Tol (''Tolpan''), also known as Eastern Jicaque, Tolupan, and Torupan, is spoken by approximately 500
Tolupan people in
La Montaña de la Flor reservation in
Francisco Morazán Department,
Honduras.
Name
Tol speakers refer to themselves as the Tolpán, but are called Jicaques or Turrupanes by
ladinos.
Former extent
Tol was also spoken in much of
Yoro Department
Yoro is one of the 18 departments into which Honduras is divided. The department contains rich agricultural lands, concentrated mainly on the valley of the Aguan River and the Sula Valley, on opposite ends. The departmental capital is Yoro. The de ...
, but only a few speakers were reported in the
Yoro Valley in 1974.
Tol used to be spoken from the
Río Ulúa in the west, to modern-day
Trujillo in the east, and to the
Río Sulaco in the inland south. This area included the areas around modern-day
El Progreso
El Progreso () is a city, with a population of 119,260 (2020 calculation), and a municipality located in the Honduran department of Yoro.
Ramón Villeda Morales International Airport of San Pedro Sula is located west of the city. To the eas ...
,
La Ceiba
La Ceiba () is a municipality, the capital of the Honduran department of Atlántida and a port city on the northern coast of Honduras in Central America. It is located on the southern edge of the Caribbean, forming part of the south eastern bo ...
, and possibly also
San Pedro Sula. Most Tolupan had fled the Spanish from coastal regions by the early 1800s. The Tol speakers at La Montaña de la Flor fled the Yoro Valley in 1865 to avoid being conscripted into forced labor by the local governor (Campbell & Oltrogge 1980:206, Hagen 1943, Chapman 1978).
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Grammar
The following overview is based on Haurholm-Larsen (2014).
[Haurholm-Larsen, Steffen. 2014]
Exploring grammatical categories of Tol.
Talk given at Workshop "State of the art of Mesoamerican linguistics". Leipzig.
Constituent order
The basic constituent order of Tol is SOV and the language displays a consistently head final order of constituents, i.e. verbs follow the subject and the object, there are
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s instead of prepositions, and subordinating conjunctions appear at the end of subordinate clauses.
Inflection
Verbs and nouns are inflected for person, number and, in the case of verbs, tense, using a number of different morpho-syntactic means which often conflate various meanings (polyexponentiality). These means include, prefixing, suffixing and infixing, ablaut and stress shift and the use of independent pronouns. Tense is also expressed by the use of particles. Number is only marked in noun phrases with animate referents. Some examples are given below.
:''m-wayúm'' 'my husband'
''w-y-ayúm'' 'your husband'
''woyúm'' 'her husband'
''kʰis wayúm'' 'our husband'
''his wayúm'' 'your husband'
''his wayúm'' 'their husband'
:''napʰ üsü müˀüs'' 'I am drinking water'
''hipʰ üsü müs'' 'you are drinking water'
''hupʰ üsü mü'' 'he is drinking water'
''kupʰ üsü miskʰékʰ'' 'we are drinking water'
''nun üsü müskʰé'' 'you are drinking water'
''yupʰ üsü miˀün'' 'they are drinking water'
Most nouns take one of three suffixes: ''-(sV)s'', ''-(V)N'', ''-(V)kʰ''.
Examples:
:''wo-sís'' 'house' (root: ''wa'')
''sitʰ-ím'' 'avocado' (root: ''sitʰ'')
''kʰon-íkʰ'' 'bed' (root: ''kʰan'')
Nouns that never take suffixes refer to body parts and kinship terms.
References
* Campbell, Lyle, and David Oltrogge (1980). "Proto-Tol (Jicaque)." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', 46:205-223
* Dennis, Ronald K. (1976). "La lengua tol (jicaque): los sustantivos." ''Yaxkin'' 1(3): 2-7.
* Fleming, Ilah. (1977). "Tol (Jicaque) phonology." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 43(2): 121-127.
* Holt, Dennis. (1999). ''Tol (Jicaque)''. Languages of the World/Materials 170. Munich: LincomEuropa.
{{Languages of Honduras
Jicaquean languages
Languages of Honduras
Indigenous languages of the Americas