Log 13: More Tz'utujiil and Patines

Our Tz'utujiil contributor Doña Rosario (or Doña Sara, as she's better known in Patzún) is famous in town for her “patines”, a dish from the Tz’utujiil area surrounding Lake Atitlán. Every week, she gets requests to cook the dish, which consists of a spicy tomato sauce and one of several kinds of meat: fish, shrimp, chicken, or “cecina”—beef that has been marinated in pure lime juice overnight. Our last week of working in Patzún, Doña Rosario prepared her “cecina” patines for us, and they were DELICIOUS! The photo below shows the carefully wrapped meal in “maxán” leaves—in Tz’utujiil, the dish is known by the name in (1) below:

(1)        Jk’omik           chu-pam                      tz’alem

            sauce               PREP.3sgPOSS-belly maxán.leaf

            Literal: ‘sauce in the belly of the maxán leaf’ / ‘patín’

IPA:     [χkˀo.ˈmik    ʧu.ˈpam    ʦˀa.ˈlem]

Amazing patines! 

Gesoel, Paulina, Carola, and I were lucky to work with Doña Rosario for many hours during our Patzún stay. Gesoel and I discovered how different the Santiago dialect is compared to the reported data in Dayley (1985) and García Ixmatá (1997), which are based on the Tz’utujiil dialects of San Juan la Laguna and San Pedro la Laguna respectively. For instance, both those authors report that VSO order is impossible in Tz’utujiil. However, Doña Rosario accepts such an order:

(2)        X-i-Ø-ruto’                  jala’     ixoq                 ik’e’     ak’ala’.

            CPL-B3pl-A3sg-help  DET    woman             two      children

            ‘The woman helped two children.’

IPA:      [ʃi.ɾu.ˈtoʔ    χa.ˈla   i.ˈʃoq   i.ˈkˀeʔ   a.kˀa.ˈlaʔ]

Paulina eliciting consonant clusters

We also confirmed that a particle has to appear following the verb upon the extraction of obliques and certain low adjuncts, similarly to the data reported in the grammars mentioned before—however, the particle’s form is [va] rather than [wi], as we expected. One example is shown below; we ran tests using different types of verbs and extracted adjuncts and the judgments were consistent:

(3)        Axwan            x-Ø-u-loq’                   jun       jaay      pruwi   r’-li’.

            Juan               CPL-B3sg-A3sg-buy  IND     house   BEN    3sgPOSS-mother

            ‘Juan bought a house for his mother.’

IPA:     [a.ˈʃwan    ʃu.ˈloq        χun      χa:j̥       pɾu.ˈvi    ɾʔ.ˈliʔ]

(4)        Naq    pruwi    x-Ø-u-loq’=*(wa)                  jun       jaay      Axwan?

            who     BEN    CPL-B3sg-A3sg-buy=WA     IND     house   Juan

            ‘Who did Juan buy a house for?’

IPA:     [naq    pɾu.ˈvi    ʃu.loq.ˈva     χun    χa:j̥    a.ˈʃwan]

Here's a photo Don Noé, Doña Rosario’s husband, took of the group after our last elicitation. Doña Rosario is wearing the traditional Santiago dress in its entirety—her güipil is adorned with different birds that inhabit the lake’s forest (note also that it is asymmetrical, which is unique for güipiles). She is also wearing the headdress known as “tocoyal”, which is worn for special occasions by Santiago women—in fact, the 25 cent quetzal coin shows a picture of Doña Concepción Ramírez, originally from Santiago, wearing the “tocoyal”.

The group in front of Doña Rosario's pink house

Now that our time in Patzún is up, we’re all looking forward already to our next trip, so we can keep working with Doña Rosario and other speakers of the Santiago dialect!