Morphology in Mesoamerican languages contacts

International audience Few grammatical affixes have been borrowed from Spanish into native Mesoamerican languages. At the level of the nominal morphology, Suárez (1977), Hill and Hill (1986), and Flores Farfán (1999) show that only three elements have been borrowed in various varieties of Nahuatl: the plural suffix (-s/-es), the agentive marker (-tero/-ero) and the diminutive marker (-ito/-ita). Stolz (1998 cited by Stolz 2008) indicate that Yucatec Maya also borrowed the agentive and the diminutive markers. Swadesh (1967) and Chamoreau (2007) point out that only one suffix has been borrowed in Purepecha, the diminutive marker. These facts are in accordance with the results presented by Stolz (2008) and with the assertion made by Matras (2007: 44) that "Borrowing of bound markers favours in particular plural markers, diminutive and agentive derivational markers, and classifiers (but not gender markers) [...]". The aim of the talk is to explore the loan of the diminutive marker in some languages of Mesoamerica. In Spanish, the diminutive marker can be codified by various forms -ito, -ita, -illo, -illa, -cito, -cita, -cillo, -cilla. Nevertheless only the first two have been reported as borrowings. These elements are very productive and very creative in the Spanish varieties spoken in Mexico and are used for a large range of communicative intentions: to indicate something is small (perrito), to indicate something is charming (abuelita), to provide a nuance of meaning (ahorita), to give a friendly tone (quisiera un refresquito), to indicate something is unimportant (mentirita) ... (Reynoso 2001). The study of the loan of the diminutive marker is particularly interesting because this marker encodes two different categories: the diminutive category -it, and the gender category which distinguishes a masculine form -ito from a feminine one, -ita. The first category is rather transparent at the semantic level and thus more easily borrowable, the second is not transparent since the languages investigated lack a grammatical category of gender (Matras 2007). The first objective of the talk is to explain the reason why these languages have borrowed this marker while they possess an element which allows the expression of the diminutive category, for example: -tsin in Nahuatl, chan in Yucatec Maya, sapi in Purepecha. Since these native elements are polysemous, the borrowing of the Spanish marker creates a form specialized at the semantic level. Although the Spanish diminutive marker shows different contextual uses, the languages restrict its use to express a positive and emotional feeling. The second objective is to analyse how these languages which do not have grammatical differentiation of gender borrow a marker which encodes this distinction. According to Field (2002: 195-196), certain constraints make the borrowing of an affix difficult if a category does not exist in the receiving language. These languages show a similar strategy to by-pass this typological constraint. They generally retain the masculine form (-ito), which is apparently a result of the relative frequency of such forms. Nevertheless, they also use the feminine form (-ita). Each language shows particularities in the capacity of borrowing this form. The specific behaviour of each language can be explained by sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors. I will thus argue that even if certain typological constraints exist, sociolinguistic and pragmatic factors allow to get round them and make possible the introduction of a distinction of gender in contexts related with the borrowing of the diminutive marker in these languages (Thomason 2001).