Mochica language

(Sican culture). Language contact Jolkesky (2016) notes that there are lexical similarities with the Trumai, Arawak, Kandoshi, Muniche, Barbakoa, Cholon-Hibito, Kechua, Mapudungun, Kanichana, and Kunza language families due to contact, also suggesting that similarities with Amazonian languages may be due to the early migration of Mochica speakers down the Marañón and Solimões. == Documentation ==

Colonial-era texts The earliest published documentation of Mochica dates back to 1607 in (1607), written by Franciscan friar Luis Jerónimo de Oré (missionary, polyglot, later bishop of Concepción in Chile), containing some Mochica sentences of unknown origin. However, a 1582 manuscript believed to be hosted at the Archiepiscopal Archive of Trujillo titled Gobierno de los situmas antes de los señores yngas comenzasen a reinar, y trata quienes fueron y mandaron en aqueste valle, Cañaribamba purported to contain information in Cañari, an extinct and poorly known language of Ecuador, has Mochica texts which were copied and published elsewhere but assumed to be of Cañari origin. 19th-20th century texts Towards the end of Mochica's existence as a native language in the 19th century, various scholars such as Adolf Bastian, the German physician and philologist , Walter Lehmann, Federico Villarreal, and Hans Heinrich Brüning documented Mochica, most notably Middendorf, Following the death of the last fluent speakers, a number of new sources of documentation were published, by Konrad Huber (1953), who collected data from 1943-47, also including an unpublished wordlist by Rafael Quesquén, Jorge Zevallos Quiñones (1941, 1946), and Paul Kosok (1965), whose wordlist contains a large amount of errors. Finally, the last rememberer of Mochica, Simón Quesquén (1918-1995), had recordings made of his speech in Mochica in 1974, the only ones known in existence. == Names ==

Colonial sources record several designations for the language now generally known as Mochica: Yunga, Mochica, Muchic/Muchik, and occasional appellatives such as Pescadora. Oré's Rituale refers to the "Mochica" language and also uses the phrase ('Mochica of the Yungas'). In the latter case, he seems to distinguish between the language itself – called Mochica – and the northern peoples – called Yungas. At the time Yunga was employed not only as a geographic and climatic term, derived from the Quechua exonym 'warm area', but also to refer to the Mochica as an ethnic group. Carrera's Arte also consistently uses the exonym Yunga. The Augustinian friar Antonio de la Calancha employed the form Muchic in his (1638). In the 19th century, Middendorf revived that variant and disseminated it as Muchik in works such as Das Muchik oder die Chimu-Sprache (1892). He also identified the language with that of the Chimú, partly because Quingnam (the actual language of the Chimú kingdom) == Classification ==

Mochica is classified as a language isolate by virtually all modern sources on the language. An exception is Stark (1968, 1972), which groups Mochica (Yunga) with Uru–Chipaya and Mayan using the comparative method. This hypothesis, however, has not been received well among the linguistic community. ==Geographic distribution==

According to the list of the vicar of Reque and author of the aforementioned Art, Fernando de la Carrera, the peoples who in 1644 spoke the Mochica language were as follows: • In the corregimiento of Trujillo: Santiago, Magdalena de Cao, Chocope, Chicama valley, Paiján. • In the corregimiento of Saña: San Pedro de Lloc, Chepén, Jequetepeque, Guadalupe, Pueblo Nuevo, Etén, Chiclayo, San Miguel, Santa Lucía, Parish of Saña, Lambayeque with four rooms, Reque, Monsefú, Ferreñafe, Túcume, Illimo, Pacora, Mórrope and Jayanca. • In the corregimiento of Piura: Motupe, Salas (annex of Penachi), Copis (annex of Olmos), Frías and Huancabamba. • In the corregimiento of Cajamarca: Santa Cruz, San Miguel de la Sierra, Ñopos, San Pablo, the doctrine of the rafts of the Marañón, a bias of Cajamarca, Cachén, Guambos and many other places in the Cajamarca mountain range, such as the Condebamba valley. == Revival ==

The Cultural Office of the district of Mórrope has launched a program to teach the Mochica language in an effort to preserve the region’s ancient cultural legacy. The initiative has been well received by local residents and adopted by numerous schools. Additional cultural activities, such as the crafting of ceramics and decorated gourds (mates), have also been introduced as part of the revitalization effort. Previously considered a dead language, Mochica is now taught in 38 schools and has around 80 teachers. ==Phonology and orthography==

The sounds of Mochica are not known with certainty due to the differing transcriptions used by different authors. In addition, the two primary sources on Mochica were recorded over 200 years apart, with significant phonetic changes having occurred during that time. Vowels Carrera Daza (1644) Carrera Daza distinguishes six vowels in Mochica, represented as , with the latter sometimes being written as in different editions of his grammar. This vowel is characterized as "begin[ning] as an e and end[ing] as a u, in such a way that there are two vowels in one". A diacritic is used to indicate length, though it is mainly restricted to a few roots ( 'big') and the ending , used in the genitive construction. Middendorf (1892) In contrast, Middendorf recognizes 17 vowels, including 11 plain vowels, two "impure" vowels, written as and , and four diphthongs. Middendorf admits that he was never able to correctly pronounce the impure vowels, but characterizes them similarly to the of Carrera Daza. is described with a very fleeting u sound, such that in rapid speech it would sound similar to or . is described as reminiscent of the diphthong . commonly found in Amazonian languages. Other hypotheses have given realizations of and . Comparison A comparison table of the vowels as written in Carrera Daza and Middendorf is given below. Table Thus, a vowel system of Mochica would resemble the table below: Consonants The orthography used for Spanish at the time of the writing of Carrera's grammar was very chaotic and inconsistent. One may therefore never be quite sure on the nature of consonants, especially sibilants, in Spanish colonial texts of the time. Sibilants The symbols used to represent Mochica sibilants in Carrera (1644) are and . The grapheme is described unanimously among Mochica scholars as representing . All but two authors coincide in their description of the phoneme represented by or . The only sources to disagree are Stark (1968), which interprets them both as different allophones of , being and respectively. Hovdhaugen (2004) interprets them as having a palatal pronunciation, which is represented as . Carrera (1644) explains the distinction between and as "they have to be pronounced between them both, hurting on the last one as in ssonto, amoss." The use of "hurting" is derived from Nebrija's Gramática de la lengua castellana, who described consonants and vowels using this definition: "they were called vowels because they have voice by themselves without mixing with other letters, the others were called consonants because they cannot sound without hurting the vowels". Thus, combining the two descriptions, it may be inferred that "sounded only when the second (last) would affect the contiguous vowel", representing a sound like or . Digraphs and trigraphs Digraphs and trigraphs used in Mochica are , , and . The digraph is derived from a normal but with the inverted to represent the difference. Middendorf (1892) describes his corresponding sound, written as , as similar to the German . Hovdhaugen (2004) interprets it as , Stark (1968) as , Torero (1997, 2002) as , Eloranta (2013) and Michael et al. (2015) as , Cerrón-Palomino (1995) as and Adelaar as . The trigraph is described as representing a sound difficult to pronounce by Carrera: "These [words] one pronounces starting with T, hurting on the Z and on the vowel, that comes after H, so that it does not say cha but tzha." He further describes the articulation of it as having the "tongue touch[ing] the palate next to the teeth". Middendorf describes it as similar to the German . The trigraph is, according to Carrera, articulated as "[t]he X preceding consonant has to be pronounced hurting between both in a soft way, attaching the tongue to the palate, in such a manner that the sound of the first letter, the vowel, may come out through one side and the other of the mouth". Stark (1968) identifies this sound as , Torero (2002) as a voiceless post-palatal lateral fricative , Hovdhaugen (2004, 2005) as , Adelaar (2004) as , and Salas, Eloranta and Michael et al. (2015) as . Other consonants The following consonants are unanimously agreed upon by all sources: • voiceless plosives , , ; is added by Hovdhaugen to represent the digraph • voiced plosive , also interpreted as by Adelaar and Hovdhaugen, and by Stark • nasals , , , , though is replaced by a pre-palatal nasal by Torero (2002) • the rhotic , an alveolar trill; a tap is also added by Stark and Cerrón-Palomino • a labial fricative, either or • the palatal glide • the postalveolar fricative , although is also given by Stark as an alternative to represent the grapheme • the postalveolar affricate , which is replaced by Stark with • the laterals and ; Torero adds and interprets as pre-palatal. shifted to around the 18th and 19th centuries. Table Michael et al. (2015) summarize their interpretations of Mochica in the following table. Comparison A comparison of various interpretations for the letters is given below. == Typology ==

Mochica is typologically different from the other main languages on the west coast of South America, namely Quechuan, Aymara, and Mapudungun. Further, it contains rare features such as: • a case system in which cases are built on each other in a linear sequence; for example, the ablative case suffix is added to the locative case, which in turn is added to an oblique case form; • all nouns have two stems, possessed and non-possessed; ==Morphology==

Some suffixes in Mochica as reconstituted by Hovdhaugen (2004): • sequential suffix: • purpose suffix: • gerund suffixes: and • gerund suffix: • gerund suffix: Nouns Possession Mochica maintains a distinction between inalienable and alienable possession. Inalienable nouns are divided into three noun subclasses, and alienable nouns into two, which can be distinguished from each other by their possesive prefixes. The former require a suffix when not possessed, and do not have a suffix when possessed. Some examples of these nouns are given below. ==Lexicon==

Nouns Locative forms of Mochica nouns: The work also contains a number of watercolors, which were captioned by Martínez Compañón's personal secretary Pedro Agustín de Echevarri, who presumably also wrote down the "plan". There are two copies of the "plan", one held in Bogotá and the other in Madrid. Both copies include 43-word lists for the Quechua, Mochica (Yunga), Sechura, Colán, Catacaos, Culli, Hibito and Cholón languages, as well as Spanish. The Colán and Catacaos languages are generally subsumed under the name Tallán, and they are closely related, probably dialects of a single language. The two versions of the "plan" have certain differences from each other, particularly in the spelling of the transcriptions. A number of diacritics are employed in the vocabularies. Their meaning is not elaborated upon in the "plan", although certain diacritics are employed in only some of the languages, and are apparently not merely decorative in purpose. The following wordlist is of the Madrid version of the manuscript. Swadesh list Below is the 100-word Swadesh list for Mochica. ==Sample text==

The only surviving song in the language is a single tonada, , preserved in the Codex Martínez Compañón: {{Poem quote|text=1st voice: 2nd voice: 1st voice: 2nd voice: 1st voice: 2nd voice: Lord's Prayer The following is the Lord's Prayer in Mochica. == Notes ==