Oto-Manguean language

Oto-Manguean languages (/ˌoʊtoʊˈmæŋɡiːən/; also Otomanguean) are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of the family, which is now extinct, was spoken as far south as Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Oto-Manguean is widely viewed as a proven language family. However, this status has been recently challenged.OtomiMazahuaMatlatzincaChichimeca (Jonaz)PameanChinantecTlapanecSubtiabaMangueanChochoPopolocaIxcatecMazatecanZapotecanAmuzgoMixtecTriqueCuicatec Oto-Manguean languages (/ˌoʊtoʊˈmæŋɡiːən/; also Otomanguean) are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of the family, which is now extinct, was spoken as far south as Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Oto-Manguean is widely viewed as a proven language family. However, this status has been recently challenged. The highest number of speakers of Oto-Manguean languages today are found in the state of Oaxaca where the two largest branches, the Zapotecan and Mixtecan languages, are spoken by almost 1.5 million people combined. In central Mexico, particularly in the states of Mexico, Hidalgo and Querétaro, the languages of the Oto-Pamean branch are spoken: the Otomi and the closely related Mazahua have over 500,000 speakers combined. Some Oto-Manguean languages are moribund or highly endangered; for example, Ixcatec and Matlatzinca each has fewer than 250 speakers, most of whom are elderly. Other languages particularly of the Manguean branch which was spoken outside of Mexico have become extinct; these include the Chiapanec language, which has only recently been declared extinct. Others such as Subtiaba, which was most closely related to Me'phaa (Tlapanec), have been extinct longer and are only known from early 20th century descriptions. The Oto-Manguean language family is the most diverse and most geographically widespread language family represented in Mesoamerica. The internal diversity is comparable with that of Indo-European, and the Proto-Oto-Manguean language is estimated to have been spoken some time before 2000 BCE. This means that at least for the past 4000 years Oto-Manguean languages have coexisted with the other languages of Mesoamerica and have developed many traits in common with these, to such an extent that they are seen as part of a sprachbund called the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area. However Oto-Manguean also stands out from the other language families of Mesoamerica in several features. It is the only language family in North America, Mesoamerica and Central America whose members are all tonal languages. It also stands out by having a much more analytic structure than other Mesoamerican languages. Another typical trait of Oto-Manguean is that its members almost all show VSO (verb–subject–object) in basic order of clausal constituents. A genetic relationship between Zapotecan and Mixtecan was first proposed by Manuel Orozco y Berra in 1864, he also included Cuicatec, Chocho and Amuzgo in his grouping. In 1865, Pimentel added Mazatec, Popoloca, Chatino and Chinantec – he also posed a separate group of Pame, Otomi and Mazahua, the beginning of the Oto-Pamean subbranch. Daniel Brinton's classification of 1891 added Matlatzinca and Chichimeca Jonaz to Pimentel's Oto-Pamean group (which wasn't known by that name then), and he reclassified some languages of the previously included languages of the Oaxacan group. In 1920, Walther Lehmann included the Chiapanec–Mangue languages and correctly established the major subgroupings of the Oaxacan group. And in 1926, Schmidt coined the name Otomi–Mangue for a group consisting of the Oto-Pamean languages and Chiapanec–Mangue. The Oto-Pamean group and the Main Oaxacan group were not joined together into one family until Sapir's classification in 1929, where it was included in the Hokan family. From the 1950s on reconstructive work began to be done on individual Oto-Manguean language groups. Proto-Oto-Pamean was reconstructed by Doris Bartholomew, Proto-Zapotecan by Morris Swadesh, Proto-Chiapanec–Mangue by Fernández de Miranda and Weitlaner.The classification by Campbell 1997 was the first to present a unified view of the Oto-Manguean languages. In 1981, William Merrifield published a reconstruction of the kinship terminologies of each of the Oto-Manguean branches and of Proto-Oto-Manguean. Unpublished reconstructions of Proto-Oto-Manguean grammar have also been made by Terrence Kaufman.In spite of the lack of a full published reconstruction of proto-Oto-Manguean, the language family has now been widely accepted by specialists, including Lyle Campbell, Terrence Kaufman, and William Poser. Campbell and Poser writing in 2008 concluded that ''Tlapanec-Subtiaba proved not to belong to 'Hokan' as postulated by Sapir (1925a), but to be a branch of Otomanguean ...'' Nonetheless a few studies have retained the inclusion in Hokan, particularly Joseph Greenberg's widely rejected 1987 classification, as well as its derivative works by Merritt Ruhlen. Writing in 1988, Leonardo Manrique still listed Tlapanec-Mangue as an isolated family. The status of the Amuzgo language as either a part of the Mixtecan group or as forming its own branch from the proto-Oto-Manguean node has been discussed by Longacre, who argued for the latter, but the currently most accepted classification by Campbell (1997) follows Terrence Kaufman in considering Amuzgo to be a branch of Mixtecan. Swadesh (1960) and Rensch included the Huave language as a separate branch within Oto-Manguean, but this inclusion has proved untenable as most of the cognates were loan-words from Zapotec. Huave is now considered an isolate. Longacre (1968) considered Oto-Manguean to be among the most extensively studied language families of the world, with a level reconstruction rivaling the Indo-European family in completeness, but Kaufman and Justeson (2009) reject this, lamenting the rudimentary reconstruction of Proto-Oto-Manguean lexicon (only c. 350 items have been reconstructed) and grammar. They call for a redoubling of the effort to document and reconstruct several important branches that have received little attention: principally Mixtecan, Popolocan and Oto-Pamean. Brown (2015) evaluates evidence assembled in support of Oto-Manguean. He points out that vocabulary reconstructed for Proto-Oto-Manguean is not supported by regular sound correspondences. While scholars, including Swadesh, Rensch, and Kaufman, have all reconstructed POM words, none have done so with the benefit of detailed sound correspondences and, consequently Brown argues that their reconstructions as well as Oto-Manguean itself are called into question. Nevertheless, Brown (2015) suggests that Oto-Manguean as Sprachbund (language diffusion area) is a reasonable alternative hypothesis to the proposal of Oto-Manguean as a language family.