Notes from the Field: Chicahuaxtla Triqui Digital Wordlist and Preliminary Observations

Abstract

This article presents a 200-item list consisting of words and sample sentences from Chicahuaxtla Triqui, an Otomanguean language spoken in San Andrés Chicahuaxtla in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico. The wordlists include broad phonetic transcriptions, English glosses, Spanish cues, individual WAV recordings, and comments. Since the key to understanding Chicahuaxtla Triqui lies in the ability to distinguish tone, the list is divided into two parts: 1) a section consisting of minimal pairs with contrastive phonemic tone and/or lexical items illustrating other interesting phonological characteristics, such as tone, fortis-lenis contrasts, prenasalized velars/pre-voicing, and velar onset nasals; and 2) lexical items that evidence tonal contours but may or may not operate contrastively in the language. To date the files have not been deposited into an institutional archive, however, the present researchers plan to do so once the data are properly categorized. This project involves San Andrés Chicahuaxtla leaders, teachers, community members in addition to researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Texas at Arlington. These digital files represent one of a number of ways to increase access not only for the Triqui community members and leaders who are interested in language conservation efforts, but also for linguists, researchers, and students who wish to learn more about the Otomanguean stock of languages.