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Subgrouping of Coahuitlán Totonac1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Devin Moore*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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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.

Information

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2016 
Figure 0

Figure 1: Traditional classification

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Figure 2: Map of Totonacan communities

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Figure 3: Brown et al.'s (2011) Classification

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Figure 4: ‘to walk around’

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Figure 5: Glide reduction

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Figure 6: ‘you (sg)’

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Figure 7: Cognates with unconditioned /e/ and /o/

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Figure 8: Locative

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Figure 9: Desiderative

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Figure 10: Negative

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Figure 11: ‘water’

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Figure 12: ‘rain’

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Figure 13: ‘sand’

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Figure 14: ‘see’

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Figure 15: Nominal form of ‘ear’

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Figure 16: ‘big’

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Figure 17: ‘chest’

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Figure 18: ‘liver’

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Figure 19: ‘leaf’

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Figure 20: ‘fire’

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Figure 21: ‘girl’

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Figure 22: ‘tomorrow’

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Figure 23: ‘heart’

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Figure 24: ‘nose’

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Figure 25: ‘green’

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Figure 26: ‘toe- and fingernail’

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Figure 27: ‘good’

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Table 1: Shared innovations in Central Totonac

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Figure 28: ASJP calculation of Totonacan lexical similarity

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Figure 29: Phylogenetic network of romance languages

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Figure 30: Encoding of characters for ‘water’

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Figure 31: Phylogenetic network of Totonacan