GOLD AND CALQUES IN MESOAMERICA: TRACING THE INTRODUCTION OF GOLD TO MESOAMERICA THROUGH LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

GOLD AND CALQUES IN MESOAMERICA: TRACING THE INTRODUCTION OF GOLD TO MESOAMERICA THROUGH LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE

Published:2019-12-31 Issue: Volume:13 Page:113-136
ISSN:2080-8216
Container-title:Contributions in New World Archaeology
language:en
Short-container-title:CNWA

Author:

Hansen Magnus¹^ORCID,Helmke Christophe¹^ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Department of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract

Gold appears relatively late in the Mesoamerican archeological record, initially imported as pieces from Central America in the Classic period. Nevertheless, Mesoamerican languages share a set of lexical calques referring to gold as either ‘god excrement’ or ‘sun excrement’. This study traces the path of this calque as it moves between different languages, arguing that the most likely path of the calque originated as ‘sun excrement’ and passed from a language family in Eastern Mesoamerica, probably in Mayan, into Nahuatl which transformed it into ‘god excrement’ and passed this form into proto-Otomi-Mazahua. These insights about the sequentiality of borrowing and calqueing provide us important information about the contact between different linguistic groups in Classic through to Postclassic Mesoamerica.

Publisher

Wydawnictwo i Pracownia Archeologiczna PROFIL-ARCHEO

Subject

General Medicine

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