados de nasalidad en vocales. En resumen se analizarán las posibilidades contrastivas del rasgo [+nasal] en las lenguas otomangues, y la implementación fonética de estas distinciones.

The Chatino languages feature floating and unlinked tones (henceforth UTs), and these phenomena are both complex and unequally distributed throughout the Chatino languages. Chatino UT phenomena are often non-local, with tones appearing words after their original hosts or being linked out of the influence of the tones on preceding words. This paper describes the UT phenomena and their distribution across the Chatino languages.

In this dissertation I address the timing of and interrelatedness between initial Early Formative period (2000–1500 BCE) transitions in residential mobility, subsistence, and social organization in Mesoamerica. I approach these topics using evidence from the La Consentida Archaeological Project (LCAP), a multi-season field and laboratory investigation of the site of La Consentida on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Based on six radiocarbon dates (1947–1530 cal B.C.), La Consentida represents the earliest village site ever discovered in coastal Oaxaca, and likely in much of Pacific coastal Mexico. According to these dates, the site has produced some of the earliest ceramics and mounded earthen architecture known in Mesoamerica. In this dissertation, I argue on the basis of changes over time in earthen architecture, ground stone tools, and house construction that the community grew more sedentary over the course of site occupation. Based on studies of faunal remains, human dental pathologies, isotopic indicators, and food processing technology, I conclude that the community ate a broad diet but consumed more maize than did contemporaneous groups in other Early Formative period occupation areas, such as the Soconusco region of Chiapas and Guatemala. Culinary preferences may have changed at La Consentida, however, with a shift over time from consuming maize in beverage form to processing flour on stone mills that prompted increasing dental attrition. Anthropomorphic ceramic figurines from the site demonstrate a diversity of social roles, suggesting that the community was heterarchically complex from very early in its history. Obsidian sourcing and evidence of ceramic formal and decorative styles similar to those from other Formative period sites in West Mexico, the Valley of Oaxaca, and Central Mexico indicate La Consentida’s broad interaction sphere. The very early dates associated with ceramic vessel fragments from La Consentida may complicate current models for the adoption of ceramic technology in Mesoamerica by suggesting an early tradition developing along the western Pacific coast that was contemporaneous with the Soconusco region’s Barra phase (1900–1700 cal B.C.). These various lines of evidence demonstrate that La Consentida was a community in transformation during one of the most fundamental moments of socioeconomic change in the ancient Americas. Research at La Consentida is relevant to key archaeological debates concerning Archaic to Formative period transitions in settlement, subsistence, and social organization. Evidence from the site is beginning to support arguments for gradual adoption of sedentism, early consumption of significant quantities of maize, and the importance of heterarchical distinctions in the birth of Mesoamerican social complexity.