Mesoamerican: A proposed Language Phylum Author(s): Stanley R. Witkowski and Cecil H.

Brown Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 4 (Dec., 1978), pp. 942-944 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/675524 . Accessed: 31/03/2011 18:04
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. 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 support@jstor.org.

Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Anthropologist.

http://www.jstor.org

942

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[80, 1978]

Steward,Julian H., and Louis C. Faron kowski 1979). Preliminary investigation shows 1959 Native Peoples of South America. that these correspondences extend as well into New York: McGraw-Hill. Huave, Lencan, Jicaque, Totonacan, and
Submitted16 March 1977
Accepted 18June 1977 Final revision received 5July 1977

Mesoamerican: A Proposed Language Phylum

STANLEY R. WITKOWSKI CECIL H. BROWN Northern Illinois University This report describes the preliminary findings of our research into the relationships of several groups of languages spoken in a large and relatively continuous zone of Mesoamerica. These include (1) the Mayan family of Guatemala, Belize, eastern Honduras, southern Mexico, and the Yucatan Peninsula (including Huastec spoken in northern Veracruz and eastern San Luis Potosi, Mexico); (2) the Zoquean family of southern Mexico (primarily the Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Veracruz); (3) the language isolate, Huave, spoken on the Pacific coast of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico; (4) the Totonacan family of northcentral Veracruz and parts of the Mexican states of Hidalgo and Puebla; (5) the Lencan family of south-central Honduras and eastern El Salvador; (6) the Jicaque family of northwestern Honduras; and (7) the Otomanguean stock, which is widely distributed through southern, central, and east-central Mexico. Our research indicates that (1)-(7) constitute parts of a large located in language phylum exclusively Mesoamerica. This grouping unites most of the languages of Mesoamerica into one geographically continuous phylum descended from a protolanguage spoken some seven to nine thousand years ago. Plausibly, plant domestication, which was beginning about the time ProtoMesoamerican was spoken, triggered a vast population increase leading to the linguistic diversity that presently characterizes these languages. The proposal of Mesoamerican is based upon observation of systematic phonological correspondences. We have documented correspondences in the velar stop series for the Mayan-Zoquean relationship (Brown and Wit-

Zapotecan, a branch of Otomanguean. Because of the time-consuming nature of this kind of research, we hope this interim note will stimulate others to join us in working on the documentation of this new phylum. Many of the relationships pertinent to Mesoamerican have been proposed before. In 1942 McQuown suggested the genetic unity of Mayan, Zoquean, and Totonacan, arguing for a Other proposals "Macro-Mayan" grouping. have linked Huave with Mayan, Zoquean, and Otomanguean (Radin 1916, 1924; Rensch 1973; Sudirez 1975), and Lencan with Mayan (Andrews 1970). While investigation of these suggested connections has not always been systematic and fully documented, our preliminary study of Mesoamerican sound correspondences supports them all. Much of the comparative work involving languages treated in this report has focused upon possible connections that are external to the Mesoamerican area. Wider affinities for for example, have been Mayan-Zoquean, sought in South America by Schuller (1920), Olson (1964, 1965), and Stark(1970, 1972), and in North America by Freeland (1931) and Whorf (1935). In addition, Greenberg and Swadesh (1953) and Oltrogge (1977) have attempted to relate Jicaque to the Hokan phylum of North America. Close examination of these proposals shows them to be unconvincing; see, for example, Campbell's (1973) detailed critique of Olson's South American proposal. A more promising avenue is exploration of connections within Mesoamerica. These connections are considerably more likely than any suggested with languages outside the area. The fact that Mesoamerican language families are contiguously located means that areal influences have been extensive. This creates special problems in investigating genetic relationships. Recent loans are usually detectable, but since borrowing has occurred for thousands of years, it is sometimes difficult to separate cognate lexical items from very early loans. Thorough sifting of the phonological, semantic, and distributional nuances of forms, however, can usually go far toward solving this problem (e.g., Brown 1977, 1979 for intraMayan examples, and Campbell 1972, 1977 and Brown and Witkowski 1979 for extra-Mayan examples). Identification of loanwords, of course, can provide important information for docu-

REPORTS AND COMMENTS menting cultural contact at different time periods, and for tracing diffusion of cultural innovations (e.g., Campbell and Kaufman 1976). Divisions of Mesoamerican. We tentatively recognize two major divisions of Mesoamerican: Northern Mesoamnerican includes the eight families of Otomanguean language (TlaPopolocan, Amuzgo, panecan, Otopamean, and Mixtecan, Chinantecan, Manguean, Zapotecan); Southern Mesoamnerican includes Mayan, Zoquean, Huave, Lencan, Jicaque, and Totonacan. For detailed information on these 14 language families - e.g., individual language names, approximate linguistic time depths for families, approximate number of speakers, etc. -see Kaufman (1974). For recent work on Otomanguean relationships, see Rensch (1973, 1976, 1977). These divisions are convenient geographic groupings, not valid genetic subgroups. The placement of Zapotecan in the Northern branch, for example, takes into account the traditional recognition of its close affiliation with the Otomanguean stock. Our investigation, however, indicates that Zapotecan is also closely related to Southern Mesoamerican. Several small language families and language isolates on the northern (Tarascan and Cuitlatec) and southern (Payan, Misumalpan, and Xincan) fringes of Mesoamerica are potential candidates for inclusion within the Mesoamerican phylum, but research at present is inconclusive. The remaining language groups in Mesoamerica are definitely not related to the proposed phylum, e.g., the Aztec-Tanoan languages such as Nahuatl and Pipil which have their origin to the north in the Great Basin area of the United States. Also intrusive from the north is the Tequistlatecan family in southern Oaxaca, a distant, 5,000-year offshoot of the Hokan related Yuman family of the southwestern United States and Baja California (Waterhouse 1976). Mesoamerican and the Linguistic Identity of the Olmec. Campbell and Kaufman (1976)

943

things diagnostic of early Mesoamerican cultural developments, things which may have been spread throughout Mesoamerica by the highly influential Olmec. The genetic relationship of Mayan and Zoquean and the proposal of a larger Mesoamerican phylum suggest the need for closely reexamining the lexical evidence provided by Campbell and Kaufman. Certainly geographic and temporal correlations provide strong circumstantial support for the hypothesis that the heartland Olmec were Zoquean speakers. On the other hand, not all of Campbell and Kaufman's proposed loanwords for things typically Mesoamerican are necessarily borrowings from Zoquean. Several of the lexical items listed by them as Zoquean loanwords in Mayan languages may as plausibly be construed as Mayan cognates of Zoquean words traced to ProtoMayan-Zoquean. Similarly, other proposed Zoquean loans in other Mesoamerican languages may in fact be linked to common parent words of a Proto-Mesoamericanlexicon. Furthermore, the proposed direction of borrowing in Campbell and Kaufman's treatment, invariably from Zoquean into other languages, is not always convincing. The unraveling of detailed relationships between archaeological cultures and ethnic-linguistic groups that existed thousands of years ago in Mesoamerica will undoubtedly be a very complex undertaking, but one which should prove rewarding as indicated by Campbell and Kaufman's promising beginning (see also Kaufman 1976).
Acknowledgments. A number of scholars

have proposed that the archaeological Olmec

living in southern Veracruz and western Tabasco, the presumed Olmec heartland, were speakers of Zoquean languages. Speakers of modern Zoquean languages occupy part of this area today, and Proto-Zoquean was spoken

have contributed to our ongoing project by offering critical comments on manuscripts or in other important ways, and we wish to thank them here. These include E. Wyllys Andrews, 5th, Glenn Ayres, Victoria R. Bricker, Linda Kay Brown, ChristopherDay, MarshallDurbin, Thomas E. Durbin, Ray Elliot, Lawrence H. Feldman, J. L. Fischer, James Fox, David C. Grove, Eric Hamp, Barbara E. Hollenbach, Dell Hymes, Rob MacLaury, Richard Reimer, Michael Salovesh, Brian Stross,Jorge A. Su.rez, Norman D. Thomas, Gregory Truex, Stephen A. Tyler, Viola Warkentin, Eric R. Wolf, and Richard B. Woodbury. Needless to say, none of the above should be held responsible for our heresies.
References Cited

about the time (1000-1500 B.C.) Olmec civilization was crystallizing. In support of their argu-

ment, Campbell and Kaufman identify Zoquean loanwords in other languages naming

Andrews, E. Wyllys, 5th 1970 Correspondencias Fonol6gicas Entre

944

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

[80, 1978]

El Lenca y Una Lengua Mayance. Estudios de Cultura Maya 8:341-387. Brown, Cecil H. 1977 Ethnoanatomyand Language Change. Manuscript, Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University. 1979 Growth and Development of Folk Botanical Life-Forms in the Mayan Language Family. In press, American Ethnologist. Brown, Cecil H., and Stanley R. Witkowski 1979 Aspects of the Phonological History of Mayan-Zoquean. International Journal of American Linguistics 45(1). Campbell, Lyle 1972 Mayan Loan Words in Xinca. International Journal of American Linguistics 38:187-190. 1973 Distant Genetic Relationships and the Maya-Chipaya Hypothesis. Anthropological Linguistics 13:113-135. 1977 Quichean Linguistic Prehistory. University of California Publications, Linguistics 81. Campbell, Lyle, and Terrence Kaufman 1976 A Linguistic Look at the Olmec. American Antiquity 41:80-89. Freeland, L. S. 1931 The Relationship of Mixe to the Penutian Family. International Journal of American Linguistics 6:28-33. Greenberg, Joseph H., and Morris Swadesh 1953 Jicaque as a Hokan Language. International Journal of American Linguistics 19:216-222. Kaufman, Terrence 1974 Mesoamerican Indian Languages. Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1976 Archaeological and Linguistic Correlations in Mayaland and Associated Areas of Meso-America. World Archaeology 8:101-118. McQuown, Norman A. 1942 Una Posible Sintesis Lingiiistica Macro-Mayance. In Mayas y Olmecas. Pp. 37-38. Tuxtla Guti(rrez: Sociedad Mexicana de Antropologia. Olson, Ronald D. 1964 Mayan Affinities with Chipaya of Bolivia, I: Correspondences. International Journal of American Linguistics 30: 313-324. 1965 Mayan Affinities with Chipaya of Bolivia, II: Cognates. International Journal of American Linguistics 31:29-38.

Oltrogge, David 1977 Proto Jicaque-Subtiaba-Tequistlateco: A Comparative Reconstruction. In Two Studies in Middle American Comparative Linguistics, by David Oltrogge and Calvin Rensch. Pp. 1-52. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Radin, Paul 1916 On the Relationship of Huave and Mixe. American Anthropologist 18: 411-421. 1924 The Relationship of Maya to ZoqueHuave. Journal de la Societe des Am(ricanistes n.s. 16:317-324. Rensch, Calvin R. 1973 Otomanguean Isoglosses. In Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 11. Thomas Sebeok, ed. Pp. 295-316. The Hague: Mouton. 1976 Comparative Otomanguean Phonology. Language Science Monograph, No. 14. Indiana University. 1977 Classification of the Otomanguean Languages and the Position of Tlapanec. In Two Studies in Middle American Comparative Linguistics, by David Oltrogge and Calvin Rensch. Pp. 53-108. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Schuller, Rudolf. 1920 Zur Sprachlichen Verwandtschaft der Maya-Qu'it6 mit den Carib-Aruac. Anthropos 14/15:465-491. Stark, Louisa R. 1970 Mayan Affinities with Araucanian. In Papers from the 6th Regional Meeting of the Chicago LinguisticsSociety. Pp. 57-69. Chicago Linguistics Society. 1972 Maya-Yunga-Chipayan: A New Linguistic Alignment. InternationalJournal of American Linguistics 38:119-135. A. Sutrez, Jorge 1975 Estudios Huaves. Colecci6n Cientifica Lingiiistica No. 22. Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico. Waterhouse, Viola G. 1976 Another Look at Chontal and Hokan. In Hokan Studies. Margaret Langdon and Shirley Silver, eds. Pp. 325-343. The Hague: Mouton. Whorf, Benjamin L. 1935 The Comparative Linguistics of UtoAztecan. American Anthropologist 37: 600-608.
Submitted 21 January 1977 Accepted 1 March 1977 Revised version received 24 February 1978