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Part of
Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond
Edited by Karen Dakin, Claudia Parodi and Natalie Operstein
[Studies in Language Companion Series 185] 2017
► pp. 301–318

Chapter 14
Loanwords in Apachean from indigenous languages of the Southwest

| University of North Texas
Most studies of Apachean language contact have focused on Spanish borrowings into these languages, or on the more recent English language influences. In this paper, the focus is on how some indigenous Southwestern languages, belonging to the Kiowa-Tanoan, Uto-Aztecan, and Zuni families, have influenced Apachean. The evidence is rather scant, but intriguing, and includes, in addition to cases of noun borrowing, some cases of sentence particle or clitic borrowing. I argue that one common pattern was to borrow, sometimes temporarily, from another indigenous language because the Apachean word was taboo, or had to be dissimulated for some other reason. This avoidance pattern is similar to the obfuscating usage of Spanish words by Apaches when confronted with nineteenth-century English-speaking interrogators.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Apachean languages
  • 3.Kiowa-Tanoan language lexical borrowing into Apachean
  • 4.Hopi and Zuni sentence particle or clitic borrowing into Apachean
  • 5.Comanche and other Uto-Aztecan influences on Apachean languages
  • 6.The wider context of indigenous language contact in the Southwest
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.185.14der
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