scholarly journals Some of Them Just Die Like Horses. Contact-Induced Changes in Peripheral Nahuatl of the Sixteenth-Century Petitions from Santiago de Guatemala

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 344-377
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Brylak

The aim of this paper is to examine contact-induced changes, visible on lexical and lexico-syntactical levels, in the set of twenty sixteenth-century petitions in Nahuatl from the region of Santiago de Guatemala. They comprise such phenomena as the creation and usage of neologisms, extentions of meaning, the adoption of loans in the morphological system of Nahuatl and the usage of calques. The material is divided in three parts. The first one focuses on specific traits of the Nahuatl language in which the Guatemalan petitions were composed, taking into account an ongoing discussion among researchers concerning the identification of this language or languages. The second part focuses on the presentation of selected lexical and lexico-syntactic changes in Nahuatl due to the influence of the Spanish language, as compared with similar contact-induced phenomena from Central Mexico and attested within the same time span. In the last part of the paper the interdependence of language contact and culture contact is discussed within the perspective of a presumed conceptual equivalency and interchangeability of the Spanish and Nahuatl terms for deer and horse, which appears in one of the studied documents.

2012 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomasz Borowiak

Abstract Tomasz Borowiak. English-Induced Changes to Urban Colloquial Hindi Lexicon and Structure.Mixed Speech as a Mode of Discourse. Lingua Posnaniensis, vol. L IV (1)/2012. The Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. PL ISSN 0079-4740, ISBN 978-83-7654-103-7, pp. 35-44. This article aims at describing some of the lexical and grammatical innovations observed in Hindi as a result of English impact. We investigate some crucial aspects of English noun borrowing and further along discuss some other phenomena that occur in Hindi due to the language contact, e.g. preposition transfer and hybridization. The data for this research consists of internet newspaper excerpts, samples from Indian film and radio speech. We try to show that English influence has far reaching effects on Hindi lexicon and structure. The conclusion to be drawn from the present investigation is that the intense interaction between English and Hindi may be the initial step towards the creation of an interlanguage located somewhere between the two languages in question.


Author(s):  
William Palmer

The English conquest of Ireland during the sixteenth century was accompanied by extreme violence. Historians remain divided on the motivations behind this violence. This article argues that the English violence in Ireland may be attributed to four main factors: the fear of foreign Catholic intervention through Ireland; the methods by which Irish rebels chose to fight; decisions made by English officials in London to not fund English forces in Ireland at a reasonable level while demanding that English officials in Ireland keep Ireland under control; and the creation of a system by which many of those who made the plans never had to see the suffering they inflicted. The troops who carried out the plans had to choose between their own survival and moral behaviors that placed their survival at risk.


Author(s):  
Nancy Farriss

Language and translation governed the creation of Mexican Christianity during the first centuries of colonial rule. Spanish missionaries collaborated with indigenous intellectuals to communicate the gospel in dozens of local languages that had previously lacked grammars, dictionaries, or alphabetic script. The major challenge to translators, more serious than the absence of written aids or the great diversity of languages and their phonetic and syntactical complexity, was the vast cultural difference between the two worlds. The lexical gaps that frustrated the search for equivalence in conveying fundamental Christian doctrines derived from cultural gaps that separated European experiences and concepts from those of the Indians. This study focuses on the Otomangue languages of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, especially Zapotec, and relates their role in the Dominican evangelizing program to the larger frame of culture contact in postconquest Mesoamerica. Fine-grained analysis of translated texts is used to reveal the rhetorical strategies of missionary discourse and combines with an examination of language contact in different social contexts. A major aim is to spotlight the role of the native elites in shaping what emerged as a new form of Christianity. As translators, chief catechists, and parish administrators they made evangelization in many respects an indigenous enterprise and the Mexican church it created an indigenous church.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Kristin De Lucia ◽  
Linda Scott Cummings

This article examines the use of cooking vessels from Early Postclassic (AD 900–1250) Xaltocan, Mexico, through residue analysis of ceramic sherds. The analysis combined phytolith and starch analyses with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Because our understanding of prehispanic foodways in central Mexico is based largely on sources that describe or depict Aztec practices in the sixteenth century, we ask how foods were similar or different prior to the Aztecs. We also seek a better understanding of how plainware vessels were used in prehispanic times. Although there is long-term continuity in the preparation of foods such as tamales and corn gruels, we find that additional foods such as tuber-based stews were prepared in the Early Postclassic. In addition, some ceramic vessels, such as comales and crude bowls, had a wider range of food preparation functions than expected.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Gasca Jiménez ◽  
Maira E. Álvarez ◽  
Sylvia Fernández

Abstract This article examines the impact of the anglicizing language policies implemented after the annexation of the U.S. borderlands to the United States on language use by describing the language and translation practices of Spanish-language newspapers published in the U.S. borderlands across different sociohistorical periods from 1808 to 1930. Sixty Hispanic-American newspapers (374 issues) from 1808 to 1980 were selected for analysis. Despite aggressive anglicizing legislation that caused a societal shift of language use from Spanish into English in most borderland states after the annexation, the current study suggests that the newspapers resisted assimilation by adhering to the Spanish language in the creation of original content and in translation.


1957 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-86
Author(s):  
†M. M. Lacas

No tourist who visits central Mexico will fail to pay a visit to the world-famous lake of Pátzcuaro. This beautiful and placid lake, with the several islands which dot its surface and the surrounding hills that frame it, formed, in olden times, the hub of the Michoacán Kingdom. Even today, it is the main habitat of the peaceloving Tarascan Indians who cluster around it and, partly at least, live on its abundant fish. An ancient author tells us that the word Michoacán means “fishing place,” and that the main occupation of the early Indians was the mild art of fishing, so opposed to the war-like activities of their neighbors to the east, the cruel Aztecs.


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