A Grammar of Umbeyajts As Spoken by the Ikojts People of San Dionisio Del Mar, Oaxaca, Mexico

ResearchOnline@JCU This file is part of the following reference: Salminen, Mikko Benjamin (2016) A grammar of Umbeyajts as spoken by the Ikojts people of San Dionisio del Mar, Oaxaca, Mexico. PhD thesis, James Cook University. Access to this file is available from: http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/50066/ The author has certified to JCU that they have made a reasonable effort to gain permission and acknowledge the owner of any third party copyright material included in this document. If you believe that this is not the case, please contact [email protected] and quote http://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/50066/ A Grammar of Umbeyajts as spoken by the Ikojts people of San Dionisio del Mar, Oaxaca, Mexico Mikko Benjamin Salminen, MA A thesis submitted to James Cook University, Cairns In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Language and Culture Research Centre, Cairns Institute College of Arts, Society and Education - James Cook University October 2016 Copyright Care has been taken to avoid the infringement of anyone’s copyrights and to ensure the appropriate attributions of all reproduced materials in this work. Any copyright owner who believes their rights might have been infringed upon are kindly requested to contact the author by e-mail at [email protected]. The research presented and reported in this thesis was conducted in accordance with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, 2007. The proposed research study received human ethics approval from the JCU Human Research Ethics Committee Approval Number H4268. Statement of authorship Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma. No other person's work has been used without due acknowledgement in the main text of the thesis. The thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution. בס"ד « Parler une langue, c’est assumer un monde, une culture. » Frantz Fanon(1952). Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. p. 30. ‘Seeing the present situation, I think that, at the very least, it behooves us as scientists and as human beings to work responsibly both for the future of our science and for the future of our languages, not so much for reward according to the fashion of the day, but for the sake of posterity. What we need to do now stares us in the face. If we do not act, we should be cursed by future generations for Neronically fiddling while Rome burned.’ Michael Krauss 1 1 (1992). ”The world’s languages in crisis.” Language. Vol. 68(1). p. 4; cited by R. M. W. Dixon in a presentation on language endangerment at the Cairns Institute (August 2011). i Acknowledgements There are over 6,000 languages in the world and endangered languages scholars estimate that the great majority of these will have become extinct by the end of the present century. Making an effort to describe the grammar of one of them, therefore, seems to me an important task, and, even though my limited contribution may be marginal, having been given the opportunity to embark upon this endeavor fills me with gratitude. Because getting involved in such a project is much more than a mere descriptive undertaking, quantifiable within a budgetary framework, and aimed at producing a data set, even though it includes all this – a linguistic fieldwork project is a social activity, an engagement with a diverse community of speakers and one of scholars, and centering around the intrinsically dialogical activity of language learning. All of this was made possible by the Ikojts community, my supervisors, my university and many scholars who have assisted me in different respects, and I owe all of the people involved my deepest gratitude. My supervisory committee consisting of Professors Sasha Aikhenvald, Bob Dixon and Maurizio Gnerre have been a tower of strength. Sasha and Bob were always there for me when I needed help, and I never witnessed such an effective team, proactively taking care of all students, always answering e-mails within a matter of hours, addressing all concerns in a detailed and thorough manner and being helpful, polite and sociable. I wish to thank them from the bottom of my heart. Doctor Gnerre has invited me to San Mateo to spend time with him and Doctor Cuturi, which I remember fondly and gratefully. Professors Ton Otto and Michael Wood have also extended me valuable advice and invitations to inspiring events and meetings, for which I wish to thank them. In addition to their support and generosity as supervisors and people, Bob and Sasha also funded my work institutionally through their competitive grants. I am extremely grateful for this, as well as for further funding which came from the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, and from James Cook University, through an IPRS scholarship. I want to express my warm thanks to Professor Helen Marsh for her advice, help and patience. Also, two anonymous examinators reviewed my thesis and provided very useful comments, and I am very thankful to them. In San Dionisio and in Mexico I received an uncountable amount of support and help in attaining my aims, primarily the successful completion of my research and data gathering tasks, for which I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to people whom I highly esteem, among which are Mtro. Obdulio Muriel Díaz and his wife Zodelva Gijón, Vladimir Muriel Gijón, Chiara Bresciani, Mtro. Lucas Rivera Rojas, Mtro. Antonio Palafox, Mtro. Amir Gómez Cruz, Na Licha, Ta Justo Juárez Ramírez, Ta Pedro Olivera, Ta Pedro Pérez, i Ta Vencho, Ta Odilón and many more – too many to mention on paper, though all are remembered with deep gratitude – Dios mangüy ikon. I also want to thank Professor Roberto Zavala Maldonado, who received and counseled me at the CIESAS, provided me with encouragement and advice, sharing his time with me both at the CIESAS in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and in the field in San Dionisio. I want to thank my fellow fieldworkers and scholars for sharing valuable experiences and information, for all of which I remain deeply indebted to Professor Rolf Noyer, Doctor Yuni Kim (paljon kiitoksia!), Víctor Vázquez Castillejos (xquixe pe lii xhamigua’), Rasheny Joha Lazcano Leyva, Doctor Samuel Herrera Castro, Doctor Marcos Ramírez Hernández, Doctor Elena Yásnaya Aguilar, Doctor Tajëëw Robles Díaz, Doctor Rosemary Beam de Azcona, Doctor Francesco Zanotelli and countless other good people. I also want to thank my colleagues – fellow PhD students as well as postdoctoral researchers – at the Cairns Institute with whom I have had valuable and - mostly - pleasant exchanges. These included (I am omitting academic titles, for convenience) Dineke Schokkin, Juliane Böttger, Kasia Wojtylak, Hannah Sarvasy, Sihong Zhang, Chia-Jung Pan, Omid Hajhashemi, Alexandra van den Elsen, John Kerby, Grant Aiton, Anne Schwarz, Gwendolyn Hyslop, Diana Forker, Simon Overall, Azeb Amha, Elena Mihas, Valérie Guérin, Angeliki Alvanoudi, and I also especially thank Brigitta Flick, Amanda Parsonage and Elena Rhind for their support and their good work. My former fellow students and supervisors from the Netherlands also deserve a prominent mention here for all their support and kindness, especially Professor Willem Adelaar. Last but not least, I want to thank my dear friends and family members, who for me form a single category, while not forgetting that without my dear parents, Mirjami and René, and my beloved grandmother Rita, none of this would even have been possible, and these next-of-kin, who have shared their world with me and supported me in difficult times, include Marco, Yirky, Jannet & Oneida, Erkki, Claudia, Meytal & André, Esther, Avi, Daniel, Yonathan & Uriel, Daniel, Anni, Morane, Naomi & Avigaël, Anni & Gianni, Frans & Allan, Anja- Riitta & Rami, Helmi & David, Anja, Mariano Antonio and family, especially Tere, Cesilia, Vicky & Joel, Yazmín Lluvia, Eric Saúl, Juanito, Chencho & Naty; Chiara & Alessio, Luis Alberto, Verito, Hugo, Leonardo to name but a few. The quote by Frantz Fanon on the title page refers to the colonising language imposed upon the colonial subject which colours the glasses through which one perceives the world as well as the way one acts in it. However, this can also be turned around to yield a far more optimistic view, perhaps less present in Fanon’s produce: That of the language of the colonised subject becoming the one through which one perceives, and acts in, our world of late modernity. ii Preface This thesis is a reference grammar of the Umbeyajts language (also known as Huave) as spoken in San Dionisio del Mar on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (Oaxaca, Mexico), a severely endangered langage spoken by approximately 2,000 people in the municipality of San Dionisio del Mar. Together with its four neighbouring varieties, Umbeyajts forms part of an isolate family with no established genetic links (affiliations to various language families or phyla have been proposed over time – Mayan, Mixe-Zoquean, Otomanguean, ‘Hokan’ – but none of these proposals have proved to be conclusive). A large number of common roots with Mixe-Zoquean, Mayan and Oto-Manguean languages are present which indicates intensive contacts. This thesis, consisting of 13 chapters, has been assembled using techniques pertaining to ethnographic fieldwork and grammar writing acquired during my studies at James Cook University and put to practice in the field. The main component of the theoretical and methodological framework underlying this grammar is Basic Linguistic Theory, and the methodology is a combination of rigorous collection and transcription of linguistic data and the qualitative methodology associated with the interpretation of these data in their natural context, thus aiming at ensuring a high degree of ecological validity of the research findings.

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