Talk:Nahuan languages

Redid list(s) of dialects.

I updated the names and codes to conform to the ISO 639-3 standard, reordered alphabetically, and (I hope) made the list more usable. Where SIL-MX has a subsite on a particular variant, I included the link. On the second list I only updated the names and codes: I did not adjust population figures or ordering.

Just to make things clear, I am David Tuggy and had a part in most of what is on the SIL-MX site (as well as a tiny bit of input in years gone by into what appears in the Ethnologue and has become part of the ISO standard.) I suppose that these links may therefore be seen as tainted with self-advertising. All the SIL-MX material has gone through a thorough review process by SIL-MX, so is "peer-reviewed" (in some sense—it's not as independent as a journal article's review). I think the links will be helpful to readers, which is why I have included them: most of these subsites have general information and links to publications in and about the particular variants. If anyone disagrees, or thinks the information should be packaged differently, and wants to discuss it here, that would be useful. --Lavintzin 16:48, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I must admit that I don't see why the SIL lists need to be on the site. It is easy enough to search for a dialect by georgraphical area on the Etnologue page instead. Also I don't hink any non-SIL linguists use them for anything.--Someoneelse 22:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're saying here, Magnus. What SIL lists are you referring to? The Ethnologue /ISO lists? (Ethnologue is an SIL publication, but it and SIL-Mexico are completely independent of each other. ISO is independent of both though it has adopted many of the Ethnologue's judgments and codes, and the Ethnologue is now, I understand, in conformity with the ISO.)

Do you mean why link to SIL-Mexico sites when those are available? My answer would be that you will find information there on the particular variants that you will not find, or not find so handily, anywhere else. I'm not sure what you think non-SIL linguists don't use for anything. Apparently you don't mean the Ethnologue. If you mean the SIL-MX subsites on different variants, usage statistics and anecdotal evidence make it pretty clear to me that many do use them, presumably with profit.--Lavintzin 03:15, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I didnt make myself clear. I mean the ISO codes in the long box to the left on the "nahuatl languages" page. I was bringing the discussion from tha nahuatl page over here. IO dont know why its necessarry to have a long list of isocodes. I was thinking that maybe if we need to link to pages for particular variants we should link to the main Ethnologue page of nahuatl variants, such as you have done here that is more useful. But I don't see how the ISO codes are encyclopedic. I being a non-sil linguist have no idea how or why to use the ISO codes, if I wanted to use the information on the Ethnologue SIL-MEX sites I would go to the sites and check their bibliographies, something that is easily done without the codes. Truth be told I find the long list of ISO codes and Ethnologue calssified variants confusing rather than informative and I would find t more useful to have a single link to all the SIL and ethnologue information. And instead inlcude here an overview of dialect groups That is: I have an idea for reworking the dialects page. I would like to present the dialects as dialect areas describing some of the traits typical for each group. Maybe the links to SIL-MEX could be put inside the text when describing an area. What do you think, Lavintzin?--Someoneelse 20:22, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, if you're saying the list of ISO codes in the infobox on the Nahuatl language (singular) page is unnecessary to the point of being unhelpful, I heartily agree. I think it should be replaced by a link (similarly prominently placed in the infobox) to the Nahuatl dialects page.

An overview of dialect groupings on this page (the Nahuatl dialects page) would be excellent, though of course how you group things depends a lot on the isoglosses you choose to emphasize. The ISO code list, Ethnologue, and SIL-MX website don't help any there. So I would say you should follow somebody's standard grouping (Lastra's, Çanger's, etc.), and reference them, and fit at least some of what's currently on the page into that framework.

I think having the whole ISO list together in one place in this article is still a good idea, however. For good or ill it is a kind of recognized world standard, and should be clearly referenced. --Lavintzin 04:18, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

PS: Is this Magnus I'm talking to? The system keeps saying so, but I'm not sure.

Yes I am Magnus. I realized that I did't like using my real name on wikipedia and as I couldnt change the username I just changed the signature. I will begin to work something out for this page shortly. --Someoneelse 18:12, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite 21 July 06

I moved stuff around quite a bit and added quite a bit more, mostly along lines discussed (mostly between Maunus and me) on the Nahuatl Language talk page. Feel free to comment/fix up.

It strikes me that a good idea would be identify for the ISO codes, insofar as possible, the place in Lastra’s classification they would fit. I *might* do this *sometime*, but if someone else would like to scoop me on it, I would be most pleased.

--Lavintzin 05:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Rewrite in order to afford proper perspective on current classifications

For a week now, I have been rewriting this article to bring out the assessment that the classification of "Center" and "Peripherals" is not insightful—and that its two proponents didn't intend it to be taken otherwise. Yes, they are the "most authoritative" schemes—but that's not saying much, no sir. There had been only one rival scheme, Juan Hasler's. In fact, the results arrived at by Canger and then Lastra were both fairly similar to Juan Hasler's, although I do not discuss that in the article, and although his proposal was empirically flimsy and shoddy, according to the dispassionate but severe criticisms by Canger (1988:§2) (stable JSTOR URL "Nahuatl dialectology: a survey and some suggestions"). There's a conclusion I draw from combining this outcome with two other facts, the fact that Canger's and Lastra's respective schemes have only one level (the Center and all the Peripherals are mutually coordinate) and the fact neither Canger nor Lastra claimed genetic validity for any of their groupings. From considering these three points, I conclude that the schemes for the most part constitute only the obvious results of their respective researches (I say "for the most part" because they Canger and Lastra did disagree in at least three cases, cases I mention in the article.) But that's not a bad thing. These researches paved the way toward a historical linguistic account of General Aztec. They produced a lot of data and they were well documented (again, Canger 1988:§2). Dale Chock (talk) 06:23, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I forgot to substantiate my edit that virtually no more dialect classification research has been published since Lastra's atlas in 1986. This assertion is substantiated by the fact that there are ZERO relevant hits for 1987-present when I performed several searches of Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts. First, [keyword=Nahuatl] AND [keyword = dialect OR dialects OR dialectology]. When that same search is reperformed with the four keywords translated into Spanish, again zilch. Likewise for searching for (author=Canger) and (author=Dakin). (I read the Flores Farfan 2004, and Dakin 2004, both of which appeared in Sprachtypologie und universalienforschung, 2004) and they don't makes remarks on the topic). Dale Chock (talk) 06:58, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

You've done good work here. I think it might be worth mentioning that there is a diachronic element in the center - periphery dichotomy. Namely that the central group corresponds to spreading innovations from the dialects of the Basin of Mexico, specifically that of Tenochtitlan (late arrivers) and the peripheral dialects correspond to early arrivers (e.g. Toltecs). Canger concludes this in the last section of her 1988 article (p. 66). It is also worth mentioning that part of the importance of Cangers study lies exactly in introducing the concept of shallow groupings - and that the reason she introduces them is that the data doesn't seem to support deep isoglosses. ·Maunus·ƛ· 15:56, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Two objections. First, Canger did not make that "conclusion", in the sense of citing evidence and imposing theory and current data on it and logically attaining an affirmative assertion. Her explicit statement was that evidence was lacking to support concluding that Central-Peripheral reflects the internal branching evolution of the Nahuan branch, and that she hoped one day evidence would arise to allow drawing that conclusion. (2) Referring only to Canger's argument, because I haven't read anything about Lastra's argument: the hypothesis is diachronic only in the limited (and to me minor) sense that "Central" is claimed to have arisen by diffusion. Dale Chock (talk) 23:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

But what about the linguistics?

I'd like to thank those of you who have done such good work on this article, which I find useful. And now that I've said that, here is a little gripe. It would be an even more useful article (at least to me) if something or other could be said about the linguistic features that have been involved in the classification proposals mentioned or have been analysed in attempts to achieve a classification. I can only see two such references and both are only kind of half useful. There is the mention of the different results of the proto-phoneme /tl/ - but only in the context of explaining that this is no longer viewed as a primary watershed. And there is the tantalizing mention of "a single grammatical feature", later expanded to "diffusion of the defining feature (an innovative verb form)", within the discussion of Canger's proposal, but not a word more than that, so that we have no idea from the article what "innovative verb form" we are talking about or how that fits in with anything else on the linguistic level. Personally I'd like to see lots more than this: classification is one issue, but low-level classifications are often problem-ridden and while that discussion is welcome, we don't need to become obsessed with the taxonomical urge. How about some basic empirical information about what linguistic features vary most between dialects and varieties (or between classical and modern varieties for that matter), or some simple statements about feature distributions where these are available and relatively easy to describe (e.g. where the so-called tl-, t- and l-dialects are located, or modern results of the classical saltillo)? I'm looking forward to reading about it :-) --A R King (talk) 18:27, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

These empirical details are given in Canger (1980) (Five studies inspired by Nahuatl verbs in -oa.), Lastra de Suarez 1986, Canger and Dakin (1985). I do not have the first two available to me, which explains why I have not given the desired elaboration. Canger 1988 makes a passing mention of the morphological criterion she introduced in 1980 to define "Central": a suffix -oa reduced to -o. We could quote this passing mention in full, but what would probably be more suitable is (would be) to work from Canger (1980) itself.

I have found not the least bit of mention of any of Lastra's specifics. That is, none of her colleagues has bothered to name one (if memory serves me), and again, I don't have access to the book itself. So, e.g., what are the criterial isoglosses for her own "Central" as opposed to Canger's "Central"? By the way, Lastra abandoned Nahuatl studies after the 1986 dialect atlas (I'm calling it ialect atlas, maybe that's inaccurate). After devoting at least 13 years to Nahuatl, she moved on to Otomí, where she remains to this day. The Martín Butragueño biography (which I included in this article's bibliography) includes a career bibliography for her. The LLBA seems to be less than complete when it comes to Spanish language works; for author Dakin, Karen and language spanish, NONE of her Spanish language books or articles is found.

I tend to think it is unadvisable to go into detail about these specifics. More detail than so far, OK, but much more? The reasons for my skepticism are: (1) these classifications are unexamined in the literature; (2) the "Center-Periphery" hypothesis (¿hypotheses?) of Canger and Lastra is purely synchronic; (3) the "Center-Periphery" hypothesis by Canger cites a sole isogloss.

Dakin seems to have but poorly documented her recent ambitious classification (Dakin 2003). Between 1985 and 2003 there is only one paper where she might have advanced her case (made serious linguistic arguments) for the recent, ambitious 2003 classification I have quoted: that paper is

Dakin 1999, Isoglosas e innovaciones yutoaztecas. In José Luis Moctezuma and Jane Hill, eds., Memorias del Congreso de los Friends of Uto-Aztecan, Hermosillo, junio 1996. Centro de Investigaciones Regionales del INAH.

I say "she might have in Dakin (1999)" because I haven't had a chance to read it. Surprisingly, she does not declare the classification in a brief article about the supposed e-/ye- isogloss, Dakin (2000) (by the way, I am about to update this Wikipedia article's citation for Dakin (2000) to the book published by the University of Sonora). This isogloss was, of course, introduced way back in 1985 (Canger and Dakin). A list of Dakin publications on Nahuatl can be compiled between the commercial database for universities, LLBA (search for author = Dakin, Karen) and the bibliography to Dakin and Wichmann 2000. The case is not argued in the latter paper itself. Dale Chock (talk) 23:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Addedendum to my preceding comments. Dakin's Eastern-Western, too, is based on one sole feature (e- vs. ye-)! Dale Chock (talk) 00:51, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt answer, Dale. I have a similar problem to yours (only worse) in that I have not had access to any of of the primary bibliography mentioned (except for Lyle Campbell's book on Pipil, if that is mentioned here - can't remember now). No Canger, no Lastra, no Dakin... I am outside the academic "circuit" and even at times when I've been in (or near) it, have been either too far afield (I live in the Basque Country) or in places that are too poor/backwards for such luxuries (El Salvador). I've been hoping to read the primary bibliography for years but still haven't had a chance. That's my personal reason why anything that can be reported about this in Wikipedia (or elsewhere) is worth its weight in gold to me! Thanks for the clarifications as far as they go. Perhaps someone else (Maunus? Lavintzin?) has more material and can help (either by publishing in Wikipedia or through some other medium). Cheers, Alan --A R King (talk) 09:36, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Extended discussions of a field of inquiry can certainly be conducted through other channels, like personal email or Wikipedia personal pages. In individual WP articles, I am keen to focus on the science, to present to the users what the state of the science is. Inarticulate of me, sorry. Well, specifically: keen not to include every speculation and half baked theory. Of course, applying this criterion (the one I'm grasping for words to describe, but I think people understand what I'm referring to) is a judgement call. Nevertheless, even if one makes a policy of erring on the side of inclusion, there will be some notions that clearly fall short. In any case, if we include a claim that's in fact not tempered/tested by discussion among scientific colleagues, we need to make clear to the users the lack of confirmation. I certainly have made it clear when claim X is just linguist Y's clever idea. There are many such ideas in this article. In the last two to three days, I have added several myself, either in the spirit of too lax is preferable to too strict, or because I deemed them worthy of inclusion for (1) their typological value; and/or (2) being of relatively wide relevance; and/or (3) touch on issues in Nahuatlan linguistics which have established themselves over time as major. Here are two specific examples.

(1) One of the big issues in the field is the disparate realization of the historical phonological glottal stop ("saltillo" in the jargon). WP already has an article on Saltillo. So I mentioned those two recently published papers (1990s) that concern themselves with the saltillo. BTW, that book, Hasler (1996)'s study of a single dialect (or tight cluster), Zongolica, goes into minute detail on saltillo variation in that dialect.

(2) Dakin's clever idea that Proto-Nahuatl may have had distinctive markings for direct possession and mediated possession. That would be a deep insight, if it were correct, so I mentioned it. But as things stand, it could be hogwash.

To get to the point: just as the article should be for genuine findings, the talk page should be limited to fairly brief discussions of what to put in or remove. I suggest that for sharing just any information at all about the discipline in question (organic chemistry, Mesoamerican linguistics), we should "travel" to the other channels of communication. Dale Chock (talk) 04:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I've answered on my own talk page. --A R King (talk) 19:26, 18 January 2009 (UTC)