Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T05:53:30.165Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

13 - Reconstructing the Sociolinguistic History of Expansion Languages in the Americas: A Research Program

from Part Two - Contact, Emergence, and Language Classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2022

Salikoko Mufwene
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Anna Maria Escobar
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Get access

Summary

In this chapter the author addresses the following questions: What does it mean to say that a language is a creole? Do creoles constitute a separate global typological class apart from other language typological groupings? The author calls for research on creole languages that is free from linguistic feature bias, creole language list bias, and genealogical bias. He compares expansion languages from the Meso and South American indigenous language families, particularly the Quechuan family (focusing on Ecuador, the northern border), with the Arawakan, Tupian, Cariban, Jêan, Chibchan, Uto-Aztecan, Mayan, and Otomanguean families. The comparison highlights processes of ethnogenesis, morphological reduction, and sub- or adstrate influence. The findings help broaden the definition of “creole” to refer to a special lexifier– descendant relationship, making the notion of creole a relational one, to facilitate comparisons with other languages and with “linguistic areas.” Questions that remain include: Are there area-specific features? And can this approach shed light on the characterization of creoles as a particular group of languages? What role can language contact play in reconstructing language families?

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact
Volume 2: Multilingualism in Population Structure
, pp. 344 - 369
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adelaar, Willem F.H. 2006. The Quechua impact in Amuesha, an Arawak language of the Peruvian Amazon. In Grammars in contact: A cross-linguistic typology, ed. by Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. & Dixon, R.M.W., 290312. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Adelaar, Willem F.H. 2008. Relações externas do Macro-Jê. O caso do Chiquitano. In Topicalizando macro-jê, ed. by Telles, S. & Santos de Paula, A., 927. Recife: Nectar.Google Scholar
Adelaar, Willem F.H. 2012. Cajamarca Quechua and the expansion of the Huari state. In Archeology and language in the Andes. A cross-disciplinary exploration of pre-history, ed. by Heggarty, P. & Beresford-Jones, D.G. (Proceedings of the British Academy 173), 197217. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Adelaar, Willem F.H. in collaboration with Muysken, Pieter. 2004. The languages of the Andes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adelaar, Willem F.H. & van de Kerke, Simon. 2009. Puquina. In Lenguas de Bolivia, vol. I, ed. by Crevels, Mily & Muysken, Pieter, 125–46. La Paz: Plural editores.Google Scholar
Aguirre Licht, Daniel. 2006. Choco languages. In Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, ed. by Brown, Keith, 367–81. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2001. Areal diffusion, genetic inheritance, and problems of subgrouping: A North Arawak case study. In Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance, ed. by Aikhenvald, Alexandra & Dixon, R.M.W., 167224. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2010. Language contact in Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1985. The Mirror Principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry 16.373415.Google Scholar
Bakker, Peter, Daval-Markussen, Aymeric, Parkvall, Mikael, & Plag, Ingo. 2011. Creoles are typologically distinct from non-creoles. In Creoles and typology, ed. by Bhatt, Parth & Veenstra, Tonjes, special edition of Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 26.542.Google Scholar
Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.Google Scholar
Brown, Cecil H. 2010. Lack of linguistic support for Proto-Uto-Aztecan at 8900 BP. Proceedings of National Academy of Science. USA 107.11.E34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cabral, Ana Suelly Arruda Câmara. 1995. Contact-induced language change in the Western Amazon: The non-genetic origin of the Kokama language. PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Cabral, Ana Suelly Arruda Câmara. 2007. New observations on the constitution of Kokáma/Omágwa: A language of the boundary Brazil, Peru, Colombia. In Language endangerment and endangered languages, ed. by Wetzels, Leo, 365–80. Leiden: CNWS.Google Scholar
Cabral, Ana Suelly Arruda Câmara. 2011. Different histories, different results: The origin and development of two Amazonian languages. Papia 21.1.922.Google Scholar
Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, 4). New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Lyle, Kaufman, Terrence, & Smith-Stark, Thomas C.. 1986. Meso-America as a linguistic area. Language 62.3.530–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlin, Eithne B. 2006. Feeling the need: The borrowing of Cariban functional categories into Mawayana (Arawak). In Grammars in contact: A cross-linguistic perspective, ed. by Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. & Dixon, R.M.W., 313–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carvalho, Fernando O. de. 2018. Arawakan–Guaicuruan language contact in the South American Chaco. International Journal of American Linguistics 84.2.243–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craig, Colette & Hale, Kenneth. 1992. A possible Macro-Chibchan etymon. Anthropological Linguistics 34.173201.Google Scholar
Cruz, Aline da. 2011. Fonologia e gramática do Nheengatú: A língua geral falada pelos povos Baré, Warekena e Baniwa. PhD dissertation, VU Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Dakin, Karin. 1982. The characteristics of a Nahuatl Lingua Franca. Texas Linguistic Forum 18.5567.Google Scholar
Dakin, Karen. 2010. Lenguas francas y lenguas locales en la época prehispánica. In Historia sociolingüística de México, vol. 1: México prehispánico y colonial, ed. by Barriga Villanueva, Rebecca & Butragueño, Pedro Martín, 161–83. Mexico City: El Colegio de México.Google Scholar
Dakin, Karen. 2017. Western and Central Nahua dialects: Possible influences from contact with Cora and Huichol. In Dakin, Parodi, & Operstein 2017, 264–300.Google Scholar
Dakin, Karen & Operstein, Natalie. 2017. Language contact in Mesoamerica and beyond. In Dakin, Parodi, & Operstein 2017, 2–28.Google Scholar
Dakin, Karen, Parodi, Claudia, & Operstein, Natalie (eds.). 2017. Language contact and change in Mesoamerica and beyond (Studies in Language Companion Series 185). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Danielsen, Swintha. 2007. Baure: An Arawak language of Bolivia (Indigenous Languages of Latin America 6). Leiden: CNWS Publications.Google Scholar
Danielsen, Swintha, Dunn, Michael, & Muysken, Pieter. 2011. The spread of the Arawakan languages: A view from structural phylogenetics. In Ethnicity in ancient Amazonia: Reconstructing past identities from archaeology, linguistics, and ethnohistory, ed. by Hornborg, Alfred & Hill, Jonathan D., 173–96. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.). 2013. The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available at http://wals.info, accessed July 17, 2017.)Google Scholar
Edmonson, Barbara Wedemeyer. 1988. A descriptive grammar of Huastec (Potosino dialect). PhD dissertation, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA.Google Scholar
Emlen, Nicholas Q. 2017. Perspectives on the Quechua–Aymara contact relationship and the lexicon and phonology of Pre-Proto-Aymara. International Journal of American Linguistics 83.2.307–40.Google Scholar
Eriksen, Love & Danielsen, Swintha. 2014. The Arawakan Matrix. In The native languages of South America: Origins, development, typology, ed. by O’Connor, Loretta & Muysken, Pieter, 152–76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eriksen, Love & Galucio, Ana Vilacy. 2014. The Tupian expansion. In The native languages of South America: Origins, development, typology, ed. by O’Connor, Loretta & Muysken, Pieter, 177–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gast, Volker & van der Auwera, Johan. 2012. What is “contact-induced grammaticalization”? Evidence from Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean languages. In Grammatical replication and borrowability in language contact, ed. by Wiemer, Björn, Wälchli, Bernhard, & Hansen, Björn, 381426. Berlin & Boston, MA: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, Michael L. 1996. El Munichi: un idioma que se extingue (Serie Lingüística Peruana, 42). Pucallpa: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
Gómez Rendón, Jorge A. 2008. Mestizaje lingüístico en los Andes: génesis y estructura de una lengua mixta. Quito: Abya-Yala.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin, Dryer, Matthew S., Gil, David, & Comrie, Bernard. 2005. The world atlas of language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Jane H. & Hill, Kenneth C.. 1986. Speaking Mexicano – dynamics of syncretic language in Central Mexico. Tempe, AZ: The University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Hoff, Berend J. 1995. Language contact, war, and Amerindian historical tradition. The special case of the Island Carib. In Wolves from the sea. Readings in the anthropology of the native Caribbean, ed. by Whitehead, N.L., 3759. Leiden: KITLV.Google Scholar
Huttar, George L. & Huttar, Mary L.. 1994. Ndyuka. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Huttar, George L. & Velantie, Frank J.. 1997. Ndyuka-Trio Pidgin. In Contact languages: A wider perspective, ed. by Thomason, Sarah G., 99124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karttunen, Frances & Lockhart, James. 1976. Nahuatl in the middle years: Language contact phenomena in texts of the colonial period (Linguistics Volume 85). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Terrence & Justeson, John. 2009. Historical linguistics and Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 20.221–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerke, Simon van de & Muysken, Pieter. 2014. The Andean Matrix. In The native languages of South America: Origins, development, typology, ed. by O’Connor, Loretta & Muysken, Pieter, 126–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Law, Danny. 2013. Mayan historical linguistics in a new age. Language and Linguistics Compass 7.3.141–56.Google Scholar
Law, Danny. 2014. Language contact, inherited similarity and social difference. The story of linguistic interaction in the Maya lowlands. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1952. Race et histoire. Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Linguistic Typology (2001) 5(2–3). Special issue entitled Creoles – a structural type?Google Scholar
Lipski, John M. 2017. Ecuadoran Media Lengua: More than a “half”-language? International Journal of American Linguistics 83.2.3160.Google Scholar
Lüdi, Georges. 1989. Aspects de la conversation exolingue entre Suisses romands et alémaniques. Actes du XVIIIe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes 7.405–24.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74.4.788818.Google Scholar
Meira, Sergio & Muysken, Pieter. 2017. Cariban in contact: New perspectives on Trio-Ndyuka Pidgin. In Boundaries and bridges. Language contact in multilingual ecologies, ed. by Yakpo, Kofi & Muysken, Pieter C., 197228. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merrill, William L., Hard, Robert J., Mabry, Jonathan B., Adams, Fritz, & MacWilliams, Roney. 2010. Reply to Hill and Brown: Maize and Uto-Aztecan cultural history. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 107.11.E35E36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michael, Lev. 2014. On the Pre-Columbian origin of Proto-Omagua-Kokama. Journal of Language Contact 7.2.309–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Maurer, Philippe, Haspelmath, Martin, & Huber, Magnus (eds.). 2013a. The atlas and survey of pidgin and creole languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Susanne Maria, Maurer, Philippe, Haspelmath, Martin, & Huber, Magnus (eds.). 2013b. Atlas of pidgin and creole language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available at http://apics-online.info, accessed July 17, 2017.)Google Scholar
Moore, Denny. 2014. Historical development of Nheengatu (Língua Geral Amazônica). In Iberian imperialism and language evolution in Latin America, ed. by Mufwene, Salikoko S., 108–42. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Denny, Facundes, Sidney, & Pires, Nádia. 1994. Nheengatu (Língua Geral Amazônica), its history, and the effects of language contact. In Survey of California and other Indian languages. Report 8. Proceedings of the meeting of the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas, July 2–4, 1993, and the Hokan-Penutian workshop, July 3, 1993, Columbus, Ohio, ed. by Margaret Langdon, 93–118. University of California at Berkeley.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2000. Creolization is a social, not a structural, process. In Degrees of restructuring in creole languages, ed. by Neumann-Holzschuh, Ingrid & Schneider, Edgar, 6584. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1977. Syntactic developments in the verb phrase of Ecuadorian Quechua. Lisse: Peter de Ridder & Dordrecht: Foris & Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1981a. Quechua causatives and logical form: A case study in markedness. In Theory of markedness in generative grammar, ed. by Belletti, Adriana, Brandi, Luciana, & Rizzi, Luigi, 445–74. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1981b. Halfway between Quechua and Spanish: The case for relexification. In Historicity and variation in creole studies, ed. by Highfield, Arnold & Valdman, Albert, 5778. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1983. El quechua de Peru y de Ecuador: una vision comparativa. In Presencia de Andres Bello en Panama, 325–51. Panama City: Círculo Lingüístico Ricardo J. Alfaro.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 1997. Media Lengua. In Contact languages: A wider perspective, ed. by Thomason, Sarah G., 365426. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 2000. Semantic transparency in Lowland Ecuadorian Quechua morphosyntax. Linguistics 38.973–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Connor, Loretta. 2014. Structural features and language contact in the Isthmo-Colombian area. In The native languages of South America: Origins, development, typology, ed. by O’Connor, Loretta & Muysken, Pieter, 73101. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
O’Hagan, Zachary J. 2011. Proto-Omagua-Kokama: Grammatical sketch and prehistory. Honors BA thesis, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Reinecke, John E. (ed.). 1975. A bibliography of pidgin and creole languages. Honolulu, HI: University Press of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Ribeiro, Eduardo Rivail & van der Voort, Hein. 2010. Nimuendajú was right: The inclusion of the Jabutí language family in the Macro-Jê stock. International Journal of American Linguistics 76.4.517–70.Google Scholar
Roberts, Sarah J. & Bresnan, Joan. 2008. Retained inflectional morphology in pidgins: A typological study. Linguistic Typology 12.269302.Google Scholar
Rodrigues, Aryon Dall’Igna & Cabral, Ana Suelly Arruda Câmara. 2012. Tupían. In The indigenous languages of South America: A comprehensive guide, ed. by Campbell, Lyle & Grondona, Verónica, 495574. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Santana, Áurea Cavalcante. 2006. Comparações preliminares entre a língua Chiquitano (Brasil/Bolívia) e o Proto-Jê. Paper presented at the symposium “Advances in Native South American Historical Linguistics” at the Fifty-Second International Congress of Americanists, Seville.Google Scholar
Schuchardt, Hugo. 1884. Kreolische Studien V. Ueber das Melaneso-englische. Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Wien 105.151–61.Google Scholar
Schuchardt, Hugo. 1979. The ethnography of variation: Selected writings on pidgins and creoles, ed. and trans. by Markey, T.L., introduction by Derek Bickerton. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.Google Scholar
Seifart, Frank. 2011. Bora loans in Resígaro: Massive morphological and little lexical borrowing in a moribund Arawakan language. Cadernos de Etnolingüística. Série Monografias, 2.Google Scholar
Shaul, David L. 2014. A prehistory of Western North America: The impact of Uto-Aztecan languages. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Sicoli, Mark A. 2005. Oto-Manguean languages. In Encyclopedia of linguistics, ed. by Strazny, Philipp, 797800. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn.Google Scholar
Stewart, J. 2014. A comparative analysis of Media Lengua and Quichua vowel production. Phonetica 7.3.159–82.Google Scholar
Taylor, Douglas M. 1951. The Black Carib of British Honduras (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, 17). New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.Google Scholar
Taylor, Douglas R. & Hoff, Berend J.. 1980. The linguistic repertory of the Island-Carib in the seventeenth century: The men’s language: A Carib pidgin? International Journal of American Linguistics 46.4.301–12.Google Scholar
Vallejos Yopán, Rosa. 2010. A grammar of Kokama-Kokamilla. PhD thesis, University of Oregon, Eugene.Google Scholar
Young, Phil & Givón, Talmy. 1990. The puzzle of Ngäbére auxiliaries: Grammatical reconstruction in Chibchan and Misumalpan. In Studies in typology and diachrony: Papers presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on his 75th birthday, ed. by Croft, William, Kemmer, Suzanne, & Denning, Keith (Typological Studies in Language 20), 209–43. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Zavala, Roberto. 2000. Olutec motion verbs: Grammaticalization under Mayan contact. Berkeley Linguistic Society 26.139–51.Google Scholar
Zavala, Roberto. 2002. Calcos sintácticos en algunos complejos verbales Mayas y Mixe-Zoques. Pueblos y Fronteras 4.169–87.Google Scholar
Zavala, Roberto. 2013. La construcción de posesión externa con aplicativo en zoque dentro del contexto mesoamericano. In Clases léxicas, posesión y cláusulas complejas en lenguas de Mesoamérica, ed. by Palancar, Enrique & Zavala, Roberto, 133–70. Mexico City: CIESAS.Google Scholar
Zavala, Roberto. 2014. Auxiliares en dos lenguas mixezoqueanas: un caso de difusión directa. In Lenguas, estructuras y hablantes. Estudios en homenaje a Thomas C. Smith Stark, ed. by Villanueva, Rebecca Barriga & Zendejas, Esther Herrera, 779804. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, II.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×