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The Pipil Language of El Salvador
Abstract
The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality.
... In texts on Uto-Aztecan languages (Campbell, 1985;Karttunen, 1983), the term 'Nahua' is used to refer to all languages, dialects, and variants of the Nahuat subgroup, a group to which the Nahuat-Pipil language belongs. Internationally among academic circles, the Nahuat-Pipil language spoken in El Salvador is known as 'Pipil' and its corresponding ISO Code is [ppl]. ...
... Language speakers in El Salvador, however, reject the name 'Pipil' because they view it as a derrogatory term; they opt instead to use the name 'Nawat' or 'Nahuat'. The naming of the Nahuat-Pipil language is a complex matter given some of the socio-political relations between the Nahuat-Pipil Indigenous community in El Salvador and the Nahuatl communities in Mexico as well as its international presence and representation in academia (Arauz, 1960;Campbell, 1985;Hernandez Gonzalez, 2011;King, 2011;Lara-Martinez & McCallister, 2012;Schultze-Jena, 2014). However, in an attempt to decrease the confusion and remain faithful to the language name used by speakers themselves, I have opted to use a hybrid of the various naming conventions and refer to the [ppl] language as Nahuat-Pipil. ...
... Whereas the nahuahablante has learned organically via immersion with caregivers and other available speakers, the neohablante has chosen to learn and is thus self-taught, usually by whatever means is available. Fortunately, thanks to the work of previous researchers, Nahuat-Pipil does have online resources 3 which facilitate self-study of the language (Alej, 2017;Hernandez Gonzalez, 2011;King, 2011King, , 2013King, , 2018, in addition to the documentation and descriptions of the language that have been carried out by previous linguists (Arauz, 1960;Campbell, 1985;Hernandez Gonzalez, 2011;King, 2011;Lara-Martinez & McCallister, 2012;Schultze-Jena, 2014). Furthermore, social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter offer opportunities for interaction in the target language, which is of great benefit for new speakers wishing to practice their developing language skills. ...
This chapter looks at the interrelation between Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), language, and historical events within the context of the Nahuat-Pipil language of El Salvador. It deals with what some refer to as Indigenous Knowledge (IK), Traditional Knowledge (TK), or Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), domains that position knowledge within broader contexts and social systems. The approaches and theories applied in this chapter are based on interactions with Indigenous people in western El Salvador from the towns of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, Nahuizalco, and Cuisnahuat where Nahuat-Pipil is most widely spoken. The research questions are a response to their specific request to conduct research on TEK, as ‘We are losing this knowledge, and without it we cannot call ourselves Indigenous’ (T. Pedro, personal communication, July 2012). Having established a baseline for understanding the motivations behind Indigenous interest in TEK, it is possible to then focus on the Nahuat-Pipil linguistic repertoire and how TEK is encoded within it. Thus, the investigation turns to the question of the ethnobiological categorization and classification of plants, how this is achieved by speakers of Nahuat-Pipil, and whether cognitive categorization strategies are reflected in the language itself. The investigation then examines folk nomenclature of plants by presenting their internal linguistic composition. The investigation of plant names is used to further inform the documentation efforts of Nahuat-Pipil by adding new focalized materials to the existing range of resources. The theoretical framework and methods employed to collect data for this body of research are interdisciplinary and draw largely upon ethnobotany, anthropology, the collection of oral histories, and sociolinguistics, in addition to my core background as a linguist and language documenter. By seeking to listen to and understand the requests of the language and speech community, this chapter thus aims to investigate how TEK informs the construction of sociocultural identity through language use, and how TEK itself is cognitively, culturally, and linguistically encoded in Nahuat-Pipil.
... Besides its theoretical goals, this paper is also meant as a contribution to the documentation of Witzapan Nawat phonology, which has only been briefly addressed in a few impressionistic works (e.g., Campbell 1985;Lemus 1997). This contribution is critical when considered in the context of the ongoing Nawat revitalization movement that is taking place in El Salvador (Lemus 2018). ...
... Nawat belongs to the Eastern Nahuan group and is closely related to varieties spoken along the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. It is the only indigenous language still spoken in El Salvador, where less than 200 elders speak it as an L1 in a few towns in the western part of the country (Campbell 1985). Despite its high level of endangerment, the last twenty years have seen the emergence of an important Nawat revitalization movement led by L2 learners who do not identify as indigenous nor live in traditionally Nawat-speaking communities (Boitel 2018;Lemus 2018). ...
... Owing to a strong social media presence, these activists have succeeded in bringing Nawat and its speakers to public awareness and, as a result, the language is now being learned as an L2 by hundreds of people all over El Salvador and even abroad. Nawat phonology has been described briefly in impressionistic works by Campbell (1985), Lemus (1997) and King (2014) without major discrepancies as to the phonemic inventory or the main phonological features of the language. Table 1 presents the Nawat phonemes according to Campbell (1985) and King (2014) as well as their corresponding letters in the official Nawat alphabet in bold font. 1 1 All living Nawat speakers are fully bilingual in Spanish and make frequent use of Spanish phonemes such as /b Table 1. ...
The stop inventory of Witzapan Nawat, a critically endangered indigenous language of El Salvador, has been traditionally described as consisting only of a voiceless series /p t k kw/. In this paper, I measure the VOT, consonant duration, and percent voicing in stops produced by five L1 Witzapan Nawat speakers. I find that, while /p t kw/ have acoustic characteristics of voiceless stops in practically all contexts, the velar stop in this language is better analyzed as a voiced velar stop /ɡ/ rather than /k/. This results in an asymmetrical and unusual stop system that is not predicted by some theories of phonemic inventory structure. For instance, markedness-based theories propose that /ɡ/ is more marked that /b d/ and predict that, if a language has one voiced stop, it would be /b/ or /d/ rather than /ɡ/. On the other hand, feature-systemic models predict that, if a language has a stop with the [+voice] feature at a given place of articulation, it will also tend to have this feature in stops at other points of articulation to maximize feature economy. The phonemic inventory of Witzapan Nawat contradicts these predictions. I explain the asymmetrical stop inventory of this language as the result of diachronic developments involving sound change and analogy, concluding that language change does not necessarily advance towards symmetry and that phonemic inventories are the reflection of their diachrony, as proposed by Evolutionary Phonology.
... and Campbell (1985) ....... 17 King, Hernández, and Ramírez (2003), Lemus (1997), and Campbell (1985) Table 4. 12 Best-fit logistic mixed-effect model of "expected production of /ɡ/" .......... 126 Table 4.14. Best- Campbell (1985) in the '70s (Salgado 2014 community that speaks the language natively, as is the case of Gaelic in Scotland (McEwan-Fujita 2018) and Māori in New Zealand (J. ...
... and Campbell (1985) ....... 17 King, Hernández, and Ramírez (2003), Lemus (1997), and Campbell (1985) Table 4. 12 Best-fit logistic mixed-effect model of "expected production of /ɡ/" .......... 126 Table 4.14. Best- Campbell (1985) in the '70s (Salgado 2014 community that speaks the language natively, as is the case of Gaelic in Scotland (McEwan-Fujita 2018) and Māori in New Zealand (J. ...
... and Campbell (1985) ....... 17 King, Hernández, and Ramírez (2003), Lemus (1997), and Campbell (1985) Table 4. 12 Best-fit logistic mixed-effect model of "expected production of /ɡ/" .......... 126 Table 4.14. Best- Campbell (1985) in the '70s (Salgado 2014 community that speaks the language natively, as is the case of Gaelic in Scotland (McEwan-Fujita 2018) and Māori in New Zealand (J. King 2013). ...
Nawat, the highly endangered indigenous language of El Salvador, is undergoing a revitalization process. This dissertation, conceived within this context, focuses on the second-language (L2) acquisition of features of Nawat pronunciation by learners who have Salvadoran Spanish as their first language (L1). Specifically, I assess the acquisition of one Nawat segmental feature and one prosodic feature through their production by L2 learners: 1) the Nawat velar stop phoneme /ɡ/, which has different allophones according to its surrounding sounds, and 2) Nawat utterance-final vowel glottalization, that is, the production of utterance-final vowels with increased constriction of the vocal folds to signal the end of an utterance. The goals of this dissertation are: 1) to explore whether L2 Nawat learners become more proficient in the production of these Nawat features as their years of Nawat study increase, 2) to identify the linguistic contexts in which the productions of these Nawat features by L2 learners differ the most from L1 Nawat speakers, and 3) to assess whether the progress in the L2 acquisition of these Nawat features is equally linear or if one aspect is more difficult to learn than the other.
For this purpose, a total of 21 L2 Nawat learners were recorded performing a reading task in Nawat and Spanish designed to elicit the sounds of interest in different contexts. A control group consisting of five L1 Nawat speakers were also recorded performing open-ended interviews and a picture description task to serve as a baseline. I find that, overall, L2 Nawat learners become more proficient in the production of Nawat /ɡ/ as their years of study increase. However, there are contexts in which productions of Nawat /ɡ/ by L2 learners and L1 speakers consistently diverge, namely, when word-initial /ɡ/ is in the post-lateral position and when word-medial /ɡ/ is in the post-approximant, post-lateral, and post-obstruent contexts. I argue that these differences are the result of L1 transfer and hypercorrection.
As for the L2 acquisition of Nawat utterance-final vowel glottalization, progress is observed but, unlike Nawat /ɡ/, even the most advanced learners do not produce Nawat utterance-final vowels at rates comparable to L1 speakers. In fact, most Nawat utterance-final vowels produced by L2 learners show weakened voicing rather than glottalization, which I interpret as L1 transfer. Thus, an asymmetry in the acquisition of these features of Nawat pronunciation is identified, which I attribute to the inherent complexity of prosody, the perceived similarity between the L1 and L2 sound systems, frequency, and the Nawat input received by L2 learners. This dissertation highlights the need to inform the Nawat teaching curricula to focus on the production and perception of utterance-final vowel glottalization and develop more effective pedagogical materials and practices to teach them.
... Pipil, the southernmost Uto-Aztecan language, is the only indigenous language still spoken in El Salvador (Lemus 2010: 50;Rivas 2004: 37;CONCULTURA 2003: 12). Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, it was spoken in a wide area ranging from Escuintla, in Guatemala, to Nicaragua, and possibly even parts of Costa Rica and Panama (Fowler 1989: 70;Campbell 1985: 2; Molina 1974: 10); nevertheless, following centuries of systematic cultural repression by succeeding governments and language shift, Pipil is now only spoken by a few dozen elderly people in Western of El Salvador, specifically in the departamentos of Sonsonate and ...
... In more recent times, the exact number of fluent Pipil speakers remains unknown and calculations vary by source. Campbell (1985: 2) deemed the language as "quite moribund" in the 1970s and estimated around 200 speakers. Ethnologue (2013), using data from 1987, reports only 20. ...
... However, more recently, the 2007 National Census declared 97 living Pipil speakers in El Salvador, while Lemus (2010: 49) has estimated less than 200 speakers based on personal observations. These higher numbers do not imply by any means that the number of speakers grew during these years; they rather reflect different attitudes towards the language: speakers who were afraid to speak Pipil due to the dangerous consequences and negative connotations are now more willing to recognize themselves as fluent in Pipil than in the past (Campbell 1985: 2). ...
Pipil is an under-documented and severely endangered Uto-Aztecan language spoken in El Salvador. In this thesis, using data from four native speakers of Pipil, I describe topological relations and frames of reference in the Santo Domingo de Guzmán (SD) dialect of Pipil with a typological and historical approach.
I find that SD Pipil is a Type Ib language in the Ameka & Levinson (2007) typology of
locative predicates (one locative verb used in locative predicates), whereas other Nahua varieties belong to Type II (small set of contrasting locative posture verbs in locative predicates). I argue that Spanish influence on SD Pipil determined this innovation. SD Pipil features a unique system of absolute locatives that only convey information about the vertical and horizontal relationship between Figure and Ground, disregarding contact between them, and features exclusively an object-centered frame of reference, as described in the MesoSpace typology (O’Meara & Pérez 2011).
... Los seres que vivían en la oscuridad, al salir el sol, se transforman en diferentes aspectos del mundo (cuevas, cerros, plantas, animales, árboles, etc.) (Neurath, 2013;López Austin, 1993). En el caso de los nahuas, el árbol y el fruto del huacal surge del cuerpo de Tantepusilam, deidad terrestre, pero también una tzitzimitl, las tzitzimitl son deidades femeninas que bajan de los cielos en los fines del mundo y tienen la fama de devorar a los humanos, pero también están relacionado con la partería (Olivier, 2005;Klein, 2000;Campbell, 1985). Ahora, diversos relatos mencionan que la primera persona que realizó la práctica de cortar al morro en dos partes, y así crear huacales, fue justo Tantepusilam. ...
In the book The Shape of Time (1962) George Kubler criticizes the iconographic approach in art history, proposing a definition of art based on the becoming of forms that includes all objects made by human hands. I connect Nahua theories-practices present in the fabrication of a 20th century waxed huacal (jícara) from El Salvador, with Kubler's concepts of form and time. Inspired by Kubler, after formal and iconographic analysis I conclude with a reflection on the agency of objects, highlighting the kinship between humans and artifacts.
... (4) OV → VO in Uto-Aztecan Nahuatl through contact and bilingualism with neighboring VO Mesoamerican languages (Gast 2007); Papuan Kuot (of New Ireland) from Papuan OV to VSO and consistent headinitial orders, surrounded by head-initial Austronesian languages (Lindström 2002); Pipil (Uto-Aztecan) originally OV which was changed to VO through bilingual contact with Mayan languages (Campbell 1985); Eskimo varieties (OV) in bilingual contact with English (Fortescue 1993). ...
Contact between languages has become increasingly recognized as a major source of historical change, as linguistic properties are introduced from one language into another. Yet contact does not necessarily lead to such changes. In fact, arguably most of the properties that contrast between two languages in contact at a given place and time do not change. This paper argues that historical and contact linguistics should now look more systematically at different kinds of bilingualism rather than contact per se and should incorporate recent sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic findings from this literature, since these can help us understand both when change occurs and when it does not. In this context we build on the general model of bilingualism, CASP (short for “complex adaptive system principles”), proposed by Filipović and Hawkins and explore its predictions for whether and when changes will occur in one or the other language of a bilingual. In the event that the relevant speech community comprises monolinguals in addition to bilinguals, these changes may then spread to the wider community when social and demographic circumstances favor this. The paper gives illustrative data supporting CASP’s predictions for change in both language usage and grammar among bilinguals.
"On Nahuat-Pipil Literature. Dialogue with the Sun" analyzes a brief literary text on a Native language from El Salvador. Due to a prevalent monolingual literature —only allowed in Spanish— until the 21st century, cultural studies deny incorporating Native languages into their sphere of knowledge. Paradoxically, decolonizing implies the refusal to examine the contribution of subaltern languages to different perspectives on social issues, such as the current crisis on migration. Some of those epistemic concepts are the following: the notion of the human body as an extension, characterizing the Sun itself, the soul energy that makes all entities to exist, as well as the right to migrate following the revolutionary motion of planets and stars, since Being-there (Dasein, Nemi) derives into Walking (Nejnemi). If the reader wants to avoid the linguistic analysis —sections II.I, II.II, and II.III— it is possible to jump from section II to section III directly.
This paper presents the transcription and translation of Chapter III of the Teotamachilizti, an anonymous collection of sermons in Nahuatl printed in Guatemala probably inthe late seventeenth century. This hitherto unpublished document evolves around the life of Jesus Christ and closely follows the text of the gospels. A brief introduction tothis source describes particular traits of its language and comments on the resources used to transmit the Christian doctrine. It also focuses on the figures of Mary Magdaleneand Judas, whose stories served its author to build the moral lesson presented in this fragment.
This paper argues that Nahuatl of Hueyapan Morelos, has a distinction between progressive and stative aspects, expressed with the suffixes -tika and -tok respectively.
Encoding of nominal predication constructions (NPC) is an essential component in typological debates concerning lexical flexibility and parts of speech. This study investigates encoding strategies of NPCs in 65 verb-initial languages from 20 language families. The results indicate that the combinations of a zero strategy and certain other typological features are cross-linguistically disfavored due to non-iconicity. The varying degree of lexical flexibility observed among languages reflects a competition between economy and iconicity, as in many other aspects of linguistic diversity.
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