The Mixe–Zoque languages are a language family whose living members are spoken in and around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. The Mexican government recognizes three distinct Mixe–Zoquean languages as official: Mixe or ayook with 188,000 speakers, Zoque or o'de püt with 88,000 speakers, and the Popoluca languages of which some are Mixean and some Zoquean with 69,000 speakers. However the internal diversity in each of these groups is great and the Ethnologue counts 17 different languages, and the current classification of Mixe–Zoquean languages by Wichmann counts 12 languages and 11 dialects. Extinct languages classified as Mixe–Zoquean include Tapachultec, formerly spoken on Tapachula, along the southeast coast of Chiapas.
History
Historically the Mixe–Zoquean family may have been much more widespread, reaching into the Guatemalan Pacific coast. Terrence Kaufman and Lyle Campbell have argued, based on a number of widespread loanwords in other Mesoamerican languages, that it is likely that the Olmec people, generally seen as the earliest dominating culture of Mesoamerica, spoke a Mixe–Zoquean language. Kaufman and John Justeson also claim to have deciphered a substantial part of the text written in Isthmian script which appears on La Mojarra Stela 1, based upon their deciphering of the text as representing an archaic Mixe–Zoquean language. Both of these claims have been criticized: Michael D. Coe and David Stuart argue that the surviving corpus of the few known examples of Isthmian inscriptions is insufficient to securely ground any proposed decipherment. Their attempt to apply Kaufman's and Justeson's decipherments to other extant Isthmian material failed to produce any meaningful results. Wichmann criticizes certain proposed Mixe–Zoquean loans into other Mesoamerican languages as being only Zoquean, not Mixean, which would put the period of borrowing much later than the Proto-Mixe Zoquean time-frame in which the Olmec culture was at its height. The date of the Mixe–Zoque split has however since been pushed back, and the argument is therefore much weaker than it once was thought to be. Later, Kaufman, again on the basis of loans from Mixe–Zoque into other Mesoamerican languages, argues a Mixe–Zoquean presence at Teotihuacan, and he ascribes to Mixe–Zoquean an important role in spreading a number of the linguistic features that later became some of the principal commonalities used in defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.
Genetic relations with other families
The Mixe–Zoque languages have been included in several long-range classification proposals, e.g. in Edward Sapir's "Mexican Penutian" branch of his proposed Penutian linguistic superfamily, or as part of the Macro-Mayan proposal by Norman McQuown with puts together the Mixe–Zoque languages with the Mayan languages and the Totonacan languages. At the end of the last century, Lyle Campbell dismissed most earlier comparisons as methodologically flawed, but considered the Macro-Mayan proposal the most promising, but yet unproven hypothesis. In two more recently published articles, evidence is presented for linking the Mixe–Zoque languages either with the Totonacan languages, or with the Mayan languages.
Classification
Wichmann (1995)
The following internal classification of the Mixe–Zoquean languages is by Søren Wichmann.
Kaufman & Justeson (2000)
The following internal classification of the Mixe–Zoquean languages is by Kaufman & Justeson, cited in Zavala. Individual languages are marked by italics. ;Mixe-Zoque
The phoneme inventory of Proto-Mixe–Zoquean as reconstructed by Wichmann can be seen to be relatively simple, but many of the modern languages have been innovative; some have become quite vowel rich, and some also have introduced a fortis–lenis contrast in the stop series. Although the lateral phoneme is found in a few words in some of the languages, these are probably of onomatopoeic origin.
Front
Central
Back
Close
Mid
Open
has also been reconstructed .
Bilabial
Alveolar
Alveolo-palatal
Velar
Glottal
Stop
Fricative
Nasal
Approximant
Syllables
Mixe–Zoquean languages are characterized by complex syllabic nuclei made up of combinations of vowels together with the glottal stop and in the proto-language. Complex syllable-final consonant clusters are also typical in the daughter languages and can be reconstructed for the proto-language. Proto-Mixe–Zoquean syllable nuclei could be either:
Grammatical features
The Mixe–Zoquean languages are head-marking and polysynthetic, with morphologically complex verbs and simple nouns. Grammatical subjects as well as objects are marked in the verb. Ergativealignment is used, as well as direct–inverse systems triggered by animacy and topicality. In Mixe–Zoquean verbs, a morphological distinction is made between two basic clause-types, independent and dependent; verbs take different aspectual and personal affixes, depending on the type of clause in which they appear. There are two different sets of aspect-markers, one used in dependent clauses and another used in independent clauses. Three aspects are distinguished within each clause-type: incompletive, completive, and irrealis.
Ethnologue classification and SIL ISO-codes
still uses the earlier pre-Wichmann classification, based on surveys of mutual intelligibility and comparative work by William Wonderly, as a basis for their work. This classification is not used by historical linguists, and Lyle Campbell's authoritative 1997 presentation uses Wichmann's classification.
