Tequistlatec language

Tequistlatec is an extinct Chontal language of Tequisistlán town, Oaxaca. Highland Oaxaca Chontal is sometimes also called Tequistlatec, but it is a distinct language.

Tequistlatec is related to the other Chontal languages of Oaxaca to the south of it, which are sometimes erroneously called "Tequistlatec" also. Tequistlatec proper, as described by Angulo and Freeland (1925), appears to have been closer to the lowland variety than the the highland variety, even though the Tequistlatecs lived farther away from the coast than from the mountains.

Oltrogge and Campbell have proposed that the Chontal languages are related to the Jicaquean languages of Honduras and offered comparative lexical evidence to support their hypothesis.^[1][2]

The phonological inventory includes glottalization contrasts:^[3]

		Labial	Alveolar	Alveolar palatal.	Palatal		Velar	Glotal
					simple	affric.
Stop		p ~ b	t (d)	tʲ	kʲ	ɡɣ	k (g)	ʔ
Fricative		f	s ~ ʃ				x	h
Nasal	simple	m	n	nʲ
	glottal.		nʼ
Tap			ɾ
Approximant		w	l	lʲ	j

Tequistlatec has six phonemic vowels: /i, e, a, ã, o, u/.

Tequistlatec was briefly described by Angula and Freeland (1925). Of the 200 words listed by these authors, more than half have cognates in Highland Oaxaca Chontal and Huamelultec, and in some cases the words are identical across all three languages. Of the remaining words, about 25 are cognate only with Huamelultec, and 19 are cognate only with Highland Chontal. Another eleven terms are similar in the other two varieties but different in Tequistlatec. Finally, 20 words are different among the three languages.^[3]

Word list derived from de Angulo and Freeland (1925):^[4]

gloss	Chontal of Tequixistlan	notes
fire	ngwa
to boil	mb’ula
to dry	hur
water	xa
river	pana’ m’am
to bathe	pos
sea	maxa	(cf. water, river)
(Perfect)	-pa, -ba
(Continuative)	-ngu (sg.), -mi (pl.)
(Present Future)	-ma (sg.), -me (pl.)
(Imperative)	-ra (sg.), -re (pl.)
(temporal suffix of obscure meaning)	-li
(Andative)	-kiç
(Causative)	-mu
(Impending Future)	-ga (sg.), -ri
big	be
little	taç, tçofi, tyof
one	nula, nuli
two	kwesi
three	fane
four	malbu
yes	akya, oy
not	tçi, tçite
dog	tsigi
chile, pepper	kasi
plátano, banana	owe, labe
tomato	ngone
corn, maize	kosa’
bean	r’ane
flower	pipi
person	sans (sg.), sanu (pl.)
man, adult	kwe (sg.), gurbe (pl.)
woman	tee (sg.), deya (pl.)
girl	bata
child (either sex), daughter, son	’wa (sg.), naske (pl.)
I	ya
thou	ma
he	gge
we	yã
ye	mã
they	re
it	i (sg.), n (pl.)	an indefinite demonstrative pronoun equivalent to "he", "the", "that", etc.
the	al, dal, gal, la
stranger	gwaya
Chontal	fale
Zapotec	nye
Yalalag	xoço
Tehuantepec	uçia
Oaxaca	pampala
Tequixistlan	al riya	"the village"
word, language	taygi

• Angulo, Jaime de; Freeland, L. S. (1925). "The Chontal language (dialect of Tequisistlan)". Anthropos. 20 (5/6): 1032–1052. ISSN 0257-9774. JSTOR 40444929.
• Campbell, Lyle (1979). "Middle American Languages". In Campbell; Mithun (eds.). The Languages of Native America: Historical and Comparative Assessment. Austin: University of Texas Press. pp. 902–1000.
• Langdon, Margaret (1966), "Notes on Highland Chontal internal reconstruction", in Hinton, Leanne (ed.), The Hokan, Penutian and J. P. Harrington Conferences, and the Mary R. Haas Memorial, Berkeley: University of California, pp. 25–34
• Oltrogge, David F. (1977). "Proto Jicaque-Subtiaba-Tequistlateco". In Rensch, Calvin R. (ed.). Two Studies in Middle American Comparative Linguistics. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington. pp. 1–52.
• Turner, Paul R. (1969). "Proto-Chontal phonemes". IJAL. 25: 34–37.
• Turner, Paul; Turner, Shirley (1971). Chontal to Spanish–English, Spanish to Chontal Dictionary. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
• Waterhouse, Viola G. (1985). "True Tequistlateco". IJAL. 51: 612–614. JSTOR 1265364.