Linguistics

Vocabcoverweb

One of the primary aims of the Upper Necaxa Project has been to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic characteristics of the Upper Necaxa language, including a description of the structure of sentences (syntax), the formation of words (morphology), and the sound system (phonetics and phonology). Learning about these formal properties of language is essential in creating a reference grammar, dictionary, and other materials that will maintain a record of the language and contribute toward revitalizing it.

To date, the project has produced:

  1. A large, academic dictionary (Beck 2011a), and two practical vocabularies written in Spanish (Beck 2003, 2012b), distributed for free in the Upper Necaxa communities;
  2. A lexical database containing over 9,000 entries, 22 analyzed texts, and nearly 15,000 interlinearized example sentences;
  3. A short grammatical sketch (Beck 2004);
  4. A corpus of child-language acquisition data;
  5. A comparative lexical database combining Upper Necaxa field data with the lexica of 10 other Totonacan languages.

Work is currently underway on a more extensive grammar, a substantial collection of analyzed texts, and more focused work on a number of topics in phonetics, phonology, and morphosyntax. A more detailed list of publications can be found on this site.