Misumalpan languages

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Misumalpan
Misuluan
Geographic distribution	Mosquitia
Linguistic classification	Macro-Chibchan ? Misumalpan
Subdivisions	Miskito Sumalpan
Language codes
Glottolog	misu1242
Historical (dotted) and current (colored) distribution of the Misumalpan languages

The Misumalpan languages (also Misumalpa or Misuluan) are a small family of languages spoken by different Indigenous groups in the region commonly known as Mosquitia, referred to in Miskitu as Yapti Tasba Masrka (“the People’s Land”).^[1]

The name “Misumalpan” was coined by American anthropologist John Alden Mason in the early 20th century as a comparative linguistic term.^[2] It is not an autonym used by any of the Indigenous nations it describes. The term is an acronym formed from the names of the family’s three branches: Miskitu, Mayangna (often labeled Sumu/Sumo in earlier literature), and Matagalpan languages.^[3]

Scholarly sources note that “Sumu/Sumo” are exonyms, whereas Mayangna is the community’s own name.^[4] Similarly, Miskitu is the preferred self-designation, while “Miskito” reflects Spanish and English colonial spellings.^[5]

The grouping was first recognized as a linguistic family by Walter Lehmann in 1920. ^[6]

All recorded languages of the Matagalpan branch are extinct, although Matagalpa cultural identity persists.^{[7][failed verification]} By contrast, Miskitu and Mayangna remain living languages. Miskitu has^[when?] an estimated 180,000–200,000 speakers and functions as a regional lingua franca on the Caribbean coast.^{[8][failed verification]}

Most Mayangna speakers are bilingual in either Miskitu or Spanish, depending on region.^{[9][failed verification]}

Scholars^[who?] emphasize that Miskitu, Mayangna, and Matagalpan represent distinct Indigenous peoples with their own histories and identities.

The term “Misumalpan family” refers solely to a linguistic classification and is not a cultural, political, or self-identified grouping.^[3]

External relations

Kaufman (1990) finds a connection with Macro-Chibchan to be "convincing", but Misumalpan specialist Ken Hale considered a possible connection between Chibchan and Misumalpan to be "too distant to establish".^[10]

Classification

• Miskito – nearly 200,000 speakers, mainly in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region of Nicaragua, but including some in Honduras.
• Sumalpan languages:
  • Sumo languages – some 8,000 speakers along the Huaspuc River and its tributaries, most in Nicaragua but some in Honduras. Many of them have shifted to Miskito.
    • Mayangna - dominant variety of the Sumo family
    • Ulwa
  • Matagalpan
    • †Cacaopera – formerly spoken in the Morazán department of El Salvador; and
    • †Matagalpa – formerly spoken in the central highlands of Nicaragua and the El Paraíso department of Honduras

Miskito became the dominant language of Mosquitia from the late 17th century on, as a result of the people's alliance with the British Empire. In north-eastern Nicaragua, it continues to be adopted by former speakers of Sumo. Its sociolinguistic status is lower than that of the English-based creole of the southeast, and in that region, Miskito seems to be losing ground. Sumo is endangered in most areas where it is found, although some evidence suggests that it was dominant in the region before the ascendancy of Miskito. The Matagalpan languages are long since extinct, and not very well documented.

All Misumalpan languages share the same phonology, apart from phonotactics. The consonants are p, b, t, d, k, s, h, w, y, and voiced and voiceless versions of m, n, ng, l, r; the vowels are short and long versions of a, i, u.

Proto-language

Below are Proto-Misumalpan reconstructions by Adolfo Constenla Umaña (1987):^[12]

Notes

Bibliography

• Benedicto, Elena (2002). "Verbal Classifier Systems: The Exceptional Case of Mayangna Auxiliaries". UBC Working Papers in Linguistics. 10: Proceedings of WSCLA 7th: 1–2. S2CID 126222949.
• Benedicto, Elena; Hale, Kenneth (2000). Benedicto, E. (ed.). "Mayangna, A Sumu Language: Its Variants and Its Status within Misumalpa". University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics. 20: 75–106. hdl:20.500.14394/50068.
• Craig, Colette; Hale, Kenneth (1992). "A Possible Macro-Chibchan Etymon". Anthropological Linguistics. 34.
• Constenla Umaña, Adolfo (1987). "Elementos de Fonología Comparada de las Lenguas Misumalpas". Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica. 13 (1): 129–161.
• Constenla Umaña A. (1998). "Acerca de la relación genealógica de las lenguas lencas y las lenguas misumalpas," Communication presented at the First Archeological Congress of Nicaragua (Managua, 20–21 July), to appear in 2002 in Revista de Filología y Lingüística de la Universidad de Costa Rica 28 (1).
• Hale, Ken (1996). "El causativo misumalpa (miskitu, sumu)". Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca "Julio de Urquijo". 30 (2): 1–2. doi:10.1387/asju.8669.
• Hale, Ken (1991). "Misumalpan Verb Sequencing Constructions". In Lefebvre, C. (ed.). Serial Verbs: Grammatical, Comparative, and Cognitive Approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Hale, Ken; Salamanca, Danilo (2001). "Theoretical and Universal Implications of Certain Verbal Entries in Dictionaries of the Misumalpan Languages". In Frawley; Hill; Munro (eds.). Making Dictionaries: Preserving indigenous Languages of the Americas. University of California Press.
• Koontz-Garboden, Andrew (2009). "Ulwa verb class morphology". International Journal of American Linguistics. 75 (4): 453–512. doi:10.1086/650551. JSTOR 10.1086/650551.
• Rouvier, Ruth (2002). Infixation and reduplication in Misumalpan: A reconstruction (BA thesis). UC Berkeley.
• Young, Phil; Givón, T. (1990). "The puzzle of Ngäbére auxiliaries: Grammatical reconstruction in Chibchan and Misumalpan". In Croft, William; Kemmer, Suzanne; Denning, Keith (eds.). Studies in Typology and Diachrony: Papers presented to Joseph H. Greenberg on his 75th birthday. Typological Studies in Language. Vol. 20. John Benjamins.

External links

Wiktionary has a list of reconstructed forms at Appendix:Proto-Misumalpan reconstructions

• FDL bibliography (general, but search specific language names)
• Ulwa Language home page
• Ulwa Language Home Page bibliography
• Moskitia bibliography
• The Misumalpan Causative Construction – Ken Hale
• Theoretical and Universal Implications of Certain Verbal Entries in Dictionaries of the Misumalpan Languages – Ken Hale
• Andrew Koontz-Garboden's web page (with links to papers on Ulwa)