Language contact and intergroup interaction in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

Summary

Research on contact linguistics has shown that, and to a great extent how, the nature of the linguistic influence of speakers of different languages on one another relates systematically to the nature of the interactions among speakers of these languages. This paper will survey some of the evidence and inferences that historical linguistics can contribute to some of the culture-historical situations addressed by other papers in this symposium, from varying time frames, and will address some of the controversies and the kinds of analysis and evidence that seem to contribute to the understanding of pre-Columbian intergroup interaction across a range of times and places. Facets of this framework are applicable within other kinds of expressive systems. However, understanding the internal histories of languages and language families depends upon detailed documentation of Mesoamerican languages, and a great deal of the linguistic diversity remains to be documented. Until richer documentation work is done, especially on Oto-Manguean languages, linguistic resources will not be able to elucidate some of the major transformations in Mesoamerican prehistory.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Interregional Interaction and Dynamic Cultural Process in Mesoamerica

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