Coahuilteco language

Coahuilteco was grouped in an eponymous Coahuiltecan family by John Wesley Powell in 1891, later expanded by additional proposed members by e.g. Edward Sapir. Ives Goddard later treated all these connections with suspicion, leaving Coahuilteco as a language isolate. Manaster Ramer (1996) argues Powell's original more narrow Coahuiltecan grouping is sound, renaming it Pakawan in distinction from the later more expanded proposal.{{Cite journal|last=Ramer|first=Alexis Manaster|date=1996|title=Sapir's Classifications: Coahuiltecan|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30028442|journal=Anthropological Linguistics|volume=38|issue=1|pages=1–38|jstor=30028442|issn=0003-5483}} This proposal has been challenged by Campbell,{{Cite journal|last=Campbell|first=Lyle|date=1996|title=Coahuiltecan: A Closer Look|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30013048|journal=Anthropological Linguistics|volume=38|issue=4|pages=620–634|jstor=30013048|issn=0003-5483}} who considers its sound correspondences unsupported and considers that some of the observed similarities between words may be due to borrowing.

Coahuilteco has both short and long vowels.Troike, 1996

Based primarily on study of one 88-page document, Fray Bartolomé García's 1760 Manual para administrar los santos sacramentos de penitencia, eucharistia, extrema-uncion, y matrimonio: dar gracias despues de comulgar, y ayudar a bien morir, Troike describes two of Coahuilteco's less common syntactic traits: subject-object concord and center-embedding relative clauses.{{Cite journal|last=Troike|first=Rudolph C.|date=1981|title=Subject-Object Concord in Coahuilteco|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/414344|journal=Language|volume=57|issue=3|pages=658–673|doi=10.2307/414344|jstor=414344|issn=0097-8507|url-access=subscription}}{{Cite journal|last=Troike|first=Rudolph C.|date=January 2015|title=Center-Embedding Relative Clauses in Coahuilteco|url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/679045|journal=International Journal of American Linguistics|volume=81|issue=1|pages=133–142|doi=10.1086/679045|s2cid=141664014|issn=0020-7071|url-access=subscription}}

In each of these sentences, the object Dios 'God' is the same, but the subject is different, and as a result different suffixes (-n for first person, -m for second person, and -t for third person) must be present after the demonstrative tupo· (Troike 1981:663).

{{interlinear|indent=3

|Dios tupo·-n naxo-xt'e·wal wako·

|God DEM-{{gcl|1CON|First-person conjunct}} 1pS-annoy CAUS

|'We annoyed God'}}

{{interlinear|indent=3

|Dios tupo·-m xa-ka·wa xo e?

|God DEM-{{gcl|2CON|Second-person conjunct}} 2S-love AUX Q

|'Do you love God?'}}

{{interlinear|indent=3

|Dios tupo·-t a-pa-k'tace·y

|God DEM-{{gcl|3CON|third-person conjunct}} 3S-{{gcl|SUB|subordinate}}-pray(PL)

|'that (all) pray to God'}}

Troike (2015:135) notes that relative clauses in Coahuilteco can appear between the noun and its demonstrative (NP → N (Srel) Dem), leading to a center-embedding structure quite distinct from the right-branching or left-branching structures more commonly seen in the world's languages.

One example of such a center-embedded relative clause is the following:

{{interlinear|indent=3

|saxpame· pinapsa·_i [xami·n e_i-Obj xa-p-xo·] tupa·-n

|sins you (OBJ) {} 2-{{gcl|sub|subordinate}}-know DEM-{{gcl|1C|first-person conjunct}}

|‘the sins (which) you know’}}

The Coahuilteco text studied by Troike also has examples of two levels of embedding of relative clauses, as in the following example (Troike 2015:138):

{{interlinear|indent=3

|pi·lam apšap’a·kan_i [e_i-SUBJ pi·nwakta·_j [Dios (∅) pil’ta·_j a-pa-ta·nko] tuče·-t a-p-awa·y] tupa·-t

|people good.PL {} things God (DEM) pronj 3-{{gcl|sub|subordinate}}-command DEM-{{gcl|3C|third-person conjunct}} 3-{{gcl|sub|subordinate}}-do.PL DEM-{{gcl|3C|third-person conjunct}}

|‘(He will carry to heaven) the good people [who do the things [that God commands]]’.}}

• Coahuiltecan languages
• Coahuiltecan people

{{Reflist}}

• Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). Languages. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. {{ISBN|0-16-048774-9}}.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-23228-7}} (hbk); {{ISBN|0-521-29875-X}}.
• Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978–present). Handbook of North American Indians (Vol. 1–20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1–3, 16, 18–20 not yet published).
• Troike, Rudolph. (1996). Coahuilteco (Pajalate). In I. Goddard (Ed.), Languages (pp. 644–665). Handbook of North American Indians. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution.

{{sister project |project=wiktionary |text=Wiktionary has a word list at Appendix:Coahuilteco word list}}

• [https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bmcah Coahuiltecan Indians]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20041110213940/http://data2.itc.nps.gov/parks/saan/ppdocuments/san%20juan%20cultural%20study2.htm Reassessing Cultural Extinction: Change and Survival at Mission San Juan Capistrano, Texas – Chapter 8: Linguistics]

{{Language families}}

{{Hokan languages}}

{{North American languages}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coahuilteco Language}}

Category:Pakawan languages

Category:Extinct languages of North America

Category:Indigenous languages of the Southwestern United States

Category:Indigenous languages of the North American Southwest

Category:Native American history of Texas

Category:Hokan languages

Category:Indigenous languages of Texas

Category:Coahuiltecan languages

Category:Language isolates of North America

hr:Coahuiltec Indijanci