Ebook: Eighteenth-Century Cholón (Hivito-Choloan)

Before turning to the Cholón language we shall look at the people, their culture, and
the ethnohistory of the Cholón (chapter 2). In this ethnohistorical sketch we shall
also discuss the demographic development of the ethnic group (and of the Híbito) in
the past, and our contact with the descendants. In chapter 3 the manuscript
containing Pedro de la Mata’s description of Cholón will be examined. We shall
look, among other things, at the outward appearance of the manuscript and at the
way the language has been de-scribed. In the chapters 4 - 12 the Cholón language
itself is described. As already stated, the description is primarily based on the data
provided by de la Mata’s Arte de la Len-gua Cholona (ALC). Chapter 4 contains a
description of the sounds. For this description, a thorough analysis of the symbols
employed in the ALC for the transcription of Cholón is made, and the relation
between the orthography developed by Pedro de la Mata for Cholón and its possible
sound structure is examined. This work of interpretation was necessary because of
the use in the ALC of a non-standardized spelling, according to which several
symbols could refer to one sound, and, vice versa, different sounds could be
represented by one symbol. Chapter 5 primarily deals with morphonological
processes in the language. In this chapter attention is also payed to the syllable
structure. In chapter 6 nominal structures are examined, and in chapter 7 the verbal
complex. Chapter 8 treats the adverbs found in de ALC; chapter 9 the interjections;
and chapter 10 the discourse markers. They are followed by a discussion about
negation (chapter 11) and complex sentences (chapter 12). A lexicon closes our
analysis of the language as described by de la Mata. The examples which appear in
the chapters 4 - 12 are followed by a number in parentheses. This number
corresponds with the number of the page or folio of the ALC on which the Cholón
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form at issue occurs. The appendices contain maps (Appendix 1); a copy of the first
and the last folios of the manuscript Arte de la Lengua Cholona (Appendix 2); a
survey the Cholón forms and examples encountered in the ALC (Appendix 3);
words showing the positions of the vowel symbols i, e, a, o, u with regard to the
consonant symbols p, t, c/k/qu, tz, ch, s/z, x, g/h/j, m, n, ñ, ng~
(u), l, ll, b/hu/u/v, i/y
(Appendix 4.1); consonant clusters and the words in which they occur (Appendix
4.2); a list of Spanish and Quechua loan words (Appendix 5); an index of the geographical names and proper names encountered in the ALC (Appendix 6); the word
lists of Martínez Compañón, Tessmann and Loukotka, the data of Greenberg, and
the list of words and expressions given by Mrs. Gutiérrez and Mr. Chapa (Appendix
7).