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Mazatec Dialect History: A Study in Miniature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Sarah C. Gudschinsky
Sarah C. Gudschinsky*
Affiliation:
Summer Institute of Linguistics
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Extract

It is well known that at least two conflicting forces contribute to the development of languages and dialects: regular sound change, which is studied by the techniques of comparative linguistics, and diffusion of linguistic innovations beyond their original source, which is studied by the techniques of linguistic geography. The present paper offers a detailed study of these two forces and their interaction in the dialects of Mazatec.

A procedure for the subgrouping of related languages or dialects on the basis of exclusively shared innovations was proposed by Brugmann and recently elaborated by Dyen (in a review of Otto Dahl's comparative study of Malagasy and Maanyan.) In the present study of the Mazatec dialects, the procedure is applied to an Amerindian language.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 34 , Issue 4: October-December , December 1958 , pp. 469 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © 1958 by Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 See, for example, Leonard Bloomfield, Language 297–345 (New York, 1933).

2 The Mazatec data were gathered in a series of field trips in 1949–1955 under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1957 Summer meeting of the Linguistic Society of America.

3 Isidore Dyen, review of Malgache et Maanjan: Une comparaison linguistique, by Otto Chr. Dahl, in Lg. 29.577–90 (1953). In his review Dyen quotes from Brugmann, Zur Frage nach den Verwandtschaftsverhältnissen der indogermanischen Sprachen, Internationale Zeitschrift für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 1.253 (1884).

4 Dyen, Lg. 29.580.

5 The phonological and comparative material in this section is taken from the reconstruction of Proto-Mazatec in my Proto-Mazatec structure (University of Pennsylvania master's thesis, 1956).

6 The term ‘Popotecan’ was coined from Popolocan and Mixtecan. Proto-Popotecan is the reconstructed parent of Mixtecan and Popolocan: Mazatec is a Popolocan language. The relationships are roughly as follows:

Proto-Popotecan {Mixtecan Popolocan {Mazatec Ixcatec Popoloc Chocho

The detailed reconstruction of Proto-Popolocan and Proto-Popotecan may be found in my Proto-Popotecan: A comparative study of Popolocan and Mixtecan (University of Pennsylvania doctoral dissertation, 1958).

7 All lexical items are quoted in their reconstructed Proto-Mazatec shapes, since the point in question is the distribution of the lexical items as such rather than of phonological variants.

8 Alfonso Villa Rojas, Los Mazatecos y el problema indígena de la Cuenca del Papaloapan, Memorias del Instituto Nacional Indigenista 7.61–74 (Mexico, 1955). Villa Rojas' outline of Mazatec history depends largely upon Mariano Espinosa, Apuntes históricos de los tribus Chinantecas, Mazatecas y Popolucas (Mexico, 1910). Espinosa appears to have spent a great deal of time with the Indians, and claimed to have access to genealogies, maps, documents, and paintings which were at that time in the Indians' hands. The date, nature, and reliability of these sources is not known.

9 Lexico-statistical skewing from dialect borrowing, IJAL 21.138–49 (1955).