Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T04:11:55.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A ‘Small’ Language in Contact with a ‘Big’ One: The Loss of the Alienability Distinction in Tének (Mayan) under Spanish Influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2017

Elwira Sobkowiak  and
Marcin Kilarski
Elwira Sobkowiak
Affiliation:
Faculty ‘Artes Liberales’, University of Warsaw, ul. Dobra 72, 00-312 Warszawa, Poland. Email: torlino@gmail.com
Marcin Kilarski
Affiliation:
Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, al. Niepodległości 4, 61-874 Poznań, Poland. Email: kilarski@amu.edu.pl
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper we discuss changes in possession marking in Tének (also Teenek, Huastec), a Mayan language spoken in Mexico. While traditionally only alienable possession is marked overtly with the suffix -il attached to the possessed noun, the marker of alienable possession is being extended in the speech of young and socially mobile Tének speakers to contexts traditionally lacking overt possession marking. We attribute this extension to changes in social and cultural patterns in Tének communities. Thus, we show that the choice of possession marking in modern Tének is sensitive to both semantic factors and the socio-cultural background of Tének speakers, including such factors as age as well as the degree of social mobility and exposure to Spanish. In addition, we interpret these developments in terms of ongoing simplification in Tének morphology. We thus take a more general view of grammatical categories as shaped not only by internal developments but also changing cultural and social patterns.

Type
Focus: Language Endangerment and Revitalization
Information
European Review , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 147 - 163
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2017 

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

References and Notes

1. Bally, C. (1926) L’expression des idées de sphère personnelle et de solidarité dans les langues indo-européennes. In: F. Fankhauser and J. Jud (Eds), Festschrift Louis Gauchat (Aarau: H.R. Sauerländer), pp. 68–78. Translated by C. Béal and H. Chappell as C. Bally (1995) The expression of concepts of the personal domain and indivisibility in Indo-European languages. In: H. Chappell and W. McGregor (Eds), The Grammar of Inalienability: A Typological Perspective on Body Part Terms and the Part–Whole Relation (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter), pp. 31–61.)Google Scholar
2. Seiler, H. (1983) Possession as an Operational Dimension of Language (Tübingen: Gunter Narr).Google Scholar
3. Suárez, J.A. (1983) The Mesoamerican Indian Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Google Scholar
4. Campbell, L., Kaufman, T. and Smith-Stark, T. C. (1986) Meso-America as a linguistic area. Language, 62(3), pp. 530–570.Google Scholar
5. Lewis, M. P., Simons, G.F. and Fennig, C.D. (2016) Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Dallas: SIL International).Google Scholar
6. INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía) (2015) Lenguas indígenas en México y hablantes (de 3 años y más) al 2015. Encuesta Intercensal 2015. Available online: http://cuentame.inegi.org.mx/hipertexto/todas_lenguas.htm.Google Scholar
7. Edmonson, B.W. (1988) A Descriptive Grammar of Huastec (Potosino Dialect) (Tulane University).Google Scholar
8.The following abbreviations are used: 1 first person, 3 third person, A ergative, det determiner, poss possessive, sg singular. Tének has no standard orthography. The examples from other sources are cited in the original orthography, while the examples elicited in our study are given in the form used by the speakers in the questionnaire.Google Scholar
9. Maldonado, R. (1994) Iconic proximity in Veracruz Huastec possessives. In: R. Zavala Maldonado (Ed.), Estudios sobre lenguas mayas (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara), pp. 1–25.Google Scholar
10.The online version of the questionnaire can be found at https://goo.gl/jzaTsz. The form was distributed among Tének native speakers via Tének Facebook groups, instant messaging and email.Google Scholar
11.Here we acknowledge the limitations imposed by relying on earlier accounts as evidence of a ‘traditional pattern’: as pointed out by Danny Law (personal communication), it is an open question to what degree these two admittedly relatively recent sources are representative of an earlier stage in the usage of possession marking in Tének.Google Scholar
12. Chappell, H. and McGregor, W. (1989) Alienability, inalienability and nominal classification. In: K. Hall, M. Meacham and R. Shapiro (Eds), Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society), pp. 24–36.Google Scholar
13. de Vidas, A.A. (2007) La otra cara de la figura del indio: La visión teenek de ‘lo indio’. Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos.Google Scholar
14. Kockelman, P. (2010) Inalienable possessions: What hearts, mothers, and shadows have in common. In: P. Kockelman (Ed.), Language, Culture, and Mind: Natural Constructions and Social Kinds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 14–51.Google Scholar
15. Trudgill, P. (2011) Sociolinguistic Typology: Social Determinants of Linguistic Complexity (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
16. Field, F.W. (2002) Linguistic Borrowing in Bilingual Contexts (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins).Google Scholar
17. Olko, J. (2018) Unbalanced language contact and the struggle for survival: Bridging diachronic and synchronic perspectives on Nahuatl. European Review, 26(1), this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18. Dahl, Ö. (2004) The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins).Google Scholar
19. Givón, T. (1979) On Understanding Grammar (New York: Academic Press).Google Scholar
20. Givón, T. (2005) Context as Other Minds: The Pragmatics of Sociality, Cognition and Communication (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins).Google Scholar