Entre consejos, diablos y vendedores de caca, rasgos gramaticales del oluteco en tres de sus cuentos

Resumen

The three Olutec stories from Oluta, Veracruz, were narrated by Antonio Asistente Maldonado. Roberto Zavala presents a morpheme-by-morpheme analysis of the texts with a sketch of the major grammatical and typological features of this language. Olutec is spoken by three dozen speakers. The grammatical structure of this language has not been described before. The sketch contains information on verb and noun morphology, verb dasses, clause types, inverse/direct patterns, grammaticalization processes, applicatives, incorporation, word order type, and discontinuous expressions. The stories presented here are the first Olutec texts ever published. The motifs of the stories are well known throughout Middle America. The story of "the Rabbit who wants to be big" explains why one of the main protagonists of Middle American folktales acquired long ears. The story of "the Devil who is inebriated by the people of a village" explains how the inhabitants of a village discover the true identity of a man who likes to dance huapango and decide to get rid of him. Finally the story of "the shit-sellers" presents twocompadres, one who is lazy and the other one who works hard. The hard-worker asks the lazy compadre how he survives without working. The latter lies to to him that he sells shit in the neighboring village. The hard-working compadre decides to become a shit-seller and in the process realizes that the lazy compadre deceived him. However, he is lucky and meets with the Devil who offers him money in compensation for having been deceived. When the lazy compadre realizes that the hard-working compadre has become rich, he tries to do the same business but gets beaten in the process.