Research |

Mixtecan Cognate Database

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This database contains lexical entries from 137 Mixtecan languages, which are cognate coded by language experts including myself and standardized to IPA. It is a work in progress and continuously updated. For use in your own research and citation, please refer to the most recent release archived in Zenodo.

Mixtec Sound Change Database

Thu, 06 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This database provides a comprehensive archive of Mixtec sound changes from 105 contemporary varieties, coded with a common methodology. It now also includes tone change for 42 varieties! It is a work in progress and continuously updated. For use in your own research and citation, please refer to the most recent release archived in Zenodo.

Documentation and description of Tù'un Na Ñuu Sá Matxí Ntxè'è (San Martín Duraznos Mixtec)

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Since 2018 I’ve been working on the documentation and description of the Mixtec variety spoken in San Martín Duraznos and surrounding towns and rancherías (including: Rio de Hielo, Santo Niño Yucuyi, San Marcos Xinicuesta, Guadalupe Nundaca), as well as in diaspora communities in northern Mexico and the United States. In collaboration with Carmen Hernández Martínez, language activist and interpreter living in Oxnard, California, we started out working with the diaspora community there. In 2019, I received a Small Grant from that allowed us to take our work to San Martín Duraznos (Oaxaca, Mexico). This ongoing collaboration with the community of origin has resulted in a audio-visual corpus of naturalistic speech of 27h, of which about half are transcribed and translated. Based on this corpus, we created various community materials for learning and maintaining the language and bridging the gap between speakers in the diaspora and in the village of origin. Since 2025, I also work in the neighboring village of Guadalupe Nundaca, where they speak a similar, but not identical variety of Mixtec.

Resources on the web:

deposit (audio-video corpus of naturalistic speech)
Let’s learn Mixteco - a community-oriented bilingual website with language learning materials, games and exercises for learning and practicing San Martín Duraznos Mixtec
Let’s learn Mixteco (managed by Carmen Hernández Martínez) - follow us for memes, videos, word of the day, and more in San Martín Duraznos Mixtec
online talking dictionary (Mixtec-Spanish-English) - in progress!

Resources for download:

reading and writing booklet (in Spanish) explaining the practical orthography -
overview of tone and its uses in the lexicon and grammar (in Spanish) -
preliminary analysis of verbal inflection (in Spanish)

Timeline:

Fall 2017 - Spring 2018: field methods class at UCSB
2019-2022: ELDP Small Grant
Dec 2019/Jan 2020: Trip #1 to San Martín Duraznos
Oct-Dec 2021: Trip #2 to San Martín Duraznos
2022: ELAR deposit online
April 2023: Trip #3 to San Martín Duraznos
February 2025: Trip to Guadalupe Nundaca

Constituency and Convergence database

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Constituency and Convergence database (CCDB) is a typological database that contains planar structures and results of constituency tests applied across multiple languages with a common methodology. The data is provided by language experts who have conducted extensive fieldwork on the respective languages. For more info, visit our project website and repositories.

Dissertation

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Confronting challenges in historical linguistics: Quantitative approaches to dialect area subgrouping and tone change in Mixtec

Abstract: This dissertation investigates the dynamics of language change in the Mixtec languages, a branch of Mixtecan (Otomanguean). Spread over a large mountainous area in southern Mexico, the history of this language family is characterized by repeated migrations, diversified local varieties, and ongoing inter-varietal contact, leading to its characterization as a dialect continuum. Mixtec languages are also well known for their intricate systems of grammatical and lexical tone, which have to be reconstructed to Proto-Mixtec and beyond.The first study applies a Bayesian phylogenetic model to lexical cognacy data of 137 Mix- tecan varieties. This model recovers the three main branches of Mixtecan (Mixtec, Triqui, and Cuicatec) as well as a number of well-supported higher- and lower-level groups within Mixtec. It also identifies varieties that are only loosely connected to the rest of the family and thus reveals that there are both wave-like and tree-like diversification processes at work and shows that subgrouping is possible and informative in a language family characterized as a dialect continuum. The second study provides a comprehensive account of sound changes in Mixtec. The sound changes are coded as fine-grained variables in a framework adapted from multivariate typology, and analyzed using computational methods. This allows for high accuracy and detail with regards to the sound changes but also for making visible larger patterns and tendencies. The latter show that the distribution of Mixtec sound changes generally aligns well with the subgroups proposed in the first study. The third study addresses the question of whether tones can be used for subgrouping and whether or not they change faster than segments. Building on the same typological framework as for the second study, I show that tone change can be analyzed in the same way as segmental change. I apply quantitative methods to calculate phylogenetic signal and rates of tonal versus segmental change based on the family tree obtained in the first study. The results show that tone change does not differ from segmental change in any meaningful way; that is, tones also show phylogenetic signal and their rates of gain and loss are not different from those of segments. Each study is designed to address the research questions in a empirical way, by including all sufficiently reliable and available Mixtec language data, which will be shared in public repositories along with all aspects of data handling, coding, and scripts used in the analyses.

Available on .

Disclaimer: My dissertation is cumulative and two of the three chapters are published as articles in an updated version, which superseed the dissertation version:

Chapter 1:
Chapter 2: The database part is published in . The sound change part is not yet published as a separate paper and the chapter of the dissertation should be cited.
Chapter 3: