Exploring the Deep History of Southern Uto-Aztecan Languages and Peoples: A Mixed Methods Approach

Introduction

A thousand years before Europeans arrived in the Americas, a vast region, covering what is now North-western Mexico and the US Southwest, was inhabited by speakers of languages belonging to the Uto-Aztecan language family.

Project Overview

Often described as nomads in a hostile periphery between the cultures of Mesoamerica and the Puebloan cultures of the US Southwest, this project puts the speakers of Southern Uto-Aztecan (SUA) languages at the centre, seeking to achieve two objectives:

1. To recover aspects of ancient SUA people's language and world-view.
2. To map cultural and linguistic flows moving through the SUA-sphere in the millennia before European colonization.

Methodology

The project brings to bear the full scope of methods of contemporary historical linguistics. It combines qualitative methods of historical linguistics and narratology with quantitative lexicostatistical and phylogeographic methods to analyze the historical relations between SUA languages and to analyze developments of SUA mythological traditions.

Integrating a component of language documentation, the project works with indigenous scholars and communities to contribute to ongoing efforts of indigenous language maintenance.

Work Packages

The project will achieve its two objectives by undertaking research in three work packages:

WP1: Language Documentation

• Documents the lexicon of two underdocumented SUA languages (Náayeri and Wixárika).
• Creates two new dictionaries.

WP2: Qualitative Historical Linguistics

• Uses the dictionaries to build an etymological database of SUA languages and an online database of glossed and annotated mythological texts.
• Applies historical comparative analyses to both mythical and lexical data to reconstruct aspects of ancient SUA language and culture.

WP3: Quantitative Phylogenetics

• Uses the etymological and mythical databases for phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses.
• Pioneers the use of an innovative method for reconciliation of 'word-trees' to produce new phylogenies.