Date: June 13, 2017
Time: 12:20-13:50
Venue: Collaboration Room 3 on the 4th Floor of the Building 18, Komaba Campus, UTokyo
Language: Spanish
Co-sponsored by the Department of Area Studies (Latin American Studies)


Roberto Aurelio Núñez López (Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro)
Hñäñho phytonymy: etymology, lexical borrowings and neologisms of the plants of the ñäñhos from Amealco, Queretaro


Plants are indispensable in the daily life of the ñähños and of the entire human race. Besides being a material resource, they have also an inmaterial value, which is inherent to their culture. The names of the plants tell us about their origen, about the history of the people and about the intercultural contact. In this interdisciplinary work, on the boundary between linguistics and ethnobotany, we have documented the hñäñho phytonomy of the plants used by the ñäñhos from Amealco, Querétaro. To do this, we carried out a series of interviews and we elicited names from native speakers from Santiago Mexquititlán and San Ildefonso Tultepec, Amealco, conducted to form a list  of  a botanical lexicon, which was analysed in order to get to know the etymology, lexical borrowings and neologisms of the hñäñho phytonyms. We identified totally 219 plants, including products, varieties and fungi. The plants that are culturally important are very well known among the population and only have one name, while other plants have more than two names.  We registrated totally 343 phytonyms by means of which the ñäñhos refer to their plants and products, and some of them had more than one name. Seventy four percent (249) of the phytonyms were hñäñho names; nineteen percent (69) were loanwords, mainly from Spanish, although we also identified a loanword from Nahuatl and five loanwords from Quechua; 7 percent (25) of the names were mixed or hybrid, compounds that contain both a word from Spanish and a word from Hñäñho. The native names of the plants refer to plants that are native to Mexico, while the loanwords and hybrid nouns account for the plants introduced by the Spaniards during the colonial era.


References
  • del Paso y Troncoso, 1988. La botánica entre los nahuas y otros estudios. Secretaria de Educación Pública. México, D. F. 287 p. 
  • de la Cruz M. 1991[1552]. Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis. Fondo de Cultura Económica / Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, México, D. F. 258 p. 
  • de Sahagún B. 2002. Historia General de las cosas de la Nueva España. Cien México. Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. México, D.F. 1450 p. 
  • Hekking E., S. Andrés de Jesús, P. de Santiago Quintanar, A. Guerrero Galván & R. A. Núñez-López. 2010. He’mi Mpomuhñä ar Hñäñho ar Hñämfo Ndämaxei / Diccionario bilingüe otomí-español del estado del Querétaro. Tres volúmenes. Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas. México D.F. 1400 p.
  • Hekking E. D. Bakker. 2009. Loanwords in Otomi, an Otomanguean language of Mexico, pp 897-917 (21 p). En: M. Haspelmath & U. Tadmor (eds.), Loanwords in the world’s languages: a comparative Handbook. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 1081 p. 
  • Hekking E. y D. Bakker, 2010. Tipología de los préstamos léxicos en el otomí de Querétaro: una contribución para el estudio sistemático, y comparativo de diversas lenguas del mundo desde un enfoque interlingüístico. Ciencia UAQ, 3(1): 27-47.
  • Hernández de L. P. A. 2014. El impacto de las lenguas mesoamericanas en otras lenguas del mundo. Arqueología Mexicana, 22(130):60-65.
  • Navarro J. 1992.  Historia Natural o Jardín Americano. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado. México, D. F. 314 p.
  • Petkova Ingrid. 2010. Los nahuatlismos en el español de México. Verbum Analecta Neolatina 12 (2): 599-612.
  • Serrano V.,  F. Sánchez y R, Pelz. 1992. Recetario “plantas medicinales de Amealco, Querétaro”, Herbario Queretano No. 2, Serie Científica, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro-Concyteq, México.