Abstract
Looking at the Spanish impact on Nahuatl both in its full historical trajectory and modern synchronic dimension, I focus on the differentiation between ‘balanced’, long-term language contact and ‘unbalanced’ contact leading to rapid language shift in contemporary indigenous communities. I discuss the connection between accelerated contact-induced language change and language endangerment and shift, highlighting and assessing the mutually interdependent extra- and inter-linguistic variables that influence and shape both processes. Of special importance is the synchronic variation linked to speakers’ proficiency that influences language transmission in the diachronic perspective. On the basis of extensive fieldwork and linguistic documentation I identify several types of Nahuatl speakers as agents of this accelerated language change which leads to individual attrition and shift at the community level. This kind of multidisciplinary approach, taking into account both historical and modern data, can also potentially be useful for other minority languages in the scenario of long-term contact with a dominant language.
Highlights
208 Justyna Olko with the latter group usually not pluralizable, except for the use of numeral classifiers combined with the singular form of inanimate nouns
I propose to view the Spanish impact on Nahuatl both in full historical trajectory and modern synchronic dimension in strict relationship to two types of contact: ‘balanced’, long-term language contact documented in historical sources and ‘unbalanced’ contact leading to rapid language abandonment in contemporary indigenous communities
The differentiation I propose closely relates to the notion of balanced versus displacive language contact (Ref. 3, p. 43–44), where the main criteria are mutual versus one-way bi/multilingualism and dominant position of at least one of the languages
Summary
I propose to view the Spanish impact on Nahuatl both in full historical trajectory and modern synchronic dimension in strict relationship to two types of contact: ‘balanced’, long-term language contact documented in historical sources and ‘unbalanced’ contact leading to rapid language abandonment in contemporary indigenous communities. This is the case of Nahuatl and this process has not been paced or not uniform in all the communities, because some of them, especially in large, urbanized contexts with increasingly dominant Spanish and mestizo populations, were already exposed to unbalanced contact and its consequences in the colonial period. In her studies on language obsolescence and death, Dorian In communities where Nahuatl has survived to the present day (such as those in Tlaxcala), the beginning of the process of language death can be traced back at least several decades; in others (such as the eastern Huasteca in Veracruz or Sierra Negra in Puebla), it is just incipient, it shares certain characteristic processes that were already in operation in more urbanized areas several decades ago
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