Borrowing and grammaticalization in Sierra Popoluca: The influence of Nahuatl and Spanish

This dissertation looks at language contact as a stimulus for grammatical borrowing and grammaticalization processes in Sierra Popoluca. The language is still robust, but all speakers today are bilingual in Spanish. In the past, however, they were exposed to a neighboring variety of Nahuatl. Multilingualism raises interesting questions about possible external influences shaping the grammar of the language. Can speakers use elements from two or more languages as the source of new grammatical items?;It has traditionally been assumed that grammar is highly resistant to borrowing (Sapir 1921, Meillet 1926). Thomason and Kaufman (1988) have argued, however, that structural features can be borrowed under circumstances of intense and longstanding contact. Sierra Popoluca provides an excellent example of just such a situation. Like many other languages indigenous to Mesoamerica and South America, Sierra Popoluca contains grammatical markers that were clearly borrowed from Spanish. What is particularly interesting about this case is that the borrowed markers have been commingled with existing grammatical items, particularly the pervasive subordinator iga, to provide a basis for the further development of grammatical markers and grammaticalization processes. Even more interesting is the discovery that the deeply entrenched iga is itself the result of contact, in this case with the neighboring Nahuatl. Furthermore, it is interesting to see that some grammatical items of Spanish-origin currently found in Sierra Popoluca were in fact not transferred directly. The transfer was mediated by the neighboring Nahuatl. This is the case of the Spanish agentive nominal -ero, which was transferred to Sierra Popoluca via Pajapan Nahuatl. This case reveals the complexity of grammatical borrowing in language contact situation. A third language can play a crucial role in the transfer of grammar from one language to another.;This dissertation further shows that once a grammatical structure has been transferred, it need not remain inert, but instead can continue to evolve, like other structures in the language, along familiar pathways of grammatical change.