Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica (PDLMA)
Terrence Kaufman John Justeson and Roberto Zavala Maldonado , directors
This site presents the aims, history, and results of research by the Project for the Documentation of the Languages of Mesoamerica, internally known as the "Snake Jaguar Project". The pages that describe the aims and history of the Project, and instructions for access to and use of posted materials, are updated at moderately frequent intervals. The online databases and the NO FRAMES version that we are making available will be updated only at intervals of about a year or more. Papers by project members are posted irregularly.
This page was last revised on April 17, 2001. Aims and history In 1993 we began a project to document the lexicon, phonology, and morphosyntax of selected Mije-Sokean languages, which by 1995 was extended to all living Mije-Sokean languages. Besides the value of the work for its own sake, this documentation was undertaken in order to facilitate a reconstruction of the proto-Mije-Sokean protolanguage. This reconstruction, and the documentation of the individual Mije-Sokean languages, was to serve as a resource for revising and extending the decipherment of Epi-Olmec writing (Justeson and Kaufman 1993, 1996 [1994], 1997). In 1995 the Project began research on 5 [JCH, CHI, CHO, LCH, ZEN] of a projected 11 Sapotekan languages. These were to be documented, the ancestral proto-Sapotekan language was to be reconstructed, and the reconstruction, along with the documentation of the individual Sapotekan languages, was to help in the decipherment of Sapoteko hieroglyphic writing, which had been under way since 1992. In 1996 research on 4 more Sapotekan languages [ATE, ZAN, COA, YAI] was started. Work is not yet effectively under way on CUI and YTZ. There are arguably more than 11 Sapotekan languages; they fall into 6 branches: since we could not reasonably document them all, at least one language from each of the branches had to be documented, plus any additional languages that promised to be straightforwardly useful for reconstructing proto-Sapotekan, proto-Sapoteko, and proto-Chatino. This set of languages contained 11 members. | |
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