Long problem:  # 297 Nothern Tepehuán

analyzed by Vera Wilhelmsen, CanIL Summer 2003

TEPEHUÁN NORTE ( Northern Tepehuán)

-a language of Mexico

The language Northern Tepehuán has about 8000 speakers (1990 census).  It is spoken in the west of Mexico, Southern Chihuahua, in the Baborigame area. It is classified as a Uto-Aztecan, Southern Uto-Aztecan, Sonoran, Tepiman language. It is related to Pima Bajo, O'odham and Southern Tepehuán.

Many Tepehuán do not speak Spanich very well, but Tarahumara is also used in the region. Literacy rate in first language is estimated to 25%, whereas literacy rate in second language is estimated to 35%. The New Testament was translated into Northern Tepehuán by 1982.

Northern Tepehuán is a VSO language, which is not uncommon in the world. We would expect head-initial phrases based on this typology, but that does not seem to apply to this language. Its long words and multiple affixes suggest it is an agglutinating language, and it is also tonal. Tone will not be covered in this paper, however, as tone is not indicated in the data.

The Clause in Northern Tepehuán

The most common constituent order in Northern Tepehuán is VSO, like the Clause in example number 105. But there are several exceptions to this, the most prominent being that the Subject is fronted to create a SVO pattern. This happens in relative Clauses and when the Subject is emphasized. An example of a relative Clause with fronted Subject is 71. In 102 the Subject is emphasized and therefore fronted.

 The Clause is the main morphemic Construction in all languages. It includes the main constituents of a meaningful utterance, and can include verb, primary, secondary and tertiary functions, as well as temporal location and spatial location. Other constituents of the Clause in  Northern Tepehuán is ASPECT, REPETITION, DUPLICATION, and Attribution. There are three kinds of Events in the data: ACTIVITY, EXPERIENCE and EXPRESSION. The smallest meaning it has to convey to be called a Clause is a verb or Verb Word and primary function. In this language, however, the verb has a default meaning of primary and secondary FUNCTION to be   -CA if nothing else is specified. (Further investigation is needed to decide whether a zero-morpheme always is present in these cases, or if it just understood.)  Therefore a Clause can consist of only one verb in Northern Tepehuán. The maximum number of constituents in a Clause is 5, as in number 137. Constituents seem to distribute evenly before and after the C-position, the discourse structure needs to be investigated to understand what motivates the order of tertiary constituents. One thing worth noting is that TEMPORAL LOCATION always comes before SPATIAL LOCATION when they are before the C-position, but when they are after the opposite is true. The clause shows some kind of symmetry as TEMPORAL LOCATION or SPATIAL LOCATION usually is the last or first constituent, and that if they are both present, TEMPORAL LOCATION is the first in the P-columns and the last in the F-columns.

In this language pronouns are sometimes used in addition to person markers on the verb, sometimes they are used without person markers. I haven’t found any pattern to this except that a pronoun has to be present when there is no person marker on the verb, and the primary function is not    -CA. Further studies of discourse structure and pronouns are needed to explain these variations. The pronouns express emphasis by coming before the verb and also by being reduplicated.

There are many embedded clauses in this language, and according to my analysis they are relative Clauses and compliment Clauses. Some potential adverbial Clauses I have analyzed as part of an M-Sentence as they in a Logical Arrangement. An example of an embedded relative Clause is number 74: makA gAgAgA goaali takavo ‘who hit the children yesterday’. It utilizes a Relative Pronoun in the Relative Clause, and it indicates the head, but is moved to Clause initial position as mentioned above.  Some compliment Clauses are embedded in the Location Phrase.  Examples of this is 32 and 73.

Further study is needed to determined several features of the Clause in Northern Tepehuán. Word order, discourse structure and the use of pronouns are examples of such features.