Copala Triqui
Copala Triqui is a Trique language primarily spoken in the municipality of Santiago Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca, Mexico. A 2007 estimate by SIL International placed the number of Copala Triqui speakers at 25,000 in Mexico.
Geographic distribution
Greenfield, California
Immigrants from Oaxaca have formed a large Copala Triqui speaking community in the city of Greenfield, California. A bi-monthly Triqui language class was piloted at the Greenfield Public Library in 2010.Orthography
Triqui has been written in a number of different orthographies, depending on the intended audience. Linguists typically write the language with all tones fully marked and all phonemes represented. However, in works intended for native speakers of Triqui, a practical orthography is often used with a somewhat simpler representation.The following Copala Triqui example is written in both the practical and the linguistic orthographies:
Syntax
Copala Triqui has a verb–subject–object word order:Copala Triqui has an accusative marker maa³ or man³, which is obligatory for animate pronominal objects but optional otherwise:
This use of the accusative before some objects and not others is what is called differential object marking.
The following example shows a Copala Triqui question:
As this example shows, Copala Trique has wh-movement and pied-piping with inversion.
Copala Triqui syntax is described in Hollenbach.
Triqui is interesting for having toggle processes as well. For negation, a completive aspect prefix signifies the negative potential. A potential aspect prefix in the same context signifies the negative completive.