Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T01:44:08.838Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Subgrouping of Coahuitlán Totonac1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Devin Moore
Devin Moore*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
*
devin.moore@ualberta.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Coahuitlán Totonac is spoken in Veracruz, Mexico, and has been variously ascribed to two different branches of the Totonacan family tree. While recent work has begun to bring empirical evidence to the internal structure of this family tree, there remain several important areas of disagreement, in addition to the disputed affiliation of Coahuitlán. This article informs the family tree and demonstrates that Coahuitlán belongs to the Northern branch using shared innovations and two computational methods. The comparative method seeks sets of shared innovations for evidence of subgrouping. This article presents proposed shared innovations in phonology, morphology, and lexicon, which fall into two sets, one belonging to the Sierra and Lowland branches, and the other belonging to the Northern. Coahuitlán Totonac overwhelmingly shares innovations found in Northern languages and lacks innovations found in Sierra. Two quantitative methods are also used to show that Coahuitlán groups groups closely with other Northern languages.

Résumé

Coahuitlán Totonac est parlé à Veracruz au Mexique et s'est vu assigné à deux branches différentes de l'arbre familial Totonacan. Malgré les travaux récents qui portent de nouveaux faits empiriques concernant la structure interne de cet arbre familial, plusieurs sujets inspirent encore la controverse. À l'aide d'innovations communes et de deux méthodes computationnelles, cet article éclaircit l'arbre familial et montre que Coahuitlán appartient à la branche du nord. La méthode comparative cherche des innovations communes pour établir des sous-groupes. Cet article présente des innovations communes aux niveaux phonologiques, morphologiques, et lexiques qui se divisent en deux groupes, l'un appartenant aux branches Sierra et Lowland, l'autre appartenant à la branche du nord. Coahuitlán Totonac présente surtout ces innovations caractéristiques des langues du nord et manque des innovations attestées en Sierra. Deux méthodes quantitatives sont également employées afin de montrer que le groupe Coahuitlán est similaire aux autres langues du nord.

Keywords

historical linguisticssubgroupingTotonacanMesoamerican languageslinguistique historiquesous-groupeTotonaclangues méso-américaines
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 84 - 117
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Funding for this project was provided by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to David Beck. I would like to thank David Beck for reading many drafts of this article and for extensive critique. Many thanks also to Eric Campbell, Paulette Levy, and anonymous reviewers for their critique and thoughtful comments, and to Søren Wichmann for running the ASJP algorithms on Totonacan wordlists. While these contributions made this a better article, any remaining faults are my own. To my wonderful field consultants, paškát ka̰cíːnaɬ.

References

Aranya, Osnaya, 1953. Reconstrucción del protototonaco: Huastecos, totonacos y sus vecinos, ed. Bernal, Ignacio. Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos 23: 123–130.Google Scholar
Aschmann, Herman P. 1973a. Diccionario totonaco de Papantla. México, DF: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
Aschmann, Herman P. 1973b. Vocabulario totonaco de la Sierra. México, DF: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
Beck, David. 2004. A Grammatical Sketch of Upper Necaxa Totonac. München: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar
Beck, David. 2011. Upper Necaxa Totonac Dictionary. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Beck, David. 2012. Apéndice: Tablas de morfología comparativa. In Las lenguas totonacas y tepehuas: Materias para su estudio, eds. Levy, Paulette and Beck, David, 587–596. Mexico City: UNAM Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Cecil H., Beck, David, Kondrak, Grzegorz, Watters, James K., and Wichmann, Søren. 2011. Totozoquean. International Journal of American Linguistics 77: 323–372.Google Scholar
Bryant, David and Moulton, Vincent. 2004. NeighborNet: An agglomerative method for the construction of phylogenetic networks. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21: 255–265.Google Scholar
Campbell, Eric. 2013. The internal diversification and subgrouping of Chatino. International Journal of American Linguistics, 79(3): 395–420.Google Scholar
Dunn, Michael. 2014. Language phylogenies. In The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, ed. Bowern, Claire and Evans, Bethwyn, 190–211. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dyen, Isidore, Kruskal, Joseph B., and Black, Paul. 1997. Comparative IndoEuropean database collected by Isidore Dyen.Google Scholar
Fox, Anthony. 1995. Linguistic Reconstruction: An Introduction to Theory and Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
García Rojas, Blanca. 1978. Dialectología de la zona totonaco-tepehua. Honors thesis, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.Google Scholar
Holman, Eric W., Wichmann, Søren, Brown, Cecil H., Velupillai, Viveka, Müller, André, Brown, Pamela, and Bakker, Dik. 2008. Explorations in automated language comparison. Folia Linguistica, 42: 331–354.Google Scholar
Huson, Daniel H. and Bryant, David. 2006. Application of phylogenetic networks in evolutionary studies. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 23(2): 254–267. Software available from www.splitstree.org.Google Scholar
Ichon, Alain. 1973. La religion de los totonacas de la sierra. México: Instituto Nacional Indigenista.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Terrance, MacKay, Carolyn, and Trechsel, Frank. 2004. Cuestionario lingüístico para la investigación de las variaciones dialectales de la lengua totonaca.Google Scholar
Levy, Paulette. 1987. Fonología del totonaco de Papantla, Veracruz. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Levy, Paulette. 1990. Totonaco de Papantla, Veracruz. México, DF: Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Levy, Paulette. 1999. From ‘Part’ to ‘Shape’: Incorporation in Totonac and the issue of classification by verbs. International Journal of American Linguistics 65: 127–175.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. Paul, Simons, Gary F., and Fennig, Charles D. eds. 2015. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 18th ed. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version at http://www.ethnologue.com.Google Scholar
MacKay, Carolyn J. 1994. A sketch of Misantla Totonac phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 60: 369–419.Google Scholar
MacKay, Carolyn J. 1999. A Grammar of Misantla Totonac. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.Google Scholar
MacKay, Carolyn J., and Trechsel, Frank R.. 2005. Totonaco de Misantla, Veracruz. México, DF: Colegio de México.Google Scholar
MacKay, Carolyn J. and Trechsel, Frank R.. 2010. Tepehua de Pisaflores, Veracruz. México, DF: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
MacKay, Carolyn J. and Trechsel, Frank. 2011. Relaciones internas de las lenguas totonaco-tepehuas. Memorias del V Congreso de Idiomas Indígenas de Latinoamérica.Google Scholar
MacKay, Carolyn J. and Trechsel, Frank. 2013. A sketch of pisaflores tepehua phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics 79: 189–218.Google Scholar
MacKay, Carolyn J. and Trechsel, Frank R.. 2015. Totonac-Tepehua genetic relationships. Amerindia 37(2): 121–158.Google Scholar
McFarland, Teresa. 2009. The phonology and morphology of Filomeno Mata Totonac. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
McQuown, Norman A. 1940. A Totonac Grammar. Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University.Google Scholar
McQuown, Norman A. 1990. Gramática de la lengua totonaca (Coatepec, Sierra Norte de Puebla). México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Müller, André, Velupillai, Viveka, Wichmann, Søren, Brown, Cecil H., Holman, Eric W., Sauppe, Sebastian, Brown, Pamela, Hammarström, Harald, Belyaev, Oleg, List, Johann-Mattis, Bakker, Dik, Egorov, Dmitri, Urban, Matthias, Mailhammer, Robert, Dryer, Matthew S., Korovina, Evgenia, Beck, David, Geyer, Helen, Epps, Pattie, Grant, Anthony, and Valenzuela, Pilar. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013), available at http://asjp.clld.org.Google Scholar
Reid, Aileen A. 1991. Gramática totonaca de Xicotepec de Juárez, Puebla. México, DF: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
Reid, Aileen A. and Bishop, Ruth G.. 1974. Diccionarío totonaco de Xicotepec de Juárez, Puebla. México, DF: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
Ringe, Don, Warnow, Tandy, and Taylor, Ann. 2002. Indo-European and computational cladistics. Transactions of the Philological Society 100(1): 59–129.Google Scholar
Saitou, Naruya and Nei, Masatoshi. 1987. The neighbor-joining method: a new method for reconstructing phylogenetic trees. Molecular Biology and Evolution 4(4): 406–425.Google Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Schnoebelen, T. 2009. A how-to guide for using phylogenetic tools on linguistic data (SplitsTree, MrBayes). Ms., Stanford University. Revised on April 23, 2009.Google Scholar
Secretaría de finanzas y planeación del estado de Veracruz (SEFIPLAN). 2013. Cuadernillos Municipales: Coahuitlán, Mexico.Google Scholar
Smythe Kung, Susan. 2007. A Descriptive Grammar of Huehuetla Tepehua. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.Google Scholar
Tadmor, Uri, Haspelmath, Martin, and Taylor, Bradley. 2010. Borrowability and the notion of basic vocabulary. In Quantitative approaches to linguistic diversity: Commemorating the centenary of the birth of Morris Swadesh, ed. Wichmann, Søren and Grant, Anthony P.. Diachronica 27(2): 226–246.Google Scholar
Watters, James K. 1988. Topics in Tepehua Grammar. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Watters, James K. 2007. Diccionario tepehua de Tlachichilco–español. Ms. in possession of David Beck, University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Wichmann, Søren, Müller, André, Wett, Annkathrin, Velupillai, Viveka, Bischoffberger, Julia, Brown, Cecil H., Holman, Eric W., Sauppe, Sebastian, Molochieva, Zarina, Brown, Pamela, Hammarström, Harald, Belyaev, Oleg, List, Johann-Mattis, Bakker, Dik, Egorov, Dmitry, Urban, Matthias, Mailhammer, Robert, Carrizo, Agustina, Dryer, Matthew S., Korovina, Evgenia, Beck, David, Geyer, Helen, Epps, Pattie, Grant, Anthony, and Valenzuela, Pilar. 2013. The ASJP Database (version 16), available at http://asjp.clld.org.Google Scholar