Ixcatec
Xwja, Xjuani
Native to	Mexico
Region	Oaxaca
Ethnicity	Ixcatecos
Native speakers	195 (2020)[1]
Language family	Oto-Manguean Popolocan Ixcatec
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Mexico
Regulated by	Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas }
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ixc
Glottolog	ixca1245
ELP	Ixcatec
Ixcatec is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Ixcatec (in Ixcatec: xwja o xjuani) is a language spoken by the people of the Mexican village of Santa María Ixcatlan, in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca. The Ixcatec language belongs to the Popolocan branch of the Oto-manguean language family. It is believed to have been the second language to branch off from the others within the Popolocan subgroup, though there is a small debate over the relation it has to them.^[2]

According to the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, there were only 8 speakers of the language in 2008.^[3] In 2010, 190 speakers of Ixcatec were registered.^[4] In 2020, 195 people reported speaking the language .^[1] The small number of current speakers is the result of a steady decline over the last 60 years, which can be attributed to anti-illiteracy campaigns by the Mexican government that discouraged the use of indigenous languages, migration from the area to the cities, and the small initial population of speakers of the language.^[5]

Despite the lack of historical documentation in Ixcatec, written speech has been observed to use Latin script following the arrival of the Spaniards.^[6] The earliest document written in Ixcatec is from 1939, when native speaker Doroteo Jiménez wrote a letter to Lázaro Cárdenas, the president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.^[7] Later on, an orthography for the language had begun development in the 1950s with reliance on the Spanish alphabet when necessary.

Ixcatec derives its name from the Nahuatl word ichcatl meaning 'cotton'. In Spanish it can be referred to by the term ixcateco, in which the added on suffix -teco stems from the Nahuatl suffixes -teca/-tecatl which means 'inhabitant of a place', especially one with a name ending in -tlan or -lan. This term can be traced back to the eighteenth century.^[8]

Classification

The Ixcatec language belongs to the Oto-manguean language family, and to the popolocan branch. The closest languages to Ixcatec, genetically speaking, are Mazatec, Chocholtec and Popolocan.^[4]

Characteristics

Like other Oto-manguean languages, Ixcatec is a tonal language and it distinguishes between long and short vowels. Due to the low number of speakers, Ixcatec is considered a language with a high risk of disappearing.

Phonology

Consonants

The following table presents the consonants of Ixcatec. Plosives can be voiceless or voiced (the second row contains the voiceless plosives while the third contains the voiced ones) as well as affricates. The voiceless bilabial stop /p/ and the trill /rr/ are the only consonants to be borrowed from Spanish (though there is only one case in which /p/ possibly was not: ʔu²ča¹pi¹ [ʔu²ša¹pi¹] ‘cenzontle’.^[9]

Most consonant groupings contain one of the following consonants: /ʔ/, /h/, and /n/. /ʔ/ and /h/ occur in the final position of a grouping, but precede nasals and /j/ whereas /n/ usually precedes a voiced consonant: /mb/, /nd/, /nd͡ʒ/, /ŋg/, etc.^[15]

Vowels

There are five oral and five nasal vowels in the Ixcatec inventory. The following table presents the pairs of vowels with the oral one preceding the nasalized version.

Vowels are grouped into diphthongs or non-diphthongs. A diphthong contains the vowel /i/ or /u/ (or their nasal counterparts) followed by a different vowel.^[16] However, both components of the diphthong must have the same manner of articulation (oral or nasal). Diphthongs generally appear in inflectional forms of stems ending in /i/ or /u/, or their nasalized versions, and are represented with one tone.

Additionally, vowels can be distinguished by length. A long vowel is composed of two of the same vowels with identical tones. It is represented with two vowels and a single tone (e.g. cee² ‘do’, ce² ‘moss’). A word-final long vowel can also be the result of suffixation. For example, the word ra²te³ ‘sandal’ followed by the suffix that indicates third-person possession creates ra²tee³ ‘his/her sandal’.^[10]

Phonological Alternations

A change in context influences the sound of the consonant /h/. /h/ is pronounced as a glottal fricative [h] in a nasal context and when it is near a consonant other than [r]. Some examples include thi² ’cane’ [thi²] and nĩ¹he˜² ‘three’ [nĩ¹he˜²]. However, in an oral context and when following an /r/, it becomes velarized, as is the case with si¹hi³ ’foot’ [si¹xi³].^[10]

Tone

There are three tones in Ixcatec. They are represented by superscript numbers following vowels, which are the main carriers of tone. They are as follows: ¹ indicates a high tone, ² indicates a medium tone, and ³ indicates a low tone. The distinction between tones is greatest between stressed syllables since they lose most of their distinctive value in syllables that precede a stressed one. Tones may undergo changes due to the influence of adjacent tones and morphological processes.

There are nine possible combinations of tones within disyllabic words according to Fernandez (1950):^[17]

Fernandez (1950) also proposed twenty-six hypothetical combinations of tones within trisyllabic words.^[18]

Syllable Structure

The syllable structure in Ixcatec is CVT in a word-initial position, and (C)VT in a non-initial position.^[19] C represents a consonant or a group of consonants. Syllables that begin with a vowel only appear in a non-initial position. The initial consonant can also be the voiceless glottal stop, /ʔ/, but it does not occur when it directly precedes a vowel. V can be a simple vowel, a long vowel, or a diphthong, and T represents one tone. Disyllabic words are composed of two different tones.

Although stress is difficult to perceive in most words, it is believed that it falls on the penultimate syllable. The stress causes a prolonged articulation, slightly or prominently, on the consonant or group of consonants that follow it. The stress is clearly shown in the inflected forms, where it is displaced as a result of suffixing a syllable of the CVT type. For example, the form of the word ra²te³ ‘sandal’ is pronounced [ra²tte³] with the /t/ slightly lengthened. However, in the form ra²te³ni¹ ‘our sandals’, the stress moves towards the penultimate syllable where it is expressed by lengthening the consonant /n/: [ra²te³nni¹].^[19]

Morphology

Processes

The most general morphological process in Ixcatec is affixation. However, one known account of complete reduplication occurs when the adjective ʔi¹ ‘small’ becomes ʔi¹ʔi¹ when pluralized.^[20]

Another morphological process is tonal change. In almost all the verbs and some nouns, tonal change indicates past or future tense.^[20]

When there is a vowel /i/ in the last two syllables of a disyllabic or trisyllabic noun, and the possessive suffixes of the second and third persons are added, the final /i/ becomes lowered and centralized. For example, nǰi²xi³ ‘pasture’ becomes nǰi²xe³e³ ‘his pasture’.^[21]

Regressive assimilation occurs in disyllabic words that have an /a/ in each syllable separated by the glottal stop /ʔ/. To form the possessive of the third person singular and plural, the first vowel assimilates to the one in the suffix.^[21] For instance, na²ʔa¹ ‘mother’ becomes ne²ʔe¹e¹ ‘her mother’.

Grammatical Persons

The nominal phrase has at least a noun or a pronoun that frequently precedes an article and one or more adjectives. The subject of possession is expressed within the noun by the addition of an ending.^[22]

There are four inflected forms for the first person, second person, third person, and collective subjects. Personal pronouns are optionally used to emphasize the person of the subject, or to avoid confusion between subjects. The pronouns that correspond to the four grammatical persons are i²na¹na³ (first person), i²la³ (second person), su²wa² (third person), and i²ni¹ (first person plural).^[22]

Respect shown towards a second-person subject is expressed by adding the enclitic ri¹ to the end of the second-person pronoun: i²la³ri¹ (‘you’ formal, equivalent to usted in Spanish). The third-person pronoun is commonly followed by a coreferential pronoun indicating the gender or plurality of the third person. This pronoun corresponds to an antecedent noun:  su²wa²da³ ‘he/him’, su²wa²kua³ ‘she/her’, su²wa²ba³ ‘it’ (as with animals), and su²wa²ma³ ‘them’.^[22]

Nouns

Nouns can be either subjects or sentence complements. Most of the multisyllabic nouns in this language are compounds. The first component is generally a morpheme that classifies the noun in one of various generic classes, which includes trees, animals, flowers, people, etc. These classifying prefixes correspond to nouns with a particular generic class. For instance, the noun u² ‘animal’ is used as a classifying prefix u²- in the names of animals. The second component of nouns does not have any significant meaning and thus cannot function on its own.^[23]

Some nouns that are used most frequently as classifiers in noun compounds are:^[24]

Possessives

Nouns that refer to body parts or kinship require the expression of a possessor, almost always a possessive suffix, while others, such as natural phenomena and wild animals, do not. Nouns express the person of a possessor by adding to their subjects specific suffixes and enclitics. The regular endings of the possessive include -ña na (first person), -aa (second person), -ee (third person), and -ni (first person plural).^[25]

There are four inflectional possessive classes apart from a small number of irregular nouns: Class I, Class II, Class III, and Class IV.^[26]

Class I

This class is the largest of the inflectional classes. The endings of nouns in this class generate a high tone in the final vowel of the word. This vowel does not change its quality in the first-person singular and plural forms but produces a reduction of vowels in the second and third-person forms. There are two subclasses, Ia and Ib, which differ only in the ending of the third-person forms.^[26]

The endings are:^[26]

The majority of the nouns in this class take the endings of Subclass Ia. Monosyllabic nouns in this subclass have a medium tone while the disyllabic ones have a sequence of two medium tones and multisyllabic ones end in a sequence of two medium tones.^[27]

Class II

Tonal raising is not carried out in the nouns of this class. The majority of these nouns end in a low tone, which makes up Subclass IIa, whereas others end in a medium tone, subclass IIb. These conserve the medium tone in all inflectional forms and include monosyllabic as well as multisyllabic names. The formal form of the second-person is followed by the enclitic ri¹. ^[28]

The endings are:^[28]

Class III

Nouns in this class share certain irregularities in their inflected forms that reveal paradigm shifts by analogy with Subclass IIa.  The endings are:^[29]

Class IV

Borrowed terms indicate the person of the possessor with the morphemes of the Ixcatec system. The type of accent that nouns receive in Spanish pronunciation, flat or acute, is diagnostic for its possessed forms in Ixcatec.^[30]

Nouns with an accent of plain origin form Subclass IVa. They are pronounced with a high tone in the penultimate syllable and can also be in the final. The tone in syllables that precede a stressed syllable is sub-differentiated and pronounced with a medium or low tone. The endings of Subclass IVa coincide with those of Subclass IIa apart from the endings of the first person singular and plural:^[30]

Nouns that have an acute accent in Spanish comprise Subclass IVb. They have a high tone in the final syllable of the stem while the tone is sub-differentiated in the preceding syllable. The endings of this subclass coincide with Subclass Ia except for the ending of the first person.^[31]

Nouns that have an acute accent in Spanish comprise Subclass IVb. They have a high tone in the final syllable of the stem while the tone is sub-differentiated in the preceding syllable. The endings of this subclass coincide with Subclass Ia except for the ending of the first person.^[31]

Plurality

The plural expression for personal pronouns is optional, and the same forms are commonly used to reference the singular as well as the plural. For example, to emphasize the plural of the second-person pronoun, different forms of tuⁱhu³, a verbal root with an inherent meaning of plurality, are added to the original form: i²la³ri¹tu¹hu³ri¹ ‘you’ (formal).^[23]

However, when it is expressed in a noun it is only to indicate the plurality of the possessor. The absolute noun expresses number through lexical means with the use of numerals or other adjectives indicating quantity.^[23]

Syntax

The Nominal Phrase

Adjectives

Nouns and pronouns can go before or after the different classes of adjectives and articles. Adjectives are demonstrative, qualifying, or quantitative. Most adjectives can also be used as adverbs. The order of the nominal phrase is as follows: article, quantitative adjective, noun, demonstrative adjective, and qualifying adjective. Additionally, the particle la² is often found between the noun and its modifier. Its function is seemingly syntactic though its use is optional.^[32]

Demonstrative adjectives follow the noun that they describe. The demonstrative rii² indicates a relatively close distance much like the word ‘this’ whereas raa² indicates a farther distance similar to ‘that’.^[33]

They often appear in conjunctive and prepositional forms, such as:^[33]

Quantitative adjectives precede the noun that they are modifying. This class pertains to all adjectives that express a quantitative concept, including numerals.^[34]

Qualifying adjectives follow the nouns they modify. An adverb, a demonstrative, or the particle la² can be inserted between a noun and a qualifying noun:^[35]

A noun that expresses possession is repeated before an adjective or replaced by the particle la²: ^[36]

An adjective in predicative function goes before the noun:^[36]

The suffix of negation -ʔa²na¹ follows a predicated adjective, but precedes the enclitic for grammatical person:^[37]

Articles

The definite article sa¹ or sa² is rarely used and less so when the determination is ambiguous. It is used most often with names of people or nouns that refer to people as well as nouns indicating possession. Additionally, it precedes the noun just like quantitative nouns and can be interchanged with the particle la². The tone of the determinate article frequently coincides with the first tone of the noun it precedes.^[38]

Pronouns

Coreferential pronouns are used in coreference with a noun, subject or object, mentioned earlier in conversation. They indicate the gender of this noun in third-person forms of the possessive, verb, or the personal pronoun su²wa². ^[39]

Each one of the four pronouns is morphologically related to the prefixes for noun classifiers.^[40]

Third-person pronouns are formed by placing the personal pronoun before the coreferential pronouns:^[22]

Verbs

Ixcatec is a head-marking language with arguments of transitive and intransitive verbs being marked by various suffixes.^[41] Word order is SV when unmarked. Subject arguments precede the verb in main clauses whereas adverbial clauses cause them to follow the verb instead with a cross-reference suffix attached to the verb.^[42] However, word order for mono-transitive main clauses is strictly SVO.^[43]

Verbs can be inflected for grammatical persons and number by means of suffixes attached to stem words.^[44]

The prefixes ba²tu²- and kwa¹tu²- represent present and past tense and are distinct in the third-person plural form:^[44]

In interrogatives forms there are affixes indicating person as well:^[45]

In past and future tenses, the prefix ku- can be used with different versions of its spelling corresponding to the initial phoneme of the verb. Another prefix is xw-.^[46]

Vocabulary

Numbers

• /hngu²/: one
• /ju¹hu¹/: two
• /nĩ¹hẽ²/: three
• /njũ¹hũ¹/: four
• /ʃʔõ¹/: five
• /ʃhõ³/: six
• /ja¹tu²/: seven
• /hni²/: eight
• /nĩ¹njẽ²/: nine
• /ʔu²te³/: ten

Interrogatives

Frequently used pronoun interrogatives almost always contain a variation of the consonant clusters ndi- or nda-:^[40]