Please join us the final meeting of the Language Variation & Change workshop for the winter quarter, this Friday, March 6, from 3:30-5pm in Rosenwald 301. A light reception will follow.

Time perspective in phonology and morphology, studies in descriptive paradox
Perry Wong, University of Chicago

The purpose of this paper is to locate the methods and findings of descriptive and comparative linguistics within a general science of history and historical process. I synthesize the results of a systematic elicitation of principal parts of lexemic roots for a little-described K’iche’an (Mayan) variety, Cunenteco, with a special interest in the morphophonology of an innovated suprasegmental contrast, a left word edge-aligned privative high tone. An otherwise not closely related K’iche’an language, Uspanteko, displays a tone aligned with the right edge of the word. (“Relatedness” is in terms of Stammbaum or family-tree inheritance of phonological shapes of lemmata.) Considered in terms of synchronic phonology, the overall patternments of tone in Cunenteco and Uspanteko appear to be minor variations of each other (see Table A). Yet, considered in terms of diachronic morphophonology, the particular lexicogrammatical classes associated with a privative high tone are different across Cunenteco and Uspanteko (see Table B), as revealed by a systematic comparison of the tonally-differentiated principal parts of a sampling of nominal roots (400+). In my linguistic analysis, I draw on materials for Cunenteco which I gathered with the assistance of a friend and colleague in Cunén, as well as materials produced by indigenous linguists for K’iche’, Uspanteko, and Sakapulteko. I locate the joined synchronic and diachronic view of tone in Cunenteco and Uspanteko within local history under a general anthropological perspective on sociohistorical process. Cunén and Uspantán, which constitute centers for the communities of speakers of Cunenteco and Uspanteko, respectively, are two adjacent towns in highland Guatemala, created through imperial Spain’s project of congregación or coerced resettlement for civic administration and religious indoctrination during the colonial period. In order to concretely illustrate a continuous historical panorama, I bring the linguistic materials into relation with interviews about local history conducted in K’iche’ and Cunenteco, visits to, and lore about, regional Late Postclassic archaeological sites (ca. 1250-1521 CE), archival records of various kinds—in particular, a late colonial-era land dispute from the area between Cunén and Uspantán, called Utza’m Siwaan or San Siguán, that is the common patrimony to the populations of both Post-Hispanic towns (ca. 1521-current)—as well as current locally-produced works about local history, by both indigenous and non-indigenous writers resident in the region. Overall, across this paper, I seek to demonstrate the essential vitality of a Boasian cosmographic perspective on historical phenomena as emerge from and bear on our present.