Pipil_language

Pipil language

Pipil or Nawat is the language originally spoken by the Pipils of western El Salvador and still remembered by some of them, mostly elderly. The Pipils themselves and people in El Salvador generally refer to the language as Nawat (in Spanish spelling, náhuat); Pipil as a name for the language is used by the international scholarly community, chiefly to differentiate it more clearly from Nahuatl. In this article the name Nawat will often be used whenever there is no risk of ambiguity.

Status and classification

For most authors the term Pipil (Nawat) is used to refer to the language in Central America (excluding Mexico). However, the term (along with the synonymous Eastern Nahuatl) has also been used to refer to Nahuatl lects in the southern Veracruz, Tabasco, and Chiapas that like Pipil have reduced the earlier /tl/ sound to a /t/. The varieties in these three areas do share greater similarities with Nawat than the other Nahuatl varieties do (suggesting a closer connection); however, Campbell (1985) considers Nawat distinct enough to be considered a language separate from the Nahuatl complex, thus rejecting an Eastern Nahuatl subgrouping that includes Nawat.

For other authors the term Aztec is used to refer to all closely related languages in this region as a single language, not distinguishing Nawat from Nahuatl (and sometimes not even separating out Pochutec). Currently the widely accepted classifications by Lastra de Suárez (1986) and Canger (1988) see Pipil as a Nahuan dialect of the eastern periphery.

Two classifications of Pipil/Nawat
Campbell (1985)		Lastra de Suárez (1986), Canger (1988)
Uto-Aztecan Northern Uto-Aztecan Numic Tübatulabal Takic (Southern California Shoshone) Hopi Southern Uto-Aztecan Piman Taracahitic Cora-Huichol (Corachol) Nahua (Aztecan, Nahuatlan) Pochutec (extinct) Pipil Core Nahua (all other Nahua varieties)		Uto-Aztecan 5000 BP^* Shoshonean (Northern Uto-Aztecan) Sonoran^** Aztecan 2000 BP (a.k.a. Nahuan) Pochutec — Coast of Oaxaca General Aztec (Nahuatl) Western periphery Eastern Periphery Pipil Sierra de Puebla Isthmus-Mecayapan Huasteca Central dialects

Pipil specialists (Campbell, Fidias Jiménez, Geoffroy Rivas, King, Lemus, and Schultze, inter alia) generally treat Pipil/Nawat as a separate language, at least in practice. It is certainly closely related to modern Nahuatl dialects and to the Classical Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, even if not descended directly from the latter.

Present state and future prospects of the language

Today Nawat is seldom used and only by a few elderly speakers in the Salvadoran departments of Sonsonate and Ahuachapán. Cuisnahuat and Santo Domingo de Guzmán have the highest concentration of speakers. Campbell's 1985 estimate (fieldwork 1970-1976) was 200 remaining speakers although as many as 2000 speakers have been recorded in official Mexican reports. Gordon (2005) reports only 20 speakers (from 1987). The exact number of speakers is difficult to determine because native speakers do not wish to be identified due to local conflict, such as the matanza ("massacre") of 1932 and laws that made speaking Nawat illegal. The varieties of Nawat in Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama are now extinct.

As an endangered language, Pipil is threatened with the possibility of extinction within the next few years unless effective steps are taken quickly to keep it alive. A few small-scale attempts or projects to revitalize Nawat in El Salvador were initiated in the course of the twentieth century. Recent relevant work includes projects by the Asociación Coordinadora de Comunidades Indígenas de El Salvador (ACCIES) and Universidad Don Bosco of San Salvador (both of which have produced some teaching materials), and also an on-line language course by Monica Ward. The Nawat Language Recovery Initiative is a grass-roots association currently engaged in several activities including an ongoing language documentation project, and has also produced a range of printed materials. Thus, as the number of native speakers continues to dwindle, there is growing interest in some quarters in keeping the language alive, yet non-existent official support from the government (cf. Various, 2002).

Present geographic distribution

Localities where Pipil was reported by Campbell as spoken in the 1970s include the following:

Ataco
Chiltiupan
Comazagua
Cuisnahuat
Izalco

Jicalapa

Juayua

Nahulingo

Nahuizalco

Santa Catarina Mazaguat

Santa Isabel Ishuatán

Santo Domigo de Guzmán

Tacuba

Teotepeque

Pipil and Nahuatl Compared

Phonology

In phonology, one of the most salient features of Pipil, the absence of tl and the occurrence of t where the former is found in Classical and some modern Nahuatl dialects, is not exclusively Pipil but shared by some Mexican forms of modern Nahuatl. Another salient characteristic, the Pipil pronunciation [u] rather than [o] as the predominant allophone of a single basic rounded vowel phoneme, is also shared with some modern Mexican varieties. Thus these features are characteristic but not diagnostic.

However, Pipil t corresponds not only to the two Classical phonemes /t/ and /tl/ but also to a word-final saltillo or glottal stop in nominal plural suffixes (e.g. Pipil -met : Classical -meh) and verbal plural endings (Pipil -t present plural, -ket past plural, etc.). This fact has been claimed by Campbell to be diagnostic for the position of Pipil in a genetic classification, on the assumption that this /t/ is more archaic than the classical Aztec reflex, where the direction of change has been t > saltillo.

One other characteristic phonological feature is the diachronic merger in Pipil of original /ll/ (kept in Classical Nahuatl, and itself resulting from earlier assimilations such as *l+tl and *l+y and internally reconstructible for the ancestor of Pipil) with single l.

Grammar

Pipil lacks some grammatical features present in Classical Nahuatl, such as the past prefix o- in verbs. It distributes others differently: for example, 'subtractive' past formation, which is very common in the classical language, exists in Pipil but is much rarer. On the other hand, reduplication to form plural nouns, of more limited distribution in the language of the Aztecs, is greatly generalised in Pipil. Still other grammatical features that were productive in Classical Nahuatl have only left fossilised traces in Pipil: for example, synchronically Pipil has no postpositions, although a few lexical forms derive etymologically from older postpositional forms, e.g. apan 'river' < *'in/on the water', kujtan 'uncultivated land, forest' < *'under the trees'; these are synchronically unanalyzable in modern Pipil.

Noun phrase

Comparison: Noun phrase
	Nahuatl	Pipil	Pipil example
plural marking	limited in Classical	generalized	taj-tamal 'tortillas' sej-selek 'tender, fresh (pl.)'
plural formation	mostly suffixes	mostly redup.	taj-tamal 'tortillas' sej-selek 'tender, fresh (pl.)'
absolute -tli (Pipil -ti)	generally kept	often absent	mistun 'cat (abs.)'
construct /C_	-wi or zero	always zero	nu-uj 'my path'
inalienability	nouns generally have absolutes	many inalienables	mey-ti, nan-ti...
possessive prefixes	lose o before vowel	retain vowel (u)	nu-ikaw 'my brother'
articles	no generalized articles in Classical	definite ne, indefinite se	ne/se takat 'the/a man'
post/prepositions	postpositions	no post-, only prepositions	tik ne apan 'in the river'

Pipil has developed two widely-used articles, definite ne and indefinite se. The demonstrative pronouns/determiners ini 'this, these' and uni 'that, those' are also distinctively Pipil in form. The obligatory marking of number extends in Pipil to almost all plural noun phrases (regardless of animacy), which will contain at least one plural form, most commonly marked by reduplication.

Many nouns are invariable for state, since -ti (cf. Classical -tli, the absolute suffix after consonants) is rarely added to polysyllabic noun stems, while the Classical postconsonantal construct suffix, -wi, is altogether unknown in Pipil: thus sin-ti 'maize' : nu-sin 'my maize', uj-ti 'way' : nu-uj 'my way', mistun 'cat' : nu-mistun 'my cat'.

An important number of nouns lack absolute forms and only occur inalienably possessed, e.g. nu-mey 'my hand' (but not *mey or *mey-ti), nu-nan 'my mother' (but not *nan or *nan-ti), thus further reducing the number of absolute-construct oppositions and the incidence of absolute -ti in comparison to Classical Nahuatl.

Postpositions have been eliminated from the Pipil grammatical system, and some monosyllabic prepositions originating from relationals have become grammaticalized.

Verbs

Comparison: Verb
	Nahuatl	Pipil	Pipil example
inflection	more complex	less complex; analytic substitutes	kuchi nemi katka 'used to stay and sleep'
past prefix o-	found in Classical + some dialects	no	ki-neki-k 'he wanted it' ni-kuch-ki 'I slept'
subtractive past formation	common in Classical + some dialects	limited
past in -ki	no	yes
perfect in -tuk	no	yes	ni-kuch-tuk 'I have slept'
imperfect tense	-ya	-tuya (stative)	ni-weli-tuya 'I could'
-skia, -tuskia conditionals	no	yes	ni-takwika-(tu)-skia 'I would sing/I would have sung'
initial prefixes /_V	lose i	mostly retain i	niajsi 'I arrive', kielkawa 'he forgets it'

To form the past tense, most Pipil verbs add -k (after vowels) or -ki (after consonants, following loss of the final vowel of the present stem), e.g. ki-neki 'he wants it' : ki-neki-k 'he wanted it', ki-mati 'he knows it' : ki-mat-ki 'he knew it'. The mechanism of simply removing the present stem vowel to form past stems, so common in Classical Nahuatl, is limited in Pipil to polysyllabic verb stems such as ki-talia 'he puts it' → ki-tali(j) 'he put it', mu-talua 'he runs' → mu-talu(j) 'he ran', and a handful of other verbs, e.g. ki-tajtani 'he asks him' → ki-tajtan 'he asked him'.

Pipil has a perfect tense in -tuk (synchronically unanalyzable), plural -tiwit. Another tense suffix, -tuya, functions both as a pluperfect (k-itz-tuya ne takat 'he had seen the man') and as an imperfect of stative verbs (inte weli-tuya 'he couldn't'), in the latter case having supplanted the -ya imperfect found in Mexican dialects.

Pipil has two conditional tenses, one in -skia expressing possible conditions and possible results, and one in -tuskia for impossible ones, although the distinction is sometimes blurred in practice. A future tense in -s (plural -sket) is attested but rarely used, a periphrastic future being preferred, e.g. yawi witz (or yu-witz) 'he will come'.

In serial constructions, the present tense (really the unmarked tense) is generally found except in the first verb, regardless of the tense of the latter, e.g. kineki / kinekik / kinekiskia kikwa 'he wants / wanted / would like to eat it'.

There are also some differences regarding how prefixes are attached to verb-initial stems; principally, that in Pipil the prefixes ni-, ti-, shi- and ki- when word-initial retain their i in most cases, e.g. ni-ajsi 'I arrive', ki-elkawa 'he forgets it'.

Bibliography

Asociación Coordinadora de Comunidades Indígenas de El Salvador (ACCIES) (no date). Tukalmumachtiak Nahuat (Lengua Náhuat, Primer Ciclo).
Arauz, Próspero (1960). El pipil de la región de los Itzalcos. (Edited by Pedro Geoffroy Rivas.) San Salvador: Ministerio de Cultura.
Calvo Pacheco, Jorge Alfredo (2000). Vocabulario castellano-pipil pípil-kastíyan. Izalco, El Salvador.
Campbell, Lyle. (1985). The Pipil language of El Salvador. Mouton grammar library (No. 1). Berlin: Mouton Publishers. ISBN 0-89925-040-8 (U.S.), ISBN 3-11-010344-3.
Comisión Nacional de Rescate del Idioma Náhuat (1992a). Ma Timumachtika Nauataketsalis / Aprendamos el Idioma Náhuat. San Salvador: Concultura.
Comisión Nacional de Rescate del Idioma Náhuat (1992b). Ma Timumachtika Nauataketsalis (Aprendamos el Idioma Náhuat). Guía Metodológica para la Enseñanza del Náhuat. San Salvador: Concultura.
Geoffroy Rivas, Pedro (1969). El nawat de Cuscatlán: Apuntes para una gramática. San Salvador: Ministerio de Educación.
Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (Ed.). (2005). Ethnologue: Languages of the world (15th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. ISBN 1-55671-159-X. (Online version: www.ethnologue.com)
King, Alan R. (2004b). Gramática elemental del náhuat. El Salvador: IRIN.
King, Alan R. (2004c). "El náhuat y su recuperación." In: Científica 5. San Salvador: Universidad Don Bosco.
King, Alan R. (typescript). Léxico básico náhuat.
Roque, Consuelo (2000). Nuestra escuela náhuat. San Salvador: Universidad de El Salvador.
Todd, Juan G. (1953). Notas del náhuat de Nahuizalco. San Salvador: Editorial "Nosotros".
Various (2002). Perfil de los pueblos indígenas en El Salvador. San Salvador.
Ward, Monica (2001). A Template for CALL Programs for Endangered Languages. On-line version