Otomanguean historical linguistics: Exploring the subgroups

Abstract

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.

Otomanguean historical linguistics: Past, present, and prospects for the future

“…Several Otomanguean major subgroups have their internal subgrouping sketched out (Campbell, ), and we have seen additional important contributions to the reconstruction of some of the families and their subgroups, especially Mixtec (Josserand, ), Zapotec (Benton, ; Fernández de Miranda, ; Kaufman, ), Chinantec (Rensch, ), Trique (Matsukawa, ), and Chatino (Campbell, , ; Campbell & Cruz, ). These and future works should provide the basis for advancing the historical linguistics of the higher levels of the family.…”

Clusters vs units in Otomanguean: the cases of Tlapanec (Mè’phàà) and Zapotec (Dixsa:)

“…Tlapanec (Mè'phàà) is spoken in the eastern part of the state of Guerrero, and belongs to the Tlapanec-Subtiaba family, along with the now extinct Subtiaba once spoken in Nicaragua. Tlapanec-Subtiaba is one of the western Otomanguean languages, along with Otopamean, Chinantecan and Chiapanecan languages, according to the classification of Campbell (2017). This paper will focus on the Malinaltepec Tlapanec ), which includes the Malinaltepec and Huehuetepec varieties (Marlett & Weathers 2015: 3).…”

“…Zapotec is mostly spoken in the state of Oaxaca and constitutes Zapotecan language family along with Chatino languages. Zapotecan is one of the eastern Otomanguean languages along with Mixtecan and Popolocan languages (Campbell 2017). All the Zapotec data come from Teotitlán del Valle Zapotec (Dixsa:), spoken in the community of Teotitlán del Valle in the Central Valley of Oaxaca.…”

Contact, Structure, and Change

“…Figure 11.1 presents the state-of-the-art Zapotecan language classification (Campbell 2017b Eastern ChaƟno (Campbell 2013) Source: Adapted from Campbell (2017b: 12) firmly established (Campbell 2013;Sullivant 2016), many nodes on the Zapotec side remain tentative (Campbell 2017b;Campbell and Broadwell, in press). Kaufman (2016) reconstructs roughly 850 proto-Zapotec forms, incorporating and expanding earlier works (Benton 1988;Fernández de Miranda 1995;Suárez 1973;Swadesh 1947).…”