JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact

No abstract

Among the linguistic lineages of Mesoamerica, the Otomanguean family is the most diverse and most widely spread. Long occupying a central position in one of the cradles of human civilization, speakers of Otomanguean languages have played important roles in the region, about which their languages have much to tell. However, Otomanguean is perhaps the least understood of the major Mesoamerican language families, due to its great diversity, the remarkable structural complexity of Otomanguean languages and the history of the field of Otomanguean historical linguistics, which has seen great achievement alternating with periodic controversy and doubt. With a focus on the higher levels and more ancient time depths of the family, this article surveys Otomanguean historical linguistic work and presents a state of the art perspective on Otomanguean classification, reconstruction, linguistic prehistory, remaining challenges, and prospects for the future.

This is the second of two articles that survey and assess progress and prospects in the historical linguistics of the Otomanguean language family, which is the most widely distributed and most diverse linguistic lineage of Mesoamerica. While considerable progress has been made in understanding the linguistic and cultural history of Otomanguean, in some ways, it remains the Mesoamerican language family about which we know the least. It consists of eight major subgroups: Mè'phàà‐Subtiaba, Chorotegan, Oto‐Pamean, Chinantec, Mixtecan, Amuzgo, Zapotecan, and Popolocan. While the first article of this series addressed the historical linguistics of the higher levels of the Otomanguean family, this article focuses on the eight major subgroups, especially progress in their reconstruction, internal subgrouping, and areas in need of further research.

No abstract