Mochica language

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 de los Yungas ('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 yunka '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 Crónica moralizadora (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) was at that time unknown to scholars, whereas colonial references and traces of Mochica still existed. Furthermore, nineteenth-century archaeology often grouped Sicán and Moche material into stages labeled "proto-Chimú" or "early Chimú", which reinforced the misattribution. Later archaeological and linguistic research clarified these associations and dissociated Quingnam from Mochica.

Today, Mochica remains the most widely used term in academic literature, while some revitalization projects prefer Muchik, taken from colonial and 19th-century sources.

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 ⟨a, e, i, o, u, æ⟩, with the latter sometimes being written as ⟨œ⟩ 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 (ûtzh 'big') and the ending -ô, used in the genitive construction.

The letter ⟨i⟩ is sometimes used as a palatalization marker by Carrera Daza (e.g. ñaiñ 'bird' or çio 'he, it'), and diphthongs did not occur in the Mochica of his time.

Middendorf (1892)

In contrast, Middendorf recognizes 17 vowels, including 11 plain vowels, two "impure" vowels, written as ⟨ů⟩ and ⟨ä⟩, and four diphthongs. Middendorf admits that he was never able to correctly pronounce the impure vowels, but characterizes them similarly to the ⟨æ⟩ of Carrera Daza. ⟨ä⟩ is described with a very fleeting u sound, such that in rapid speech it would sound similar to or . ⟨ů⟩ is described as reminiscent of the diphthong .

The sixth vowel

The vowel represented by ⟨æ⟩ is hotly debated in the field of Mochica studies. As no sound recordings of Mochica exist, and because the existing descriptions are rather vague, the true phonetic value cannot be discerned and any interpretations remain completely hypothetical. One hypothesis is that the sixth vowel was , 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 ⟨ç/z, s, x⟩ and ⟨ss⟩. The grapheme ⟨x⟩ is described unanimously among Mochica scholars as representing . All but two authors coincide in their description of the phoneme represented by ⟨ç⟩ or ⟨z⟩. 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 ⟨s⟩ and ⟨ss⟩ as "they ⟨ss⟩ 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 ⟨ss⟩ "sounded only when the second (last) ⟨s⟩ would affect the contiguous vowel", representing a sound like or .

Digraphs and trigraphs

Digraphs and trigraphs used in Mochica are ⟨cɥ⟩, ⟨tzh⟩, and ⟨xll⟩. The digraph ⟨cɥ⟩ is derived from a normal ⟨ch⟩ but with the ⟨h⟩ inverted to represent the difference. Middendorf (1892) describes his corresponding sound, written as ⟨c̓h⟩, as similar to the German ⟨tj⟩. 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 ⟨tzh⟩ 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 z .

The trigraph ⟨xll⟩ 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 ⟨tr⟩
• 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 ⟨x⟩
• 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;
• an agentive case suffix used mainly for the agent in passive clauses; and
• a verbal system in which all finite forms are formed with the copula.

Morphology

Some suffixes in Mochica as reconstituted by Hovdhaugen (2004):

• sequential suffix: -top
• purpose suffix: -næm
• gerund suffixes: -læc and -ssæc
• gerund suffix: -(æ)zcæf
• gerund suffix: -(æ)d

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:

Classifiers

Numeral classifiers in Mochica:

Numerals

Mochica numerals:

The "plan" of Martínez Compañón

Mochica is attested in a 43-word list in a document referred to as the "plan" collected by Martínez Compañón between 1782 and 1785. The "plan" is part of a larger work, known as the Codex Martínez Compañón, detailing life in colonial Peru. 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.

Sample text

Tonada del Chimo

The only surviving song in the language is a single tonada, Tonada del Chimo, preserved in the Codex Martínez Compañón:

1st voice: Ja ya llũnch, ja ya llõch
Ja ya llũnch, ja ya lloch [sic]
In poc cha tanmuisle pecan muisle pecan e necam

2nd voice: Ja ya llũnch, ja ya llõch
Ja ya llũnch

1st voice: E menspocehifama le qui
ten que consmuiſle Cuerpo lens
e menslocunmunom chi perdonar moitin Roc

2nd voice: Ja ya llõch
Ja ya llũnh,[sic] ja ya llõch

1st voice: Chondocolo mec checje su chriſto
po que si ta mali muis le cuer po[sic] lem.
lo quees aoscho perdonar
me ñe fe che tas

2nd voice: Ja ya llũnch, ja ya llõch
Ja ya llũnch, ja ya llõch

—

A proposed translation is as follows:

'

‘Who calls you asking you to come, has to say: Give (it) to my soul, give (it)

to my soul!’. One has to say it by crying: Give us your love to our soul, with your body! As you say, the Holy Communion means to forgive. The blood of

our Lord Jesus Christ was shed because of me. You have been my father’

'

Lord's Prayer

The following is the Lord's Prayer in Mochica.