History of Ixil Language Contact

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

In a multilingual and multicultural world, the languages we speak can change in different ways as speakers of those languages come into contact with one another for diverse purposes. Decades of linguistic research have investigated how languages can change as a result of this language contact. The research shows that both the linguistic details of the languages in contact and the social circumstances in which that interaction takes place, can effect what changes and what does not, but more precise details still remain to be established. One hypothesis is that more extensive change in a language's grammar can happen in situations of contact between languages that are very similar, for example languages that descend from a common ancestor, as is the case for Spanish, Italian and French, all of which share a common ancestor language, Latin. How this increased susceptibility to change in contact interacts with changes in society is crucial for understanding the ways in which multilingual interactions are changing language today. Such investigation,however, requires a long-term perspective, one that considers centuries of changing social relations and shifting linguistic forms. The Mayan language Ixil provides a useful case study for the investigation of language contact between similar languages in shifting social circumstances. Ixil is spoken today in vibrant rural communities in highland Guatemala, as well as in immigrant communities in Virginia and elsewhere in the United States. Speakers of Ixil have been in contact with speakers of several related languages, particularly K'iche',Q'anjob'al, and the Lowland Mayan (Yukatekan and Ch'olan) languages. These languages are similar to Ixil to different degrees, and have had contact with Ixil at different points in time in distinct social contexts, providing a range of test cases to trace the relationship between linguistic form and social relations. Hieroglyphic writing and colonial manuscripts provide linguistic data for languages involved in these linguistic exchanges spanning more than two thousand years. This project will complement those available resources by gathering an extensive corpus of Ixil linguistic material. It will use those data to identify and contextualize Ixil linguistic innovations resulting from contact with Lowland (Yukatekan and Ch'olan) Mayan languages over more than a thousand years. The type and degree of Lowland Mayan linguistic influence on Ixil will provide insights into the nature of the historical interaction between Lowland and Highland languages prior to the Spanish Conquest. It will also provide a rich case study of the interplay between structural similarity and socio-historical factors in conditioning the outcomes of language contact. Another focus of the project is to involve students in cutting-edge linguistic research and to engage with the communities that speak Ixil today, aiding efforts to revitalize the language and to communicate the history of Ixil to the people most directly connected to that history.