From Taxonomy to Typology: The Features of Lexical Contact Phenomena in Atepec Zapotec-Spanish Linguistic Contact

In this paper, I begin with an examination of what constitutes a borrowing from one language to another with particular reference to lexical borrowing. I develop a set of three aspects of words/lexemes that can serve as features within the context of borrowing and as a model for their representation to be used to account for lexical contact phenomena, and compare them with characteristics used in previous descriptions of these phenomena. I then apply a featural analysis to the currently accepted taxonomy in order to demonstrate its lack of consistency in arbitrarily excluding a part of the lexical results of cultural contact and in failing to distinguish crucial differences in the agentivity of change. I argue that, by using these features, the full scope of lexical contact phenomena can be described. Using a derived and coherent terminology, I apply the features to the results of Atepec Zapotec (AZ)-Spanish (Sp) contact and conclude with a discussion of possible uses of this typology in terms of other areas of contact linguistics. * An earlier version of this paper was presented to an Ohio State Linguistics Departmental colloquium January 6, 2001, and portions were presented at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, April 20, 2001. My thanks to Rich Janda, Jen Muller, Tom Stewart, the Changelings socio-historical linguistics study LEXICAL CONTACT PHENOMENA IN ATEPEC ZAPOTEC-SPANISH CONTACT 59 1 Contact reaction choices When a new item or concept is encountered by the speaker of one language coming into contact with another place or culture and its language, one of several reactions may occur. a. The first might be to simply ignore the item, due to its lack of cultural or personal salience, as might occur with an animal species that is apparently useless, even in an esthetic sense, and threatless, e.g., a type of gray moth such as Hemeroplanis punitalis, found in the Southwest US, with no common name. b. A second might be to use the resources of one’s native language to create a linguistic sign for the item, as with American English ‘yellow-bellied sapsucker’, a small woodpecker with a yellow breast that pecks holes in the bark of trees in order to drink the sap for its nourishment. c. A third might be to modify an existing native resource by the addition of a new meaning to a word, e.g. English polecat (from ME poulas in poultry + cat in the sense of ‘small hunting mammal’), a European relative of the weasel which has a foul odor it uses for marking territory, expanded its semantic range to include ‘skunk’. Another option would be to change the referent completely, as occurred with robin, which changed red-breasted bird species with its change of continent (from Europe to North America). d. A fourth could be to learn, or at least to approximate, the word from the language spoken by the other culture, as with skunk, from Abenaki seganku. e. A fifth would be to use some combination of the second and fourth approaches, as with woodchuck, from Algonquian wuchak. The last three approaches are what is involved in lexical borrowing, but the second approach should also be considered in listing the lexical results of contact as evidence of the type and the history of the contact situation. Not all borrowing occurs under the impetus of novel phenomena, but these are a starting point for an examination of the lexical results of contact. Table 1 below gives a listing of terminology used to describe the lexical results of linguistic and cultural contact as offered by four sources, with Haugen’s (1953) system the (apparent) primary source for the rest. The numbers given for each category correspond to the approaches given above. group, and particularly to Brian Joseph and Don Winford, without whom this paper would have stopped before it started down the runway. All pilot errors are my own. 1 Naturally, the first category will not be represented in the table.