Mixed grammar, purist grammar, and language attitudes in modern Nahuatl

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Tlaxcala and Puebla, Mexico, Nahuatl is being replaced by Spanish. Economic and social factors, principally a shift from a peripheral agrarian integration in the Mexican economy to integration as a rural proletariat involved in migratory labor, has been accompanied by a shift in language attitudes which has led to a narrowing of the range of functions of Nahuatl to a function primarily as a “language of solidarity.” This narrowing of function and the accompanying development of ethnic self-consciousness and egalitarianism are expressed through the stigmatization of Spanish loan words, other ethnic boundary-marking usages, the narrowing of honorific usage, and the differentiation of Nahuatl from Spanish grammar in noun-number constructions. (Nahuatl, Spanish, language shift, ethnicity.)