Cora language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cora naáyarite.
Spoken in:	Mexico: Nayarit,Jalisco
Total speakers:	—
Language family:	American  Uto-aztecan   Corachol    Cora
Official status
Official language of:	none
Regulated by:	Secretaría de Educación Pública
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	—
ISO 639-3:	—
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

The Cora language is an indigenous language of Mexico, spoken by the ethnic group widely known as the Cora but who refer to themselves as Naáyarite. The Cora inhabit the northern sierra of the Mexican state Nayarit which is named after its indigenous inhabitants. Cora is a mesoamerican language and shows many of the traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area Under the "Law of Linguistic Rights" it is recognized as a "national language" along with 62 other indigenous languages and Spanish which have the same "validity" in Mexico [1].

Contents 1 Geographic Distribution 2 Genealogy 3 Phonology 3.1 Consonants 3.2 Vowels 4 Grammar 5 References

[edit] Geographic Distribution

There are two main variants of Cora one called Cora del Nayar or Cora Meseño which is spoken by around 9000 people (1993 census) in the Sierra de Nayarit Jalisco, the other variant is called Cora de Santa Teresa and is spoken by approximately 7000 people (1993 census) in north central Nayarit and has so low intelligibility with other varieties of Cora that the Ethnologue has chosen to consider them separate varieties. Due to recent migrations a small community of Coras exist in the United States in western Colorado.

[edit] Genealogy

The closest relatives of the Cora language is the Huichol language together with which it forms the Coracholan subgroup of the Uto-Aztecan languages. The Taracahitan group of languages containing among others the languages Tarahumara, Yaqui and Mayo is also related to Cora.

• General Uto-Aztecan
  • Coracholan branch
    • Huichol language
    • Cora languages
      • Cora
      • Santa Teresa Cora

[edit] Phonology

The phonology of Cora is typical of northern Uto-aztecan languages with five vowels and a relatively simple consonant inventory. However atypically of Uto-aztecan languages Cora has developed a simple tonal system or pitch accent with an harmonic accent taking high falling tono.

[edit] Consonants

	Bilabial		Alveolar		Palatal (retroflex)		Velar		Glottal
Plosives	p/b	pʷ			t		k	kʷ	ʔ
Fricatives			s		ʂ		x		h
Affricates			ts		tʃ
Liquids			l		ɽ
Nasals	m	mʷ			n
Semivowels	w						j

[edit] Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close (high)	i	ʉ	u
Mid	ɛ
Open (low)		ɑ

[edit] Grammar

Cora is a verb initial language; its grammar is agglutinative and polysynthetic, particularly inflecting verbs with many affixes and clitics. Nouns are marked for possession and exhibit several different plural patterns. Verbs are inflected for person and number of subject and direct object and object prefixes for 3rd person inanimate objects also show the basic shape of the object. Verbs are also inflected for location and direction. There are a number of adpositional clitics that can also be used as relational nouns. Typologically Cora is interesting because it is a VSO language but also has postpositions, a trait that is rare cross-linguistically but does occur in a few Uto-Aztecan languages (Papago, Tepehuán, and some dialects of Nahuatl).

[edit] References

• Miller, Wick. (1983). Uto-Aztecan languages. In W. C. Sturtevant (Ed.), Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 10, pp. 113-124). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.
• McMahon, Ambrosio & Maria Aiton de McMahon. (1959) Vocabulario Cora. Serie de Vocabularios Indigenas Mariano Silva y Aceves. SIL.
• Casad, Eugene H.. 2001. "Cora: a no longer unknown Southern Uto-Aztecan language." In José Luis Moctezuma Zamarrón and Jane H. Hill (eds), Avances y balances de lenguas yutoaztecas; homenaje a Wick R. Miller p. 109-122. Mexico, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia.