“You know how strange they talk up there, but yo can understand what they’re saynig”:1 Rulfo’s generative grammar

Abstract

The relationship between Rulfo’s writing and the rural speech of Jalisco has been extensively studied by critics; and it has often been noted that Rulfo’s peasants do not speak like their real models; that is, that Rulfo’s characters speak a fictionalized language. What has been scarcely explored is the generative capacity that it displays in the mouths of the characters. Terms such as “apalcuachar”, “arrejolar” and “tilcuatazo” are true creations as they do not appear in dictionaries, despite which the reader can almost naturally understand their meanings. In this paper I explore the phenomenon of the generation of these terms and the consequent understanding of the reader, based on the notion of “generative grammar”.