Matlatzinca, or more specifically San Francisco Matlatzinca, is an endangered Oto-Manguean language of Western Central Mexico. The name of the language in the language itself is pjiekak'joo. The term "Matlatzinca" comes from Nahuatl, meaning "lords of the net". At one point, the Matlatzinca groups were called "pirindas", meaning "those in the middle".
The first group or groups of Matlatzincas likely settled in the Toluca Valley around the 12th century. After other groups began to settle around and within it, the Matlatzinca territory became an important hub of economic activity. The economic activity prompted the Nahuatl language to become the dominant language in the area. At this point, Matlatzinca communities began losing their language.
Since the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the group has lost much of their territory. As Franciscan orders began arriving in the territory and evangelizing to the natives, missionaries were forced to learn the languages and create grammars. In 1565 before epidemics ravaged the native populations of New Spain, it was estimated that there were perhaps 180,000 people who spoke Matlatzinca.
There are fewer and fewer speakers of San Francisco Matlatzinca. Even in a majority bilingual population, the use of Spanish is becoming increasingly dominant. The language is only spoken among the older generation and very few young people, and because Spanish is so necessary to know outside of the community, it has begun to replace the Matlatzinca language. In 2020, San Francisco Matlatzinca was spoken by around 1,245 people. Even though Matlatzinca is a moribund language, it is recognized as an official language of Mexico along with Spanish and dozens of other native languages. At any one time, about half the population is in the village of San Francisco Oxtotilpan and half away in Mexico City.
There is little hope that the language will persist even though younger speakers exist, but there are revitalization efforts that focus on documenting recorded audio-visual interviews, Spanish-translated materials, transcriptions, glosses, and annotated materials. This database was put together in 2019 by Enrique L. Palancar and Leonardo Carranza. Though it is not supposed to be a revitalization project exactly, the database provides materials to aid in future revitalization efforts.
There are 16 phonemes in the consonant inventory of San Francisco Matlatzinca. In some transcriptions, the IPA symbol is replaced with the segments seen in the brackets.
There are 7 vowel phonemes in San Francisco Matlatzinca.
There are no glides inherent to these vowels, so it's as if they resemble Spanish vowels. There is the tendency to drop word-final vowels if it occurs after a voiceless stop or affricate. For example, /i/ may get left off the end of a word if it is unstressed and appears after a voiceless consonant.
Every syllable is structured around one of the vowels listed. Neither an onset or a coda is required of a syllable generally, though there are restrictions on whether an onset or coda is necessary depending on placement of the syllable within the word.
For example, the first syllable of a word may begin with a vowel or a consonant. In this case, the syllabic vowel can be preceded with a consonant or not or may be followed by a consonant or not. The possibilities for word-initials can be summed up in these possible syllables: V-, CV-, VC-, CVC-.
Word-final syllables must always have an onset consisting of one consonant or a two-consonant cluster: -CV or -CCV. This also means that all words will end in a syllabic vowel, never a consonant
Syllables found in the middle of words will always have an onset of either one consonant or a two-consonant cluster. The syllable can be open, meaning there is no coda of consonants after the syllabic vowel, or closed with consonants on both sides. However, if the onset contains a cluster, then the vowel cannot be closed. Additionally, consonant clusters have a maximum of two consonants and only occur in onsets, never codas, of the syllable. The possibilities for these syllables found in the middle of words can be summed up in these possible syllables: -CV-, -CVC-, -CCV.
Examples of these structures are <em>t'etÃÂÃÂna</em> "my clothing" and <em>inÃÂtÃÂti</em> "a sheep".
There are no phonemes that have specific prosodic qualities ascribed to them, but there are patterns to be found nonetheless. Andrews and Shell (1945) notice that there seems to be a pattern of a stress on alternating syllables, as seen in the word <em>'meka'ka.</em> Frequently, the vowels in these stressed syllables will become lengthened. They also notice that this pattern of alternating stresses does not continue across phrases, but only within individual words, noting its usefulness for determining word boundaries.
However, pitch and tone do hold lexical, morphological, and syntactic importance. Tone sandhi occurs in Matlatzinca, which is a pitch-accent language, just as it does in many Oto-Manguean languages.
Matlatzinca has a high and a low tone, but as four phonetically distinct tones. The high and low tones are often interpreted as a pattern of stress and lack of stress, though stresses can occur both on high and low tones. Tonal changes often occur when Matlatzinca combines two or more words, such as <em>tahnÃÂ:bi</em> "I danced" with a low tone on the middle syllable becoming <em>tahnÃÂ:bi bÃÂk'i</em> "I danced here" with the same syllable converting to a high tone add the <em>bi</em> becoming a low tone. Some other tendencies are that the tone of the syllable will be drawn towards the one that follows it, such as in <em>tuko:ti mbaÃÂni</em> "She shut the house". When the word ends with a low tone before a high tone, the high tone tends to be dropped to a mid tone. If the end of the word ends in a low tone, the last syllable may drop to a phonetic sub-low tone. Finally, a falling glide may occur at the final syllable of a word, such as in
Here are examples of only some of the phonological processes that occur in Matlatzinca:
The stem frequently takes a few different forms such as CV, CVC, CVV, CVVC, and CVðCVC. The only obligatory prefixes that are always attached to the stem are for the number and gender of the possessor. For example, the marked gender plural is used in <em>ÃÂin-ne-tðami</em>, meaning "coin", where <em>ÃÂin-</em> is the determiner and <em>-ne</em> is the plural marked gender. When there is an indefinite possessor, the suffix -ta is used, such as in <em>ÃÂine-moo-ta</em> meaning "someoneâ²s feet".
An example of possessive prefixes is in the word <em>ÃÂim-botâ²o-no</em>, meaning "our head". The possessive prefix, which in this case is ø for the singular marked gender, will come after the number and gender prefixes. Given that the prefixes for plural 2nd and 3rd person are the same, tone is often used to distinguish between the two.
Matlatzinca also has appreciative prefixes that preceded the stem but come after the prefixes for the number/gender and possessive. Here are some examples:
The verb system is generally aligned with a nominative-accusative system. Verb stems often take the forms of either CVC, CVV, CVVC, or CVðVC. Verbs include affixes for time-aspect-mode, voice, and the number of subject and object arguments. The affix for time-aspect-mode will precede the stem of the word. This can be seen in the word <em>ki-ro-nnÃÂðàne-ÃÂuwi</em>, meaning "the women dance", where <em>ron-</em> indicates the third person accusative.
When speaking about an object, the suffix <em>ki-</em> is used to mark the first person singular, such as in <em>ki ron-to-seti-ki</em>, and <em>ø</em> is used to mark third person singular, such as in <em>ki tu-ÃÂuri-ø</em>.
As seen in both the previous examples, the morpheme <em>ki</em> is used in most verb constructions, but its meaning and function is not very clear. It appears with morphemes concerning time-aspect-mode, generally preceding the verb, but it does not come before determinant phrases, adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions.
Motijo proposes that the morpheme <em>ÃÂin</em> is a determiner that indicates a noun, as seen in the word <em>ÃÂimbaani</em>, meaning "house". It does not form part of the noun, and adjectives can come between that and the noun. <em>wee</em> is another determiner that is mutually exclusive of <em>ÃÂin</em>, though it is very similar. <em>wee</em> is mostly used in noun phrases where human nouns are used, implicating a social function, such as in <em>weþiwi</em> (<em>wee ø-þiw</em>), meaning "son". <em>ÃÂin</em> is used in all the other cases. <em>ÃÂin</em> also appears regardless of the number of the noun, but <em>wee</em> does not appear in nouns that are dual or plural. Furthermore, <em>ÃÂin</em> can take on different allomorphs such as [ÃÂiN], [ÃÂi], or [N]. The final consonant /n/ may be realized as [n], [ò], [à Â], or [m] as seen in <em>ÃÂimbotâ²o xiita</em> or <em>ÃÂiòchä</em>. The final consonant may also fall off, and the determiner becomes <em>ÃÂi</em>.
Based on data provided by Escalante and Hernández, Matlatzinca utilizes an SVO word order just as English does. For example,
However, if there is not a direct object present, the sentence can take the order VS or SV. For example,
Another common sentence structure is VO.
Within the noun phrase, there are certain ordering rules:
Matlatzinca mostly follows the system nominative-accusative system. There is also a small class of verbs that follow an active-stative alignment, but there is not enough in the existing corpus to infer the general difference for when each case is used. Examples of different case markings can be seen in the <strong>Morphology</strong> section above.