Talk:Pochutec language

The classification question
The main interest of Pochutec for linguistics has lain in the subclassification of the Aztecan branch of the Uto-Aztecan family. Two dialects, Pipil and Pochutec, gave rise to disputes as to their relation to the rest of the dialects/languages that are uncontroversially grouped as Nahuatl. As for Pipil, there's no doubt that originally it was a variety of Nahuatl; the controversy is whether Pipil has diverged so much as to be considered no longer Nahuatl (one must bear in mind that the many member dialects of the Nahuatl group are already so mutually divergent that they are mutually untelligible). As for Pochutec, the controversy was whether it ever was a variety of Nahuatl.

Since the landmark paper of Campbell and Langacker 1978a, it has been widely accepted that Pochutec and Nahuatl are coordinate branches of Aztecan (a search of the LLBA database for either "Pochutec" or "Pochuteco" as keywords shows no new contributions on this issue since Canger 1988). However, for the last two years, editor Maunus has been claiming the exact opposite -- without providing any citation. In doing so, Maunus not only disregards the virtually unanimous assertions in the literature (as recently as 2001 at least), but the statement by linguist Lavintzin in the article, General Aztec. Lavintzin 2.5 years ago inserted a categorical statement that Pochutec is clearly not Nahuatl (it's the last sentence in the article lead). The documentation of the General Aztec article shows that nobody (in particular, Maunus) has ever deleted that assertion from the article nor disputed it on the talk page.

Today I have corrected the information and cited sources (including page numbers) to back me up. Readers deserve to know as well that I began my editorial dispute with Maunus on this issue at a closely related article, Nahuatl about four days ago. Please refer to that article's talk page for explication from me (Talk:Nahuatl under "Pochutec" ), including a lengthy quotation from pp 42-44 of Canger 1988 (e.g., top of p 42: "The crucial difference between Whorf, Lastra, and Campbell and Langacker on the one hand and Hasler on the other resides in their view on Pochutec: the former treat it as a separate branch coordinate with some dialect or stage from which all the other Nahuatl dialects have developed"). The highlight of my rebuttal is that Maunus invoked two works (Lastra de Suarez 1986, Canger 1988) in support of his rebuttal of Campbell and Langacker, but that Canger herself raised not the slightest objection, AND she identified Lastra de Suarez (1974) as being in the "outside Nahuatl" camp with Campbell and Langacker. (By the way, Maunus neither offered page numbers nor quotations from Canger and from Lastra.) Even if Maunus could adduce a single investigator who advances arguments against Campbell and Langacker 1978, this would be one against many. But so far, Maunus has not adduced even one. Since I have read Canger 1988 (45 pages) twice and confirmed there's nothing of the sort there, that leaves only Lastra de Suarez 1986. That is a work hardly available in the USA, so Maunus needs to do us the favor of quoting from it -- if there's anything to quote.

About Canger 1988, first I checked it the easy way: searching for "Pochutec". When this turned up no skeptical remarks, I double checked by browsing the entire article. Then I found this passage in Peralta Ramirez, p 4: "Al respecto, Canger (1986) retoma la propuesta de Campbell y Langacker (1978) para su clasificación, aunque no está del todo de acuerdo con la separación del pochuteco, sin embargo, no da otra alternativa debido a la falta de datos, . . . ." He means 1988 (there's no Canger 1986); BTW, he forgot to cite it in his bibliography. Anyway, this made me triple check Canger 1988. Peralta's statement is imprecise: although Canger does not declare herself in agreement with the theory, neither does she declare herself not. Dale Chock (talk) 01:03, 4 January 2009 (UTC)


 * About Lastra, I have found a publication from 1992 where she asserts Pochutec is not Nahuatl; I have added that reference to the article. As noted above, Canger 1988 reported Lastra as holding this opinion. Dale Chock (talk) 17:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Correction about V. Peralta R. (2005)
I jumped to the conclusion that when Peralta cited "Canger (1986)" on p. 4, he really meant Canger's "Nahuatl dialectology: A survey and some suggestions" from IJAL in 1988. (According to LLBA, there is no Canger (1986).) However, he meant Canger (1980) -- which he indeed listed in the bibliography. (I had noticed that on the same page, p. 4, Peralta quoted a classification list from "Canger (1980)", but the ramifications did not sink in.) In that paper, Canger did, apparently, squarely address the debate on Pochutec classification. I do not have access to Canger (1980), but I can quote from Karen Dakin's review of it (IJAL 1983, 49(1):102-107). On 103-4, Dakin reports, "In her 'Introduction,' besides a discussion of sources . . ., the author makes a tentative subgrouping of dialects for which she has data. In agreement with Campbell and Langacker (1978), she sets up two major branches: Pochutec and General Aztec. She divides General Aztec into Central and Peripheral areas." Dale Chock (talk) 21:02, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Notice of article renaming
I renamed the article "Pochutec language" in order to comply with the naming convention on articles about languages. Dale Chock (talk) 05:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Pochutec classification again
I have been able to get hands on some of my materials that I have not had acces to since Dale Chock drastically altered the classification scheme for Pochutec and Nahuan in general based on his understanding of Canger, Lastra, Campbell & Langacker and Dakin. It seems that his interpretation is at odds at least with that of Dakin who wrote in 2001 in the article "Estudios sobre el náhuatl" in Avances y balances de lenguas yutoaztecas, (Published by Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia ISBN: 970-18-6966-4.): "Debido tambíen a ciertos rasgos arcaicos, Campbell & Langacker han clasificado como dos lenguas distintas al pipil, refiriendose sólo a los dialectos de Centroamérica, y al pochuteco, dialecto extinto hablado antes en Pochutla, Oaxaca. Sin embargo, un enfoque más histórico de la evolución de los dialectos del náhuatl como se ha notado en los trabajos de canger y Dakin (1985), Canger (1988), Dakin (en prensa) y Valiñas (1979, 1981), señala más bien que una diversion básica bipartita que se formó al salir un primer grupo de hablantes con dirección al centro hacia el Golfo, hasta llegar a Centroamérica (identificado como náhuatl del este) y los que se quedaron atrás (llamados los grupos del náhuatl del occidente), quienes bajaron por la costa del Pacífico o siguieron diversos caminos hacia el centro donde se mezclaron con los grupos fundadores originales (los orientales ). La comparación entre los dialectos de la periferia occidental con el pochuteco y los de la periferia oriental, sobre todo los de la Huasteca y el Istmo, con el pipil o el nawate, muestra muestran importantes innovaciones compartidas entre el pochuteco con el occidente y el pipil con el oriente" Dakin then proceeds to draw up a classification scheme that she states follows the classifications of Lastra and Canger that counts Pipil among the eastern dialects and Pochutec among the western dialects. This seems to mean either that Karen Dakin suffers from the same misunderstandings of the classification of nahuan languages that yours truly did until Dale chock came around and corrected it or that in fact the page previously reflected the scholarly consensus better when it classified Pochutec as a Nahuan language classifiable with dialects of the the western periphery. I chose to believe Karen Dakin and will take steps to bring back the previous classification scheme - while of course noticing that it disagrees with earlier classification like that of Campbell & Langacker. ·Maunus· ƛ · 18:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow, three years later. Since there has been virtually no change in the article either since Maunus in 2009, I will for the time being make just a brief reply for the record. We see that half of Maunus's reply is not in English. That's disrespectful to third parties who don't read Spanish but want to follow this discussion. So if anybody read this page since then, maybe they just ignored him. Basically, what he said in Feb 2009 is that I got it all wrong, especially what Canger's opinions on the genetic family tree of Aztecan languages were. Even though I quoted from Canger here on this page, and he doesn't. His authority is Dakin (2001). In quoting from Dakin (2001) above, he picks only a summary, general passage, which he interprets as contradicting my assessment of Canger's view. But Dakin doesn't quote Canger in this Spanish language passage, Dakin says that based on this paper and that paper, she, Dakin, comes to a conclusion opposed to Campbell and Langacker's. (Granted, Dakin and Canger coauthored one of those papers.) Then Maunus switches to English and gets sarcastic about me. But HE DOESN'T REFUTE ME ON SPECIFIC POINTS. He virtually never did, in all our disputes on three articles during 2008: Talk:Nahuatl, here, and Talk:Otomi. He weasel-words: "it seems that Dale's interpretation is at odds at least with that of Dakin." In fact, Dakin is a maverick -- as I had already documented on this page. Dale Chock (talk) 06:18, 11 June 2012 (UTC)