Cambio lingüístico: Métodos y problemas (review)

This collection of four essays grew from a round-table in 2000, an indication of the growing importance of historical linguistics in Mexico. However, as Martín Butragueño remarks in the preface, the scholarship has yet to settle on a single methodology. In this sense he hopes the volume will be ‘una contribución más al estudio de los procesos de cambio lingüístico’ [a contribution more to the study of the processes of linguistic change] (10) by presenting analyses from a comparative linguistic perspective.

‘Imágenes visuales, lingüística comparada yutoazteca y evidencia etnohistórica sobre Mesoamérica’ (11–32) by Karen Dakin aims to draw parallels between the semantic classification of nominal classes and particular visual images common to the Utoaztecan culture. By citing multiple images from different sources for each independently reconstructed base, Dakin attempts to apply the methodology of comparative reconstruction to explain the lexical creation of images. For instance, she connects the base *Mɨ ‘parallel lines’ to images of blankets made from long, thin strips of rabbit skins (Kawaiisu mɨri’i) and a quiver of long, thin arrows (Mitl mi-til) (16–17). The semantic class extends in other languages to include Hopi ditches, Nahuatl bones, and Tarahumara ears of corn.

Yolanda Lastra offers a data-rich analysis of thirty-three dialects of Otomí in ‘Apuntes sobre la dialectología del Otomí’ (33–52), with almost all her data coming from field research. The result is a series of excellent maps showing the phonetic differences among the dialects, as well as some work on the disappearance or shift of the dual and the great variation in words for ‘paper’, ‘metal’, ‘eat’, and even ‘mother’.

The third essay in the volume is José G. Moreno de Alba’s ‘Diacronía y diatopía de la oposición canté/he cantado’ (53–80). It begins as a historical view of the preference for the indefinite over the present perfect in corpora from the past one hundred and fifty years. After considering the opposition’s literary significance, the author suggests that its development is continuing at a faster pace in Central and South America: whereas the preference sits at a nearly even 48.6% indefinite to 51.4% perfect in Madrid, the dialect of Buenos Aires has it at 83.5% to 16.5% (74) and there are similar results in Mexico City, 80% to 20% (71).

‘El contacto de dialectos como motor del cambio lingüístico’ (81–144) is the editor’s own contribution. Martín Butragueño proposes that all language change comes from dialect contact, and that a study of the present-day immigrant and native Madrid dialects can shed light on the process of language change. The immigrants live in Getafe, a discrete community in the Greater Madrid area. In tracking phonetic variation of several social groups, Martín Butragueño demonstrates that the Getafe youth are the ones most likely to engage in the ‘desdialectalización’ of their parents’ less-prestigious dialect, even hypercorrecting, though he warns that it is still too early to draw conclusions on the social implications of his findings.