LINGUISTIC ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE POQOMCHI’- SPEAKING AREA: TRACING LANGUAGE CONTACTS BEFORE AND AFTER THE CONQUEST

Written documents in Amerindian languages stemming from the colonial period provide valuable information for historical linguistics, as they present unique empirical attestations of linguistic phenomena that no longer exist in modern languages. This data can also be used in linguistic archaeology to reconstruct the social contexts in which the speakers of ancient languages lived. This paper discusses language contacts in the Maya area by analysing early colonial manuscripts in the Poqomchi’ language. Poqomchi’ speakers were in close contact with speakers of Western Ch’olan Mayan languages before the Spanish Conquest. The direction of contacts changed in the 16th century under the influence of Dominican missionaries. Several similarities in the grammatical development during the colonial period may be observed between Poqomchi’ and Q’eqchi’, a neighbouring K’iche’an language. However, Poqomchi’ maintains the tendency to borrow linguistic structures rather than individual lexemes, which may be due to the deliberate efforts on the part of the speakers to preserve their ethnic identity.