Mason - The Status and Problems of Research in the Native Languages of South America

8/12/2019 Mason - The Status and Problems of Research in the Native Languages of South America

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The Status and Problems of Research in the Native Languages of South America

J. Alden Mason

Science , New Series, Vol. 101, No. 2620. (Mar. 16, 1945), pp. 259-264.

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money invested, not money spent. Precisely becausethe National Research Council has sought through itsfellowships to find and train investigators and teach-ers, and through its research programs sought to giveresearch opportunities to competent workers we arehere to-day to thank its members and offer the tributeof admiration and respect. The most essential needof fundament51 research in medical sciences is men-men of attainment and men of promise still to be ful-filled. They can t live without salaries, they can twork without laboratories, they can t teach withoutpupi ls who want to join the ranks. Their curiositiesare not to see how much they can take from societyin money or prestige. They want to understand thefundamenta l facts of living tissues and living organ-isms and human relationships. They have their dis-appointments, their difficulties, thei r tragedies. Theyare human. Medical research is an abstraction-the

realities are men who search and search again forcauses and the relation between phenomena. Until weare prepared in this country to understand the mo-tives, the needs, the rewards, in short the lives ofresearch men we shall go our floundering, hit-or-miss, good-naturedly uncomprehending way, wastefulof these human resources, negligent of our oppor-tunities and happily ignorant of our failures to meetthe essential need of fundamental research-the find-ing, training and support of first-rate scientific brains.One- and two-year grant s won t suffice. Medals andcitat ions aren t enough. Time for long study andmoney for apparatus and helpers and the chance ofsteady employmentthese are what first-rate men

need and too rarely get from the society they couldshower with the blessings of freedom from pain, relieffrom disability and the knowledge by which humanlife is not merely prolonged but rendered happy, freedfrom fea r and ignorance. If you think exaggeratereflect upon the contributions described this afternoonin the fields of anesthesia, bacteriology, nutrition,physiology and virus diseases.

Created during the first World War, the NationalResearch Council under the auspices of the NationalAcademy of Sciences continued in ensuing years thework of fostering ancLdirecting research work in thiscountry. t will resume after this war its work in theservice of science and of society. I could hope thatin increasing measure the lay will recognizehow valuable are its potentialities, how ready and wellqualified it is to administer funds for research workin peacetime and how useful could be its services to

society.Dr. Harrison, you represent the National Research

Council not only by your own extraordinary gifts asan investigator, your long services as a counselor andteacher and the example of a splendid character, youalso are the designated representative of the NationalResearch Council to receive the tribute offered hereto-day to the gifts, the services and the example ofthe scientists of America in behalf of t he public health.I trust that this occasion will aid in a better under-standing of the importance of fundamental researchin the medical sciences and serve as a warm acknowl-

edgement of the debt of society to the fa it h whioh hascreated and maintained the National Research Council.

THE STATUS AND PRO LEMS OF RESEARCH IN THENATIVE LANGUAGES OF SOUTH AMERICA'

By Dr. J. A L D E N M A S O NTHE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM,

V N a relatively short sketch of the linguistic con-ditions of a large area should cover such points as :general features-phonetic, morphological and lexi-cal-that characterize the languages, and the mainpoints i n whioh they differ from languages of otherregions; brief digests of the grammar and phoneticsof each independent family or a t least of the moreimportant ones; a classification of the-se families ingroups according to phonetic and morphological type;a classification of the component languages of each

Vice-presidential address of the incoming chairmanof the section on Anthropology, American Associationfor the Advancement of Science, Cleveland, September 15,1944. This address was prepared as the introduction tothe linguistic section of the Handbook of South AmericanIndians to be published y the Bureau of AmericanEthnology of the Smithsonian Institution, and is hereprinted with the permission of that institution.

UNIVERSITY O F PENNSYLVANIA

family in their proper subdivisions as dialects, lan-guages, groups and stocks, according to degree oflinguistic relationship; and a reconstruction of lin-guistic history and migrations. As regards the abo-riginal languages of South Amerio a i t must be un-derstood at the outset that, as comparatively littlereliable data are available upon them, none of theabove points can be treated with any approach tothoroughness, and on most of them little can be saidat present.

South American Indian languages have no uniformor even usual characteristics that differentiate them

orth languages. The same may esaid of American languages fundamentally, as opposedto Old World languages. Languages were formerly

grouped into categories according to morphological


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pat tern isola ting, agglut inat ing, polysynthet ic andinflective, with a n implication of evolution a nd better-men t tow ard the inflecting ideal-4f course of our ownIndo -Euro pean languages . However, research hasshown that , so fa r as there has been any evolut ion,the isolating is the last , not the first stage. Americanlanguages were once classed with the polysynthetic,with agglutinative tendencies. No such hard -and- fastdistinctions can be made; few languages belong defi-nitely to one or another class, and most of them showtraits of several classes. This appl ies equal ly wel l t sAmerican and to Old World languages; some showtendencies towards inflection, Gore towards polysyn-thesis. I t i s impossible to g ive any descr ip t ion that:would characterize the majority of Anlerican Indianlanguages or contras t them w ith Old Wo rld languages ,either frorn a niorphological or a phonetic point ofview. Inco rporati on (of the nolziinal or pronom inal

object) was formerly considered one of the character-ist ics of American languages; this also is missing inmany of them.

classification of languages according to patternsand types being impossible, the only possible one isgenetic, based on relationship, common origin ant1lin gu is tic h i ~ t o r y . ~

The classification of hunian groups according tothei r languages is pow accepted as the bes t sys tem f o rreconstructing historical connections. Cu ltural ele-ments a re too easily adopted to have much historicalvalue; sonlatological characterist ics, though more per-

manent than l inguistic ones, are less readily identi-fiable in mixture. On the other hand, a proved rela-t ionship of two languages a t presen t widely sep ara tedindicates a former close connecticn or identity of theancestors of thei r speakers and thus affords imp ortan tdata on human migration. Bu t proof of linguis ticrelationship is :fraug ht with innum erable difficulties.I t i s se ldom absolute , but depends on acceptance byscholars ; on the other hand, i t i s impossible to provethat two languages are not re la ted .

Merely to ascertain the connection between two lan-guages is f a r frorn sufficient to establish a good his-tor ica l p ic ture . I f we knew no more than that S pa n-ish , I ta l ian , German a nd Ru ssian ar e rela ted i t wouldmean l it t le. Al l the languages of South America maybe related; all those of all America may be; conceiv-ably a l l languages in the world may eventual lybe

On the classification of languages, and of AmericanIndian languages in particular, see Boas, Introduction toHandbook of Am erican Indian. Languag es, 1911; Ha rryHoije r, Methods in the Classification of AmericanIndia n Languages in Language, Culture and Person-ali ty ; Essays in Memory of Edward Sapir, Menasha,1941, 3 14; J . Alden Mason, The Native Languag es ofMiddle America in The Maya and their Neighbors,New York, 1940, 52 87; C. F. Voegelin, North Amer-ican Indian Languages Still Spoken, and their GeneticRelationships m 'Lang uag e, Culture and Personality,15-40 ; and references and bibliographies therein.

proved to have a common descent. II I the same sense,a l l mainmals a re re la ted , a l l animals a re re la ted , lll ife had a common origin. Relationship means l i t t leunless we know degree and nearness of relationship.

A direct comparison of two distantly related lan-guages seldom yields convincing proof of their con-nection. A comparison of Polish and English wouldprobably resul t in a .negat ive decis ion;it is only be-cause me know the historical l inguistics of the Indo-European languages well , with reconstructed roots ofwords, tha t the re la tionship can be proved. On theother hand, no prbof would be needed of the relation-ship of French, S panish and I ta l ian ; even if we didnot know their descent from Latin, the resemblance isobvious. The relationship of dialects such as Catalan,Provengal and Elallego is even closer and more evident.

Rela ted languages are grouped in families orstocks, presumed , on pre sen t evidence, to be un -

related. These fanlil ies ar e then subdivided into divi-sions, groups, branches, languages, types, dialects,varieties, etc. The ternlinology is indefinite and the rear e no established criteria. W hen families heretoforeconsidered ind epen dent are- determ ined to be related,a more inclusive term is required; phylum has beenaccepted. F o r ins tance , i f Indo-Europe an, Ha ~n i to -Semit ic and Finno-Ugrian are proved to be re la ted ,es has been posited w ith considerable groun d, theywould corupose a phylu m. Most of the eighty-five-oddfamilies of North America, form erly considered in-

dependent , a re now grouped in re la t ively few phyla .

Good scientific gramniars of South American lan-guages are practically non-existent, and granitnars ofany kind, even of the older type based on analogy withLat in grammar, are very few. Comparisons of mor-phology, one of the imp ortan t cr i teria f or l inguis t icconnectiops, are therefore in most cases impossible.Most of t he classifications a re based on lexicalgrounds, on vocabularies, often short , taken by travel-ers or l i i issionary priests, and generally with the helpof in terpre ters . The recorders were untra ined in pho-netics and each used the phonetic system of his nativelanguage, Spanish , Por tuguese , French, G erman, Eng-lish, sometimes Dutc h or Swedish. Scientific deduc-

tions made on the basis of such material have l i t t lec laim to acceptance . Yet on many languages , ext inctor l iving, nothing else is available. A n independentfamily should not be posited on the basis of one suchvocabulary, no mat ter how apparent ly d i fferent f romany o the r l anguage (cf. Masub i )

Of many extinct languages, and even of some livingones, nothing is known ; of o thers there are statementsthat the nat ives spoke a language of thei r own, d i f -ferent f rom that of thei r neighbors , but wi thout anysuggestion as to how different, or that the languagewas intell igible or unintell igible or related to that of

other groups : Of some, only place an d personal


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names remain; of others, recorded lexical dat a rang-ing from a few words to large vocabularies and gram-matical sketches.

Owing to the magnitude of 'the field it has been pos-sible for me to make very few independent studies andcomparisons of lexical nnil i~~orphologicalata with aview to establishing lingrlistic connections, and evenmost of the articles published by others in support ofsuch relationships have not been critically stuaied andappraised . The greater number, and by fa r the mostcogent, of these studies have been writ ten by the deanof South American linguists, Dr. Paul Rivet. Sim-ilar studies in Macro-Ge languages have been pub-lished by Loukotka. I n almost all of them the authorswere, unfortunately, limited to comparing vocabu-laries collected by others and pregnant with the f aul tsalready herein set for th. 'Words from lists in onegroup of languages are compared with words from

languages of another group. Rarely are the roots orstems isolated or known, and morphological elementsmay often be mistaken for pa rt s of stems. Rarelyhas it been possible to deduce any rules of sound-shift,the best proof of linguistic relationship, or the ex-amples given are too few in propor tion to the numberof comparisons to carr y conviction. Few if any ofthese proposed linguistic relationships can be said tobe incontrovertibly proved; good cases have been madefor many, and many or most of them have been ac-cepted by later authorities. Others are,of doubtfulvalidity, an& all require reappraisal, and reworking,especially those in which new data may later become,or may already have become, available.

t is a truism of linguistic research that, given largeenough vocabularies to compare, and making allow-ances fo r all possible changes in the form of a wordor stem, as well as in its meaning, a large number ofa,pparent similarities, convincing to the uncritical, canbe found between any two language^ ^ Especially isthis true if the comparison is made between two largegroups, each consisting of languages of admitted rela-tionship. To car ry conviction, laws of sound-shif tmust be deduced, obeyed by a large proportion of thecases in question, and a basic similarity in morpho-

logical and phonetic pattern must be shown. Few ofthe comparative works on South American languagesattempt such obligations, and almost all suffer fromthe faults above listed. There is not a real compara-tive grammar of any South American, or for that

As a few exaniples, which really should not be men-tioned in the same context as Rivet's work, see Miles Poin-dexter, ('The Ayar Incas, 1930, -proving a connectionbetween Kechua and Sanskrit and other Aryan lan-guages ; T S. Deiinison, Mexican Linguistics, includ-ing Nauatl or Mexican, in Aryan Phonology, etc., vhichdoes the same for Aztec; Julio Salas, Origenes ameri-canos ; lenguas indias comparadas, Caracas, 1924, whereinconnections are seen between all American languages andEuropean ones, based on such analogies as Hecate-Ehecatl, Apollo-Ollin, etc.

matter of any American, native linguistic family, ex-cept possibly Algonkian.

One of the pitfalls to be avoided in linguistic com-parison is that of borrowing. Languages easily adoptwords fromaeighboring languages; these must be dis-counted in seeking evidence on genetic relationship.Words for new concepts or new objects are likely tobe similar in many languages4; generally their cate-gories and very similar forms betray their recentorigin. Phonetic patt ern and morphological tra its arealso borrowed, but to a lesser degree. Grammaticalpattern is the most stable element in a language,phonology next; vocabulary is most subject to change.There are several areas in America where a numberof languages with little or no lexical resemblance havea relatively uniform phonology, and/or similar mor-phological peculiarities.

Many American languages, North as well as South,

show resemblance in the pronominal system, often zfor the first person, r or p for second person.Whether this is the result of common origin, chance orborrowing has nevqr been proved, but the resemblanceshould not be used as evidence of genetic connectionbetween any two languages. Many of the languagesof central and eastern Brazil are characterized bywords ending in vowels, with the stress accent on theultimate syllable.

I n some cases, the amount of borrowed words andelements may be so great as practically to constitutea mixed language. Linguis tic students are in dis-agreement as to whether a true mixed language withmultiple origins is possible. Loukotka, in his 1935clas~if icat ion ,~onsiders a language mixed if the for -eign elements exceed one fifth of t he forty-five-wordstandard vocabulary used by him for comparison.Lesser borrowings he terms '(intrusions and ves-tiges.

The situation is further complicated by the factthat, in a large number of instances, the same or avery similar name was applied by colonists to severalgroups of very different linguist ic affinities. This maybe a descriptive nBme of European derivation, such asOrej6n, Big Ears ; Patag&, Big Feet ; Coroado,

Crowned or Barbados,L T ~ n ~ ~ r e d ; Bearded ;Lengua, Tongue. Or it may be an Indian wordapplied to several different groups in the same waytha t the Mayan Lacand611 of Chiapas are locally

See Erland NordenskiGld, Deductions Suggested bythe Geographical Distribution of Some Post-ColumbianWords Used by the Indians of South America, in Com-parative Ethnographical Studies 5, GBteborg, 1922.Also George Herzog, Culture Change and Langnage:Shifta in the Pima Vocabulary, in Language, Cultureand Personality, Menasha, 1941, 66-74. Such words asthose for banana, cow, telegraph, are pertinent.

Cestmir Loukotka, Clasificaoi6n de las lenguas sud-americanas, Prague, 1935. See also Loukotka, Linguasindigenas do Brazil, in Revista do Arquivo MunicipalLIV, 147-174, Sao Paulo, 1939.


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called Caribs, and the rust ic natives of Puer to Ricoand Cuba Gibaros and Goajiros, respectively.Thus, Tapuya, the Tupi word fo r enemy, wasapplied by them to almost all non-Tupi groups, Boto-cudo to wearers of large lip-plugs, etc. Amongother names applied to groups of different languages,sometimes with slight variations, are Apiaca, Arara,Caripuna, Chavante, Quana, Guayana, Canamari,Caraya, Catawishi, Catukina, Cuniba, Jivaro, Macu,Tapiete, not to mention such easily confused namesas Tucano, Tacana and Ticuna. Many mistakes havebeen made due to confusion of such names cf. espe-cially, Arda)

America, and especially South America, is probablythe region of greatest l inguisti c diversity in the world,and of greatest ignorance concerning the native lan-guages. On the very probable presumption that eachhomogeneous group, tribe, band or village, spoke arecognizable variant dialect or variety, there may havebeen five thousand such in South America. The indexof Rivet (1924) lists some 1,240 such groups (includ-ing a few synonyms), and this is far from the total.For instance, in the above index, Rivet lists thirteencomponent members of the small and unimportantTimote family of Venezuela; in his monograph on theTimote6 he mentions 128 names for local groups, apartfrom the names of the villages occupied by them.

The multitude of languages in America has oftenbeen given as a n argument fo r a comparatively. greatlength of time of human occupation of this hemi-

sphere. This concept presupposes that the first immi-gra nts to America had a common speech. This is un-likely; it is more probable that each migrating grouphad its specific language, and th at the number of pre -sumably independent linguistic families was originallymuch greater than a t present. Such a reduction hasbeen the linguist ic history of the rest of the world.These 'Lfamilies may either have had a remote com-mon ancestry or multiple unrelated origins; of theorigin and early forms of speech we know nothing.All known primitive languages are highly complexand evidently have had a long period of development.Of course the minor dialects and obviously relatedlanguages were differentiated in America.

Since the main migration to America is believed tohave been via Alaska, we would expect to find inSouth America languages of older migrations than inNorth America, the speech of the earliest migrantsforced to the peripheries and to cul-de-sacs by laterand more aggressive groups, and also small enclavesof moribund independent linguistic families. This ap-plies especially to southernmost and easternmost SouthAmerica, and to the spee'ch of natives of paleoamer-

6 Paul Rivet, La Famille linguistique Timote. Inter-national Journal of American Linguistics, 4, 137-167,

New York, 1927.

ican physical type, such as the Ge and the Fuegians.Regarding extra continental.relationships many ill-

conceived attempts have been made to show connec-tions between South American native languages andIndo-European or Semitic ones; all these are so ama-

teurish that they have been accorded no scientific at-tention. Dr. Paul Rivet is firmly convinced of theconnection between Australian languages and Chon,and between Malayo-Polynesian and Hokan. Insteadof by direct trans-Pacific voyages, he believes that theAustralian influence came via the Antarctic during afavorable post-glacial period not less than 6,000 yearsago.6a This radical thesis has met with no acceptanceamong North American anthropologists. he dataoffered in it s supp ort fa ll short of conviction, butprobably have not received sufficient careful con-sideration.

I t is possible that some of the South American lan-guages belong to the great Hokan or Hokan-Siouanfamily or phylum of North America. Cf. Yuru-mangui, Kechua.) Since isolated Hokan enclaves ar efound as fa r south as Nicaragua, evidence of migra-tions across Panama would not be entirely unex-pected. A number of languages from Colombia tothe Gran Chaco have Hokan-like morphological pat-terns. Dr. J. P. Harringt on is convinced of theHokan affiliations of Kechua, but his published article7fails to carry conviction, and no other argument forHokan in South America has been presented. SuchHokan migrations, if proved, were probably at a rela-

tively early period.On the other hand, several of the great South Amer-ican families have penetrated the southern peripheriesof North America. Chibchan languages occupied asolid area, with possibly a few small enclaves of ofherfamilies or isolated languages, as far as the Nica-raguan border, and the probably affiliated Mosu-malpan Miskito-Sumo-Matagalpa) would extendthis area to cover Nicaragua. Arawak and Caribextended over the Lesser and Greater Antilles, andthe former may have had a colony on the Floridacoast.

I n 1797 the native Carib Indians remaining in theLesser Antilles, mainly on St. Vincent Island, weretransported to Roatan Island off the coast of Hon-duras. Mixing with the Negro population there theyhave spread over much of the coast of Honduras andpar ts of British Honduras. They now number some15,000, most of them speaking a Carib jargon.

The trend in the classification of American lan-guages has been quite opposite in North and in South

6aPau1 Rivet, Leq mel:lt~ -o rolyl~;ui~,l~rit les austra-liens en AmBrique, S 5 l , 1925, and manyl l J 11 / ~ I I . ~ ~ I O . ~other articles. (See I , i l~l ic~gr:~[~l tyr l . ic .ot ,p. 432.l l

John P Harrington, Hokan Discovered In SouthAmerica, ournal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 33: 11, 334-344, Washington, 1943.


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America. I n the former, radical scholars believe th ata l l the m any languages forme rly considered indepen-den t may fa l l i n to s ix g rea t phy la : Esk imo , NqD ene ,Algonkian-Mosan, Ho kan - Siouan, Macro-Penut ianand Macro-Otomanguean, p lus the South American

phylum Macro-Chibchan. I n South America , on thecontrary , the m ore recent classifications have increasedrather th an reduced th e number of famil ies or group sgiven independent s ta tus . Most of these new ones,it must be admitted, are one-language families, oftenext inct , and general ly based on one or a few shor tvocabularies th at show li t t le or no resemblance t oany other language with which they have been com-pare d. These should be -considered a s unclassifiedra ther than as independent families . I t i s certa in tha tthe number wi l l be great ly reduced as the languagesbecome more intensively studied, but doubtful if i twill ever reach such relative simplicity as in North

America. Almost certainly the linguistic picture willbe found to be f a r more complex than in Europ e andAsia.

One of the main reasons for the great d i fferencein the proposed number of l inguis tic families in Northand South America i s tha t the s tudy of South Ameri -can l inguist ics i s now about i n the same s tage a s thatof North American languages th i r ty years ago.Since that t ime many t ra ined s tudents , both in theUni ted S ta tes and i n Mexico, have s tudied the nat ivelanguages intensively, largely under the direction orexample of the la te Drs . Fra nz Boas8 and Edw ardSap i r. Excep t fo r t he inde fat igab le Dr. Pau l R ivetand Curt Nimuendajf i , South America has had fewlinguistic scholars of wide interests and scientificvie-oint, an d until recently very few trained youn germen. The No rth Am erican languages have beengrouped in to s ix phyla , mainly on grounds of mor-phological resemblance and intuit ion, and in this thes tudents have been a ided by the fac t that the lan-guages are fewer, and fewer of them extinct, so thatsuch morpholog ical studies could be made. Sou thAmerica suffers not only from lack of students, pau-city of grammatical studies, multi tudes of languages,extinction of many of them, but also from the prac-

tical problems of linguistic research: immense dis-tances, po or tran sportatio n, difficult ies and expense ofexpeditions, lack of capab le inte rpre ters and similarhandicaps.

The his tory 'of a t tem pts to c lassi fy the languag esof So uth America was reviewed by Cham berlain n1906.9 Th e earli er classifications, such as those of

See especially (Handbook of American Ind ian Lan-guages," edited by Fran z Boas, Pa rt s1 and 2, Bulletin40, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, 1911,1922; Part 3, New York, 1933.

Alexander F. Chamberlain, "South American Lin -guistic Stocks" in C. R. Congr. Internat. d. Amer., XVeSess., Quebec, 1906 (1907), t.11 pp, 187-204.

Adelung and Vater, Balbi , Caste lnau, Gi l i j , Hervas ,Ludewig, von Mart ius and d 'orbigny, were not con-sidered therein, and need not be here. Modern classi-fication began with Brintonin 1891.1 W it h his usua lfar-seeing good sense, no t "curiously enough" as Cham -

ber lain remarks , Br inton refused to enum erate or l is this "stocks," bu t appa ren tly recognized nearly sixty.I n man y la ter shor t art ic les Br inton cont inued to a l terhis groupings . Other l i s ts publ ished in the next fewyears were McGee, 1903 (56) ; Chamber la in , 1904(57) ; Ehrenreich, 190 5 (52) . Al l these d i ffer morethhn the slight ' variation in total would suggest.Chamberlain then gave his own list , totall ing 83.Later he publ ished a revision of this, which becamethe s tan dard c lass if icat ion in En gl ish fo r a decade ormore.l l Though th e total of 8 3 stocks is exactly thesame as in h is ear l ier l i s t (p lus 77a) , the number ofalterations, deletions and additio ns is great.

Since 1922 a number of classifications have ap-peared. Krickeberg12 stressed only the fifteen mostimportant famil ies ; based on th is J imenez Morenopublished a large' distribution m ap in color.13 P. W .Schmidt a lso wisely d id not a t te mp t to enumerate an dl is t every family, but d iscussed them under 6fanl il ies or groups.14 Cu rt Nimuen daj6 has neveratte mp ted a complete lingu istic classification of Sou thAmerica , and his unpubl ished map and index do notinclude the f a r nor th , west and south , but h is f i rs t -hand knowledge of the rest of the continentis unex-celled. I n this restricted region he recognizes 42stocks , 34 isola ted languages and hundreds of un-classified languages, the latter generally without anyknown l inguis t ic data .

Two comprehensive classifications of all So ut hAmerican languag es have been m adein the las t twentyyears. Pa ul Rivet,ls combining some of Chamber-lain 's families, separating others, reached a total of77. Pericot16 follows Rivet very closely, bu t not i n

1 6 Luis Pericot y Garcia. Am6rica Indigena. TomoI : ( E l Hombre Americano-Los Pueblos de Am6rica.Barcelona, 1936.

1 0 Daniel G. Brinto n, "The American Race," N. Y.1891.

1lAlexander G. Chamberlain, ('Linguistic Stocks ofSouth American Indians, with Distribution-Map," AmerAnth (n. s.) , 15, 2, 236-247, 1913 .

1 2 Walte r Krickeberg, "Die VQlker Siidamerikas," pp.217-423, in G eorg Buschan, Illu strie rte VGlkerkunde,Stuttg art, 1922.

1 3 Wig berto 3imBnez Moreno, "Map a Lingiiistico deSudamBrica, segfin Erickeberg; bajo la direcci6n de Wig-berto JimBnez Moreno; lo dibuj6 Agustin Villagra. Pub -licacidn hecha por el Instituto Panamericano de Geografiae Historia, en colaboraci6n con el Museo Nacional y conel Inst itut o Mexicano de Investigaciones Lingiiisticas, en1937. Mexico, 1936.

1 4 W. Schmidt, "Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachen-kreise der Erde, Heidelberg, 1926.

15 Paul Rivet, ((La ng ues Amhrjeaines. 111. Languesde l1Am6rique du Sud et des Antilles," 639-712,in 4.Meillet et Marcel Cohen, "Les Lang ues du Monde," Par is,1924.


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64 S IEN E VOL. 101, NO. 2620

numerical of alphabetical order. The most recentclassification an d the most radical-or most conser-vative, accord ing to the point of view-is th at ofL o ~ k o t k a . ~ ~ fam ilies t ha nividing more of Rivet'she combined, he enumerates 94 families with a total

of some 558 languages. La ter he revised the detailssomewhat, but only regarding th e languages of Brazil .I n this latt er article he notes the l inguistic sourcesfo r each language.18

South Am erican linguistic history o r philology doesnot extend before the beginnings qf the sixteeqthcentury with the first words and observations madeby Eur ope an voyagers. No native alphabets had beendeveloped; there w ere no hieroglyphs, and even picto-graphs, petroglyphs and picture-writing seem to beless than in North America . The Peruv ian quipuswere arithmetical, astrological, divinatory and mne-

monic. There was a tradition among the Kech ua atthe t ime of the Conquest that they had once hadnsystem of writing on tree leaves that was later for-bidden and forgotten,le bpt this is given li t t le cre-dence by modern scholars, and no trace of i t remains.A system of writing h as been claimed f o r the Chibchaalso, based, not on tradition, but on the peculiar, andapp aren tly non-pictorial character of many picto-g r a p h s in Colombia; this also has received no cre-dence amo ng archeologists. On the other hand, themodern Cun a of P ana ma have developed a n in ter-esti ng existent system of mneinonic picture-w riting.2o

Two of the native languages merit special mentionas having become, afte r the Span ish Conquest,lenguasfrancas of wider extent and use tha n formerly. TheTupi of the Brazilian coast became the basis of thel ingoa geral the medium of conlmunication of priestsand t raders throughout the Amazon drainage ; i t i snow generally replaced by Portuguese. The Cuzcodialect of Kechua became the culture language of theInca rtgi on and extended its area even before the

Conquest ; af ter the la t te r i t continued i ts spre ad andwas adopted a s a second language by the Spanis h inPe ru. Neither language has to-day, however, the cul-tu ral position of the Maya of Yucatan, f or instance,though both have added many nat ive terms in theSpanish and Portuguese of their regions, and eventhroughout the world, such as t ap ioca jaguar l lamaquin ine . I t has been es t imated tha t 1 5 per cent. ofthe vocabulary of Brazilian Portuguese is of Tupior igin . I n Paraguay , Guaran i i s considered a cul turelanguage, and some newspape rs ar e published in i t .

For those exact-minded scientists who may be ap-palled or disgusted with the classificatory disagree-ments noted above, let me close with a quotation fro111a grea t l inguist: Essayer de faire. une classificatio?iexacte et complete de toutes les langues en famillesrigoureu seme nt de'finies, c'est m ontr er d 6j8 qu'on n'apa s c omp ris .le pri ncip e de la classification gdn6alo-gique des l a n g ~ e s . ~ ~

OBITUARYO S C A R F L O Y D P O I N D E X T E R

OSCARFLOYD was born on December 8,OINDEXTER1898, a t Cynthiana, Kentucky. H e was educated inthe schools of Cynthiana and the University of Ken-tucky. On October 4,1918 , he enlisted in the S.A.T.C.of the University of Kentucky and was honorably dis-charged f rom the Uni ted S ta tes Army on December18, 1918. H e then cont inued his education a t theUniversity of M ichigan, dese rting agriculture, his

majo r a t Kentucky, fo r geology and mineralogy, andreceived the A.B. degree in geology and mineralogyin 1922 and the master 's degree in 1924. Dur ing theundergraduate yea rs a t the Univers ity of M ichigan hewas a teaching laboratory ass is tant in the depar tm entof mineralogy supervising students in the identifica-tion of minerals. I n Ju n e of 1924, he first entered

17Chestmir Loukotka, LLClasificaci6nde 13s lenguassudamericanas, Pragu e, 1935.

8 Chestmir Loukotka, Lingu as indigena s do Brasilin Revista o Arguivo Municipal LIV 147-174, SaoPaulo, 1939.

9 Montesinos, 1840, 1920, Chaps. 7, 14, 15; Bingham,1922, Chap. 16; 1929, Chap. 9.

the service of the State of Michigan in charge ofnfield party mapping deposits of road-building mate-r i a ls fo r the S ta t e Highway Depar tmen t under thedirection of the Geological Survey Division, Depart-ment of Conservation. H e was in charge of the fieldpar t ies du r ing the summers of 1924 and 1925 andinfull charge of the road material survey in the summerof 1926. D uri ng the scholastic years, 1924 to 1927,Mr. Poindexter was ins t ructor in pet rography andgenera l economic and engineering geology i n the CaseSchool of Applied Science, Cleveland, Ohio. I n June,1927, he resigned from Case to permanently enter theservice of his well-loved adopted State, Michigan, asmineral economist of the Geological Survey Divisionof the Department of Conservation, and continued aschief of the road niaterials survey, discovering, test-ing, mapping hun'dreds of deposits and writing sum-mary reports of each deposit , as well as workinginand writin g more detailed repor ts of the othe r mineral

2 Comparative Ethnologioal Studies, 7, GGteborg,1928, 1930.

21 A. Meillet, Les L angues du Monde, Pa ris, 1924,p. 10.


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The Status and Problems of Research in the Native Languages of South AmericaJ. Alden MasonScience , New Series, Vol. 101, No. 2620. (Mar. 16, 1945), pp. 259-264.Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-8075%2819450316%293%3A101%3A2620%3C259%3ATSAPOR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1

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6 La famille linguistique Timote (Venezuela)P. Rivet International Journal of American Linguistics , Vol. 4, No. 2/4. (Jan., 1927), pp. 137-167.

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