CHAPTER 11 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES OF MESOAMERICA 435Box 11.7 Linguistic Diffusion from Mixe-Zoquean
(from Kaufman and Justeson in press)About 100 Mixe-Zoquean words were borrowed into southern Mesoamerica—Mayan, Zapotec,
Huave—and more southerly Central American languages like Xincan and Tol; the vast majority
were probably adopted from Zoquean. About 90 Mixe-Zoquean words were borrowed in and
around the Basin of Mexico, especially by Totonacans, Nahuas, Tarascans, and Matlatzincans.
Most of this borrowing in both regions occurred during the Preclassic era, and most of the rest
during the Early Classic.
In both areas, the borrowed vocabulary comes from all semantic domains; but most com-
monly borrowed were words for cultigens, especially those of lowland origin (for example, cacao,
papaya, guava, manioc, sweet potato, and gourds), and words relating to the ritual calendar (for
example, names for animals and plants that were names of days in the ritual calendar, and words
for numbers and systems of numeration). Some of the borrowings in the south are attributable
to Olmecs, others to epi-Olmecs.
A northern group of Mixe-Zoquean loans may seem surprising, given the Gulf Coast home-
land of this family and their association with the Olmec civilization; but (as indicated in Chapter 1)
there were small settlements of Olmec immigrants in the Basin of Mexico around 1200 B.C. Kauf-
man has shown that the geographic distribution of the northern loans puts their source in the east-
ern half of the Basin of Mexico; they were probably associated with the influence of Teotihuacan
in Central Mexico.acquiring imperfect control of the target language. Alternatively, grammatical copy-
ing occurs when two groups are in long-term, intense contact, probably the more
common situation in Mesoamerica.
Such grammatical borrowing happened many times and in many places in
Mesoamerica. Within the Mayan family, whereas Greater Tzeltalan and Ch’olan ap-
pear to have had a heavy influence on the vocabulary of Yucatecan, Yucatecan has
probably influenced the grammar and phonology of Greater Tzeltalan and Ch’olan
in such features as the development of a glottalized p’from some instances of earlier
b’,and in the development of a pervasive grammatical pattern known as “split erga-
tivity.” In Oto-Manguean, the spread of sound changes among different Mixtec lan-
guages indicates that the Mixtecs of Tilantongo exerted substantial influence on
neighboring kingdoms. Nahua was massively restructured after entering northern
Mesoamerica, under the influence of Huastecan, Totonacan, and northern Mixe-
Zoquean languages (see Box 11.6)
Glottochronology
Another tool often used in historical linguistic studies is “glottochronology.” By as-
suming that basic vocabulary is lost at a relatively constant rate, the time elapsed
since two languages had a common ancestor can be determined, provided that it is
known that they are in fact related and that the basic vocabulary list has been re-
constructed. The assumption that vocabulary is lost at a constant rate appears to be
at best an approximation, but glottochronology can provide at least a rough esti-
mate for when two or more languages were one. In the cases of migration just dis-
cussed, this gives an estimate for when the people speaking these languages migrated.