Social:Ch’ol language

Chol
Ch'ol
Native to	Mexico
Region	North Central Chiapas Tabasco
Native speakers	212,117 (2010 census)
Language family	Mayan Cholan–Tzeltalan Cholan Chol–Chontal Chol
Early form	Classic Maya
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ctu
Glottolog	chol1282

The Ch'ol (Chol) language is a member of the western branch of the Mayan language family used by the Ch'ol people in the Mexican state of Chiapas. There are two main dialects:

• Ch'ol of Tila spoken by 43,870 people of whom 10,000 are monolinguals in the villages of Tila, Vicente Guerrero, Chivalito and Limar in Chiapas.
• Ch'ol of Tumbalá spoken by 90,000 people of whom 30,000 are monolinguals in the villages of Tumbalá, Sabanilla, Misijá, Limar, Chivalita and Vicente Guerrero.

The Cholan branch of the Mayan languages is considered to be particularly conservative and Ch'ol along with its two closest relatives the Ch'orti' language of Guatemala and Honduras, and the Chontal Maya language of Tabasco are believed to be the modern languages that best reflect their relationship with the Classic Maya language.

Ch'ol-language programming is carried by the CDI's radio station XEXPUJ-AM, broadcasting from Xpujil, Campeche.

Morphosyntax

The basic word order is VOS. However, word order varies and VOS is not always grammatical: factors including animacy, definiteness, topicalization and focus contribute to determining which word order is appropriate.

Ch'ol is a split ergative language: its morphosyntactic alignment varies according to aspect. With perfective aspect, ergative-absolutive alignment is used, whereas with imperfective aspect, we rather observe nominative-accusative.

Numeral classifiers are obligatorily included in noun phrases containing numerals. They occur between the numeral and the noun. The classifiers vary according to semantic properties of the noun: -tyikil is used for persons, -tyejk for trees, etc.

Phonology

Below is the consonant and vowel inventory of Ch'ol.

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	Voiced	b
	Voiceless	p		tʲ	k	ʔ
	Ejective	p'		tʲ'	k'
Fricative			s	ʃ	x
Affricates	Voiceless		ts	tʃ
	Ejective		ts'	tʃ'
Nasals		m		ɲ
Laterals			l
Trills			r
Glides		w		j

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

See also

• Acala Ch'ol
• Lakandon Ch'ol
• Manche Ch'ol

References

Aulie, H. Wilbur, ed (1998). Diccionario Ch'ol de Tumbalá, Chiapas, con variaciones dialectales de Tila y Sabanilla. Serie de vocabularios y diccionarios indígenas "Mariano Silva y Aceves", No. 121. Emily Stairs (electronic reproduction with March 2005 corrections, 2nd ed.). Coyoacán, D.F.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano. ISBN 968-31-0291-3. OCLC 42692322. http://www.sil.org/mexico/maya/chol-tumbala/S121a-Diccionario-CTU.htm. 

Coon, Jessica (2010). "Complementation in Chol (Mayan): A Theory of Split Ergativity" (electronic version). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/001072. Retrieved 2010-07-15.  [includes a grammatical sketch of the language]

Schumann, Otto Gálvez (1973). La lengua Chol de Tila (Chiapas). UNAM. .

Warkentin, Viola; Ruby Scott (1980). Gramática Ch'ol. Summer Institute of Linguistics. 

External links

• El ch'ol, website with links to unpublished scholarly work on the language
• Mayan Languages Collection of Victoria Bricker at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America. Contains a recording of a Ch'ol narrative from Tila, Chiapas.