Itzaʼ language

Itzaʼ (also known as Itza or Itzaj) is an endangered Mayan language spoken by the Itza people near Lake Peten Itza in north-central Guatemala and neighboring Belize. The language has about 1,000 fluent speakers, all older adults.[2]

Itzaʼ
Itza, Itzaj
Native toGuatemala
RegionPetén
Ethnicity2,930 Itza (2019 census)
Native speakers
410 (2019 census)[1]
Mayan
Language codes
ISO 639-3itz
Glottologitza1241
ELPItza'

Itzaʼ was the language of administration across much of the Yucatán Peninsula during the supremacy of Chichen Itza. Later, the Itza people had the last independent Maya nation in Mesoamerica until 1697.[3] During this time, the Itza people resettled their ancestral home in the Petén Basin.[3] The subjugation of the Itza capital by the Spanish forced the Itza people to flee or live amongst the Spaniards, such as in San Jose, Guatemala, where the only modern speakers of the language live.

The modern Itza people are the last of the Lowland Maya to be able to directly trace their heritage back to the pre-Columbian era.[4] The Itzaʼ language reflects this history in its nomenclature for the natural world: Itzaʼ words referring to agriculture and agricultural practices remain unchanged since first being recorded.[5] Additionally, Itzaʼ possesses a rich vocabulary for crops and animals that encodes specific information about different varietals and individuals of the species.[5]

Classification

Itza' is abbreviated "itz" in the ISO 639-3 language codes. Itzaʼ belongs to the Yucatecan branch of Mayan Languages. The other languages in the Yucatecan branch are Yucatec, Lacandon, and Mopan. All Yucatecan languages are closely linked with each other. However, people speaking Itzaʼ and those speaking Yucatec have difficulties understanding each other. There are 12 different branches of Mayan language, all with sub families like Itzaʼ.

History

The government of Guatemala banned the speaking of Itzá in the 1930s and two generations of Itzá Maya have grown up learning only Spanish. The late 1980s brought an increase in interest among Maya people, including the Itzá, in preserving their cultural heritage. The Guatemalan government has set up an institution, the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, to help develop and preserve various Mayan languages, including Itzaʼ.[6]

Geographic distribution

Itzaʼ is spoken on the north shore of Lake Petén Itzá in San José, Petén Department, Guatemala. Among the ethnic population of 2,000, there are only about 1,000 Itzaʼ speakers remaining, most of which also use Spanish.[2]

Phonology

Consonants

The following chart shows the consonant phonemes of Itza:[7] Where the orthography differs from the IPA notation, the orthography used by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala is noted in brackets.

Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
plain affricated
Plosive/
Affricate		 plain p t t͡s ⟨tz⟩ t͡ʃ ⟨ch⟩ k ʔ ⟨ʼ⟩
ejective pʼ tʼ t͡sʼ ⟨tzʼ⟩ t͡ʃʼ ⟨chʼ⟩ kʼ
implosive ɓ ⟨bʼ⟩
Fricative s ʃ ⟨x⟩ h
Nasal m n
Approximant l j w

The phonemes /d, g, f, v, r, ɲ/ have been adopted from Spanish and are present only in loanwords.[7]

Vowels

The following chart shows the vowel phonemes of Itza. All vowels except /ə/ have long equivalent, and vowel length is contrastive.

Front Central Back
High i iː u uː
Mid e eː ə o oː
Low a aː

The Itza language does not contain tone nor pitch.[8]

Grammar

Nouns

Possession is marked with the same ergative particle as is used in verbal constructions.[9] Possession constructions are marked differently based on whether the possession is inherent or non-inherent. Body parts, family members, and personal property are marked as being possessed differently than are parts of a whole. Additional possession constructions exist and are used generally where the possessor is inanimate.[9]

All nouns in Itzaʼ possess grammatical gender. The masculine and feminine genders are overtly marked by a prefix, while the neutral gender is unmarked.[10] Gender is not marked on all nouns: typically, proper nouns and professions have marked gender, while other categories do not. The gender markers of Itzaʼ also play the role of rigid designators: specific individuals across all possible worlds will have overtly marked gender, while references to classes of objects will not.[10]

Verbs

Itzaʼ is an ergative-absolutive language demonstrating split ergativity. Ergative person markers indicate intransitive subjects in the imperfective aspect and all transitive subjects, while absolutive person markers indicate intransitive subjects in the perfective aspect and in dependent clauses and all objects.[3]

Itzaʼ employs the Irrealis grammatical mood to mark the future tense: the mood is coupled with a temporal adjective to form a future construction. The past tense is similarly constructed by using the Perfect tense and temporal adjectives. Similarities in the Irrealis and Perfect constructions may suggest that the Itzaʼ consider the past and future to be similar, which reflects the Itzaʼ worldview that time is cyclical.[11]

Sentence Structure

Itzaʼ has VOS word order, although VSO is also common and all word orders are possible.[3] Topicalization is marked by the addition of a suffix and the movement of the topicalized word to the sentence initial position.[3]

Generally, modifiers precede the words they modify: adjectives, numerals, determiners, and negation all follow this pattern. Possessives, demonstratives, and relative clauses all typically follow the words they modify; adjectives can also occur in this position.[3]

Vocabulary

Itzaʼ possess a rich vocabulary of agriculture and taxonomy. Itza has specific words to encode various properties of different varietals and individuals within a species. Plants and animals of different size, color, and taste are referred to with different terms.[5] Additionally, agricultural terms in Itzaʼ have been virtually uninfluenced by contact with the Spanish, allowing some insight into the commonplace vocabulary of pre-contact Itza.[5]

Discourse

Discourse in Itzaʼ is marked by its heavy use of repetition and linguistic parallelism. Words and linguistic constructions are often repeated throughout a sentence order to draw emphasis to what is being spoken.[3] The resulting sentences are thus composed of several, complete phrases such as in the sentence:

in-ten

EMP-1SG.PRO

k-im-bʼel

INC-1SG.A-go

im-bʼen-es-eech

1SG.A-go-CAUS-2SG

in-ten k-im-bʼel im-bʼen-es-eech

EMP-1SG.PRO INC-1SG.A-go 1SG.A-go-CAUS-2SG

"I am going to take you."

in-ten

EMP-1SG.PRO

k-im-bʼel

INC-1SG.A-go

inw-aʼl-e(j)

1SG.A-say-DTS

tech

2SG.IO

in-ten k-im-bʼel inw-aʼl-e(j) tech

EMP-1SG.PRO INC-1SG.A-go 1SG.A-say-DTS 2SG.IO

"I am going to tell you."

The repetition of the pronoun in-ten and the verb k-im-bʼel, as well as the near-repetition of the pronoun eech/tech, is typical of Itzaʼ discourse.[3] Such literary style is comparable to parataxis in English, a style of discourse where simple, coordinating sentences are preferred over long, subordinating sentences.

Discourse, both common and mythological, often employs framing particles—particles placed before and after a phrase in order to frame the phrase within the discourse as a whole. These particles convey the spatial and temporal relationships between new and old pieces of information in the discourse, creating larger discourse units.[12]

The categories tense, aspect, and mood are interwoven in Itzaj Maya verbal and adverbial morphosyntax. Itzaj narrative discourse suggests a division between what a person knows from personal experience centered in one's home and town (the actual), and what is less known, but imaginable, further away in space-time.[11]

See also

Bibliography
  • Charles Andrew Hofling: Itzá Maya texts with a grammatical overview. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 1991. 321 pp. ISBN 0-87480-359-4
  • Charles Andrew Hofling, Félix Fernando Tesucún: Tojtʼan: diccionario maya itzaj – castellano. Guatemala, Cholsamaj, 2000.
  • Charles Andrew Hofling: Itzaj Maya Grammar. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 2000. ISBN 0-87480-666-6
  • Charles Andrew Hofling, Félix Fernando Tesucún: Itzaj Maya–Spanish–English Dictionary. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City 1997. ISBN 0-87480-550-3

References
  1. Itzaʼ at Ethnologue (24th ed., 2021) closed access
  2. "Itza'". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 2019-06-06.
  3. Hofling, Charles Andrew (2000). Itzaj Maya Grammar. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. ISBN 0-87480-666-6.
  4. Atran, Medin, Ross, Lynch, Coley, Ucan Ek, Vapnarsky, Scott, Douglas, Norbert, Elizabeth, John, Edilberto, Valentina (1999). "Folkecology and Commons Management in the Maya Lowlands". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 96 (13): 7598–7603. Bibcode:1999PNAS...96.7598A. doi:10.1073/pnas.96.13.7598. JSTOR 48105. PMC 22132. PMID 10377461.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. Atran, Chase, Fedick, Knapp, McKillop, Marcus, Schwartz., Webb, Scott, Arlen F., Scott L., Gregory, Heather, Joyce, Norman B., Malcolm C. (1993). "Itza Maya Tropical Agro-Forestry". Current Anthropology. 34: 633–700. doi:10.1086/204212. JSTOR 2744279. S2CID 147519787.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. "Language: Itza, Guatemala." Unesco.org. Discovery Channel, 2004. Web. 02 May 2016.
  7. Hofling, Charles Andrew (1991). "Itzá Maya Texts, with a Grammatical Overview" (PDF). Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc.
  8. Bricker, Victoria (January 1994). "Reviewed Work(s): Itzá Maya Texts with a Grammatical Overview by Charles Andrew Hofling". International Journal of American Linguistics. 60: 87–92. doi:10.1086/466222.
  9. Hofling, Charles A. (1990). "Possession and Ergativity in Itzá Maya". International Journal of American Linguistics. 56 (4): 542–560. doi:10.1086/466174. JSTOR 1265229. S2CID 144152977.
  10. Lois, Ximena (1998). "Gender Markers as "Rigid Determiners" of the Itzaj Maya World". International Journal of American Linguistics. 64 (3): 224–282. doi:10.1086/466358. JSTOR 1265685. S2CID 144347125.
  11. Hofling, Charles Andrew (1998). "Irrealis and Perfect in Itzaj Maya". Anthropological Linguistics. 40 (2): 214–227. JSTOR 30028624.
  12. Hofling, Charles A. (1987). "Discourse Framing in Itzá Maya Narrative". Anthropological Linguistics. 29 (4): 478–488. JSTOR 30028117.
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