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Mixed grammar, purist grammar, and language attitudes in modern Nahuatl1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Jane H. Hill  and
Kenneth C. Hill
Jane H. Hill
Affiliation:
Wayne State University & University of Michigan
Kenneth C. Hill
Affiliation:
Wayne State University & University of Michigan
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Abstract

In Tlaxcala and Puebla, Mexico, Nahuatl is being replaced by Spanish. Economic and social factors, principally a shift from a peripheral agrarian integration in the Mexican economy to integration as a rural proletariat involved in migratory labor, has been accompanied by a shift in language attitudes which has led to a narrowing of the range of functions of Nahuatl to a function primarily as a “language of solidarity.” This narrowing of function and the accompanying development of ethnic self-consciousness and egalitarianism are expressed through the stigmatization of Spanish loan words, other ethnic boundary-marking usages, the narrowing of honorific usage, and the differentiation of Nahuatl from Spanish grammar in noun-number constructions. (Nahuatl, Spanish, language shift, ethnicity.)

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Type
Articles
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Language in Society , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , December 1980 , pp. 321 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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