This rather technical article provides a typological sketch of the

Pipil language Nawat (academically Pipil, also known as Nahuat) is a Nahuan language native to Central America. It is the southernmost extant member of the Uto-Aztecan family. Before Spanish colonization it was spoken in several parts of present-day Central ...

(also known as Nawat). Another related article outlines

Pipil grammar This article provides a grammar sketch of the Nawat or Pipil language, an endangered language spoken by the Pipils of western El Salvador and Nicarao people of Nicaragua. It belongs to the Nahuatl, Nahua group within the Uto-Aztecan language famil ...

in fuller detail. The distinctive purpose of the present article is to single out those specific features of Nawat linguistic structure that are relevant to this language's general typological classification and characterization, answering the question: What major features make this language similar to or different from other languages? Most of the assertions in this article are generalizations from information found in the Pipil grammar article. This article is likely to be of most interest and use to readers interested in general

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

language typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

, and related areas such as areal typology, and especially (though not exclusively) to professional linguists. Another possible use of this article is as a thumbnail sketch of the language, a checklist of its most salient points, serving as a brief guide to the fuller language description in the Pipil grammar article.

Phonology

Phoneme inventory

The Nawat

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

inventory is smaller than that of most languages in the area. Phonemically relevant

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

distinctions are generally absent:

plosive In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...

s are normally voiceless (though there exist some voiced

allophones In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...

), as are

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

s and

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

liquid Liquid is a state of matter with a definite volume but no fixed shape. Liquids adapt to the shape of their container and are nearly incompressible, maintaining their volume even under pressure. The density of a liquid is usually close to th ...

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

s and

semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are ''y ...

s are normally voiced (though there exist voiceless allophones).

Other aspects

Syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

s consist of a

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

nucleus preceded and followed by a maximum of one

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

: (C)V(C). Word

stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phra ...

is normally phonologically determined, and rarely distinctive.

Morphology

Inflectional and derivational

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines *Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts *Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, ...

are of moderate complexity, with a fairly balanced mix of

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

ing and

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

ing mechanisms.

Nominal morphology

In the

nominal Nominal may refer to: Linguistics and grammar * Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech * Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement") * Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb * Nou ...

morphology there is no

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

for

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

definiteness In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases that distinguishes between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those that are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...

, the morphological categories being

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

(absolute vs. construct) and

person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations suc ...

(of the possessor, with construct state).

Verbal morphology

In the verbal morphology, tense, mood and

(of the

subject Subject ( "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness, or ...

) are marked by

es,

(of the subject, and of the

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an a ...

with transitive verbs) by

es. Prefixes can also reduce a transitive verb's

argument An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persu ...

valency, making it either unaccusative (''ta-'') or unergative (''mu-''). A further prefix (''(w)al-'') adds a directional meaning component (roughly 'towards the speaker') to some verbs, though no longer

productive Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proce ...

ly. Derivational suffixes can add to a verb's valency, acting as

causative In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...

s (which add a new subject as

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuran ...

) or applicatives (which add a new object as recipient). A few cases of paradigmatic

suppletion In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or ev ...

occur (''witz'' 'comes' : 'came'; ''ki-uni'' 'he drinks it (transitive)' : ''ati'' 'he drinks (unaccusative)'.

Syntax

Word order

Sentence

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...

shows considerable flexibility.

Pronominal In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not con ...

arguments An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persua ...

(which may represent

) usually precede the

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

, and are only used for emphasis: compare ''Naja nikita'' 'I see him/her/it' and ''Naja nechita'' 'He/she/it sees me' (''naja'' 'I, me'). Within the

noun phrase A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently ...

determiner Determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a term used in some models of grammatical description to describe a word or affix belonging to a class of noun modifiers. A determiner combines with a noun to express its reference. Examp ...

s and quantifiers precede the

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple ani ...

Adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

s may either precede or follow the head noun.

Possessors Possessors is a fictional extra-dimensional race appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. They first appeared in ''Strange Tales'' #118 (March 1964). Fictional character biography The Possessors sought to conquer Earth but wer ...

follow possessed, and

relative clause A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence ''I met a man who wasn ...

s follow their head. There are

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

al structures.

Head or dependent marking

There is

pro-drop A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping") is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they can be pragmatically or grammatically inferable. The precise conditions vary from language to language, and can be quite ...

for both subject and object (i.e. subject and object pronouns are omitted in

unmarked In linguistics and social sciences, markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The dominant defau ...

sentences). One or two

s of the verb are indexed for

and

in the verb (one when

intransitive In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additi ...

, two when transitive). A maximum of one object index is possible. If a transitive verb has both a

patient A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by Health professional, healthcare professionals. The patient is most often Disease, ill or Major trauma, injured and in need of therapy, treatment by a physician, nurse, op ...

('direct object' in English grammar) and a recipient ('indirect object'), it is the latter which is indexed as object of the Nawat verb, e.g. ''Nechmaka at'' 'He gives me water', where ''nech-'' indexes a first-person-singular object. There is no marking on the arguments to indicate the various semantic relations so far mentioned. This is a head-marking structure, meaning that relations between a head and dependent are marked on the head (here, the verb) and not on the dependent (here, the subject or object). This is also illustrated by the above examples ''Naja nikita'' 'I see him' vs. ''Naja nechita'' 'He sees me', where the 'case' of the pronoun ''naja'' is determined by the indexing on the verb. Head-marking patterns are found in other parts of Nawat syntax too, so the language shows consistency for this typological feature. The canonical expression of

possessive A possessive or ktetic form (Glossing abbreviation, abbreviated or ; from ; ) is a word or grammatical construction indicating a relationship of possession (linguistics), possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a numbe ...

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

relations is parallel: the head (i.e. the possessed) is marked with indices indicating the person of the dependent (the possessor), the noun phrase expressing which is either omitted normally if pronominal (a pro-drop phenomenon) or occurs as a noun phrase following the head and unmarked for the possessive relation, e.g. ''nu-nan'' 'my mother', ''i-nan'' 'his mother', ''i-nan ne kunet'' 'the child's mother'.

Argument valency restrictions

Another kind of typological consistency between verbal and nominal constructions is seen in the fact that just as verbs may be classified as intransitives, which do not require an object, and transitives, which require one, so some nouns in Nawat need not have a possessor while others must have one. Some nouns change their form depending on whether they have a possessor or not, alternating between absolute and

construct state In Afro-Asiatic languages, the first noun in a genitive phrase that consists of a possessed noun followed by a possessor noun often takes on a special morphological form, which is termed the construct state (Latin ''status constructus''). For ex ...

s, such as absolute ''kunet'', construct 'child'; this is reminiscent of how verbs may change their forms depending on their transitivity (i.e. whether they take an object or not), e.g. intransitive ''waki'', transitive 'dry', transitive ''miki'' 'die', transitive ''-miktia'' 'kill', etc. Once again, it is changes in the head that determine the nature of the grammatical relation between the head and its dependent(s).

Adpositions

Other relations between a verb and its noun phrase complements or

adjuncts In brewing, adjuncts are unmalted grains (such as barley, wheat, maize, rice, rye, and oats) or grain products used in brewing beer which supplement the main mash ingredient (such as malted barley). This is often done with the intention of cut ...

are expressed by means of a small number of

prepositions Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositions (which precede their complemen ...

or relational constructions. The relational construction itself, e.g. ''nu-wan'' 'with me', ''i-wan'' 'with him/her/it/', ''i-wan ne kunet'' 'with the child', is internally just like possessive constructions, with ''wan'' playing the same role as a construct noun.

Predication and sentence types

There is no general copula; instead, a nominal (or other non-verbal)

predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...

with no verbal component may be made a

clause In language, a clause is a Constituent (linguistics), constituent or Phrase (grammar), phrase that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic Predicate (grammar), predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject (grammar), ...

's grammatical nucleus. Some of these take subject indices just like verbal predicates, but tense can only be expressed

periphrastic In linguistics and literature, periphrasis () is the use of a larger number of words, with an implicit comparison to the possibility of using fewer. The comparison may be within a language or between languages. For example, "more happy" is periph ...

ally in such sentences.

Negation In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...

is achieved by placing a negative particle in front of the predicate.

Yes–no question In linguistics, a yes–no question, also known as a binary question, a polar question, or a general question, is a closed-ended question whose expected answer is one of two choices, one that provides an affirmative answer to the question versus ...

s have no special grammatical marking, while

wh-question A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms, typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrog ...

s are identified by the presence of a

question word An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', '' who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most ...

, which usually precedes the verb (or other predicate).

Subordinate clause A dependent clause, also known as a subordinate clause, subclause or embedded clause, is a certain type of clause that juxtaposes an independent clause within a complex sentence. For instance, in the sentence "I know Bette is a dolphin", the claus ...

s are either introduced by a subordinator in clause-initial position or else are juxtaposed with no subordinating conjunction.

Bibliography

* Campbell, Lyle (1985). ''The Pipil language of El Salvador''. Mouton Grammar Library (No. 1). Berlin: Mouton Publishers. (U.S.), {{ISBN, 3-11-010344-3. * Campbell, Lyle,

Terrence Kaufman Terrence Kaufman (1937 – March 3, 2022) was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguistic ...

and Thomas C. Smith-Stark (1986). "Meso-America as a Linguistic Area." ''Language'' 62:3, p. 530–570.

Language typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

Indigenous languages of Central America Mesoamerican languages Linguistic typology