| Pochutec | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | Pochutla, Oaxaca, Mexico |
| Extinct | 20th century |
| Language family |
Uto-Aztecan
|
| Writing system | Latin |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xpo |
Pochutec is an extinct Uto-Aztecan language of the Nahuan (or Aztecan) branch which was spoken in and around the town of Pochutla on the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 1917 it was documented in a monograph by Franz Boas, who considered the language nearly extinct.[1] In the 1970s another investigator found two speakers around Pochutla who still remembered a few of the words recorded by Boas.[2]
For much of the 20th century, Uto-Aztecanists disagreed among themselves as to the classification of Pochutec within the Aztecan branch. Although the majority thought it likely that Pochutec and Nahuatl were to be considered as belonging to separate branches of Nahuan (or Aztecan, as it was then called), Hasler proposed the opposite. The majority view classifying Pochutec outside of Nahuatl was bolstered in 1978 when Campbell and Langacker published a paper[3] in which they adduced new arguments relying on the data of Boas. Their conclusion has met with little if any rebuttal in the literature and become widely accepted.[4][5][6][7][8] The Aztecan branch (often called the Nahuan branch) of Uto-Aztecan thus consists of Pochutec and General Aztec, the latter in turn consisting of Nahuatl and Pipil.
Bartholomew (1980) suggests that some of the divergent traits, for example last syllable stress, are due to influence from Chatino, an Oto-Manguean language. She argues that at the time of the 16th century Spanish conquest of Mexico the settlement of Pochutla did not fall under the Aztec Empire's domain, but instead was part of the Mixtec state centered at Tututepec. Thus, the Chatino linguistic influences stemmed from the trade and communication routes between Pochutla and Tututepec passing through Chatino territory.
Pochutec is an agglutinative language, where words use suffix complexes for a variety of purposes with several morphemes strung together.
IJAL = International Journal of American Linguistics