Trique language

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The Trique or Triqui language is an Oto-Manguean language of Mexican spoken by the Trique indigenous group of the state of Oaxaca. It belongs to the Mixtecan branch together with the Mixtec languages and Cuicatec.

The ethnologue counts 3 variants.

• Trique de Copala spoken by 15,000 people (1990 census) in San Juan Copala, Oaxaca (and recently due to migrations in San Quintín valley, Baja California)
• Triqui de San Andrés Chicahuaxtla spoken by 6,000 people in San Andrés Chicahuaxtla, Oaxaca.
• Triqui de San Martín Itunyoso spoken by 2,000 people (1983 survey) in San Martín Itunyoso, Oaxaca.

All varieties of Trique are tonal and have complex phonologies. The tone system of Copala Trique is the most described, having 8 tones (Hollenbach, 1984). The tone system of Itunyoso Trique has 9 tones (DiCanio, 2006). The tone system of Chicahuaxtla Trique has at least 10 tones (if you follow Good (1979)) but may have as many as 16 (if you follow Longacre, 1957).

Of the Trique dialects, the Copala dialect has undergone the most vowel loss, with non-final syllables losing their vowels. The result of this, as in many other Oto-Manguean languages, is a complex set of consonant clusters. So, for instance, the word /sikuj/ 5-5 'cow' in Itunyoso Trique is /skuj/ 5 in Copala Trique (5 is high, 1 is low).

Trique morphology is interesting for having complex phonological processes that are triggered by the presence of root-final clitic pronouns. These pronouns (especially the 1st and 2nd person singular) change the shape of the stem or alter its tone.

Trique syntax is interesting for having toggle processes. Under the scope of negation, a completive aspect prefix signifies the negative potential. A potential aspect prefix in the same context signifies the negative completive.

As a language sub-family, Trique is interesting for having a large tonal inventory, complex morphophonology, and interesting syntactic phenomena (much of which has yet to be described).