Xinka Lexicography and Morphology

Planification and Implementation of the Project

The project was designed as a joint venture with the COPXIG (Consejo del Pueblo Xinka de Guatemala), the official representative body of the Xinka community of Santa Rosa. Having already started to collect language data themselves the COPXIG was very much interested in this kind of cooperation. The role of the COPXIG in the project was searching for speakers, establishing contact with potential informants, and accompanying me during fieldwork. In exchange for this help the COPXIG receives the analysed data and the results on the grammatical structure of the language that has been lost to them.

The cooperation with the COPXIG was thought to have several advantages: Due to the connections and ties the members of the COPXIG have with influential people in many rural communities of the research area, the search for informants would be rather efficient. As a certain unwillingness of the people to communicate about their language and culture had been observed, it was hoped that potential speakers would be less reluctant to deal and work with the COPXIG rather than with a foreign researcher and that this would assure the project of the people’s approval.

In the course of the project two periods of field research were planned. The first campaign was carried out in February/March, the second field stay was programmed at the beginning of the dry season in October/November. In the interim the documented material was revised and partially analysed. Questions and ideas that arose as first results were re-checked with the informants during the second period of fieldwork.

The COPXIG was meant to establish contact with potential informants prior to my arrival, but locating Xinka speakers turned out to be more difficult than first expected: The sad fact that two old women the COPXIG wanted me to work with had already died when I arrived – one in November 1999, the other in January 2000 – limited the number of disposed informants. Another speaker whom we did not meet in the first period of fieldwork and who was prepared to work with us during the second field campaign had died two weeks prior to my arrival. According to the COPXIG several dozen of speakers were known in Guazacapán and Chiquimulilla alone. Some of them had been contacted by COPXIG members and had arranged for interviews. When I started the interviews in February, however, I became suddenly aware of the fact that the majority of elders who are considered knowledgeable of the idioma de antes are only able to reproduce a very limited amount of words, and most of it quite deficiently.

The misconception of the term "hablante" affected the research project heavily and we shifted our focus and concentrated instead on the search for informants. Absolutely no speakers could be pinpointed in Chiquimulilla and the search was concentrated on the municipio of Guazacapán alone.

During fieldwork I stayed with members of the COPXIG in Chiquimulilla commuting to surrounding villages to search for and interview informants. The entire linguistic fieldwork, i.e. interviewing, was carried out in the neighbouring municipio of Guazacapán which can be easily reached by public transport. For additional excursions, which were arranged to extent the search for informants to more distant villages like St. María Ixhuatán, a privately owned pick-up (with driver) was rented.

The first period of field research (February/March):

During the first period of fieldwork we found and worked with eight informants. Only three of these can be regarded as speakers. A fourth one has contributed to lexicographic research by remembering lexical items from a wide range but has no command of speaking the language fluently and, therefore, cannot be considered a speaker. The remaining four informants have only knowledge of a few, single lexical items and do not show any language competence either.

As regards to the three fluent speakers, only two of them actually provided valuable information: An old woman of more than 90 years of age was already encountered in a state of mental disarray which made it impossible to interview her. Occupied with his agriculture and reluctant to share his language knowledge with foreigners, the second speaker, who is 72 years old, allowed us not more than one hour of interviewing per week. Only with the third informant, who is 88 years of age and in a threatening health condition, it was possible to work regularly and effectively.

The second period of field research (October/November):

In the second period of fieldwork a certain amount of time was dedicated to re-checking the forms and phrases documented during the first field stay with the two major informants. Since the COPXIG had encountered difficulties in locating more informants, even more time was invested in searching for further speakers. Although four more speakers could be located in the area of Guazacapán, none of them was willing or able to cooperate in the project. Further excursions into the surroundings did not provide us with more informations about speakers.

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