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19-540: The Mixean languages are a primary branch of the Mixe–Zoquean language family of southern Mexico. According to Wichmann (1995), there are three divergent Mixean languages, and a Oaxacan branch that constitutes the bulk of the family: One of the languages is extinct, one is nearly extinct, and one is endangered. List of ISO 639-3 codes and demographic information of Mixean languages from Ethnologue (22nd edition): Mixe%E2%80%93Zoquean languages Historically

38-662: A number of the linguistic features that later became some of the principal commonalities used in defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area . The so-called " language of Zuyua  [ es ] ", which was used by some of the nobility and priesthood of the postclassic Yucatan region, may have been a Mixean language. The Mixe–Zoque languages have been included in several long-range classification proposals, e.g. in Edward Sapir 's "Mexican Penutian" branch of his proposed Penutian linguistic superfamily, or as part of

57-441: Is found in a few words in some of the languages, these are probably of onomatopoeic origin. *ɨ   *ɨː has also been reconstructed *ə   *əː . Mixe–Zoquean languages are characterized by complex syllabic nuclei made up of combinations of vowels together with the glottal stop and /h/ in the proto-language. Complex syllable-final consonant clusters are also typical in the daughter languages and can be reconstructed for

76-620: Is likely that the Olmec people, generally seen as the earliest dominating culture of Mesoamerica , spoke a Mixe–Zoquean language. Kaufman and John Justeson also claim to have deciphered a substantial part of the text written in Isthmian script (called also by them and some others 'Epi-Olmec') which appears on La Mojarra Stela 1 , based upon their deciphering of the text as representing an archaic Mixe–Zoquean language. Both of these claims have been criticized: Michael D. Coe and David Stuart argue that

95-419: Is made between two basic clause -types, independent and dependent; verbs take different aspectual and personal affixes, depending on the type of clause in which they appear. There are two different sets of aspect -markers, one used in dependent clauses and another used in independent clauses. Three aspects are distinguished within each clause-type: incompletive, completive, and irrealis. Ethnologue still uses

114-710: Is presented for linking the Mixe–Zoque languages either with the Totonacan languages (" Totozoquean "), or with the Mayan languages . The following internal classification of the Mixe–Zoquean languages is by Søren Wichmann (1995). The following internal classification of the Mixe–Zoquean languages is by Kaufman & Justeson (2000), cited in Zavala (2000). Individual languages are marked by italics . Justeson and Kaufman also classify

133-475: Is still under discussion. In Lost Languages (2008) Andrew Robinson summarises the position as follows: Overall, then, the case for the Justeson/Kaufman 'decipherment' of Isthmian is decidedly unproven and currently rests on shaky foundations ... What it needs, more urgently than some other 'decipherments' given its evident linguistic sophistication, is the discovery of a new text or texts as substantial as

152-572: Is structurally similar to the Maya script , and like Maya uses one set of characters to represent morphemes , and a second set to represent syllables . The four most extensive Isthmian texts are those found on: Other texts include: In a 1993 paper, John Justeson and Terrence Kaufman proposed a partial decipherment of the Isthmian text found on the La Mojarra Stela, claiming that the language represented

171-586: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec , dating to c.  500 BCE – 500 CE , though with dates subject to disagreement. It is also called the La Mojarra script and the Epi-Olmec script ('post-Olmec script'). It has not been conclusively determined whether Isthmian script is a true writing system that represents a spoken language, or is a system of proto-writing . According to a disputed partial decipherment, it

190-508: The Macro-Mayan proposal by Norman McQuown which groups together the Mixe–Zoque languages with the Mayan languages and the Totonacan languages . At the end of the last century, Lyle Campbell dismissed most earlier comparisons as methodologically flawed, but considered the Macro-Mayan proposal the most promising, but yet unproven hypothesis. In two more recently published articles, evidence

209-547: The La Mojarra text was disputed by Stephen D. Houston and Michael D. Coe , who had tried unsuccessfully to apply the Justeson-Kaufman decipherment-system to the Isthmian text on the back of the hitherto unknown Teotihuacan-style mask (which is of unknown provenance and is now in a private collection). Along with proposing an alternative linguistic attribution of Epi-Olmec writing as proto- Huastecan , Vonk (2020) argued that

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228-554: The Mixe–Zoquean family may have been much more widespread, reaching into the Soconusco region and the Guatemalan Pacific coast. It has been hypothesized that Mixean speakers were present, and perhaps represented ruling classes, at the preclassic sites of Kaminaljuyu , Takalik Abaj , and Izapa . Terrence Kaufman and Lyle Campbell have argued, based on a number of widespread loanwords in other Mesoamerican languages , that it

247-402: The earlier pre-Wichmann classification, based on surveys of mutual intelligibility and comparative work by William Wonderly, as a basis for their work. This classification is not used by historical linguists, and Lyle Campbell 's authoritative 1997 presentation uses Wichmann's classification. Isthmian script The Isthmian script is an early set of symbols found in inscriptions around

266-408: The language represented in the Epi-Olmec script as an early Zoquean language . The phoneme inventory of Proto-Mixe–Zoquean as reconstructed by Wichmann (1995) can be seen to be relatively simple, but many of the modern languages have been innovative; some have become quite vowel rich, and some also have introduced a fortis–lenis contrast in the stop series. Although the lateral phoneme /l/

285-598: The period of borrowing much later than the Proto-Mixe–Zoquean time-frame in which the Olmec culture was at its height. The date of the Mixe–Zoque split has however since been pushed back, and the argument is therefore much weaker than it once was thought to be. Later, Kaufman (2001), again on the basis of putative loans from Mixe–Zoque into other Mesoamerican languages, argued a Mixe–Zoquean presence at Teotihuacan , and he ascribed to Mixe–Zoquean an important role in spreading

304-419: The proto-language. Proto-Mixe–Zoquean syllable nuclei could be either: The Mixe–Zoquean languages are head-marking and polysynthetic , with morphologically complex verbs and simple nouns. Grammatical subjects as well as objects are marked in the verb. Ergative alignment is used, as well as direct–inverse systems triggered by animacy and topicality . In Mixe–Zoquean verbs, a morphological distinction

323-427: The size of the corpus compares unfavorably in comparison with the rate of repetition within the corpus, so that a unique decipherment is simply impossible given the current state of affairs. He goes on in illustrating the principal applicability of readings in random Old and New world languages (including Ancient Greek, Latin, Spanish and German) to demonstrate the coincidental nature of any such proposals. The matter

342-419: The surviving corpus of the few known examples of Isthmian inscriptions is insufficient to securely ground any proposed decipherment. Their attempt to apply Kaufman's and Justeson's decipherments to other extant Isthmian material failed to produce any meaningful results. Wichmann (1995) criticizes certain proposed Mixe–Zoquean loans into other Mesoamerican languages as being only Zoquean, not Mixean, which would put

361-493: Was a member of the Zoquean language family. In 1997, the same two epigraphers published a second paper on Epi-Olmec writing, in which they further claimed that a newly discovered text-section from the stela had yielded readily to the decipherment-system that they had established earlier for the longer section of text. This led to a Guggenheim Fellowship for their work, in 2003. The following year, however, their interpretation of

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