Comecrudan refers to a group of possibly related languages spoken in the southernmost part of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

and in northern

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

along the Rio Grande of which ''Comecrudo'' is the best known. Very little is known about these languages or the people who spoke them. Knowledge of them primarily consists of word lists collected by European missionaries and explorers. All Comecrudan languages are extinct.

Family division

The three languages were: # Comecrudo (also known as Mulato or Carrizo) ''(†)'' # Garza ''(†)'' # Mamulique (also known as Carrizo de Mamulique) ''(†)''

Genetic relationships

John Wesley Powell John Wesley Powell (March 24, 1834 – September 23, 1902) was an American geologist, U.S. Army soldier, explorer of the American West, professor at Illinois Wesleyan University, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He ...

's 1891 classification of North American languages, Comecrudo was grouped together with the Cotoname and Coahuilteco languages into a family called

Coahuiltecan The Coahuiltecan were various small, autonomous bands of Native Americans who inhabited the Rio Grande valley in what is now southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. The various Coahuiltecan groups were hunter-gatherers. First encountered by Europ ...

John R. Swanton John Reed Swanton (February 19, 1873 – May 2, 1958) was an American anthropologist, folklorist, and linguist who worked with Native American peoples throughout the United States. Swanton achieved recognition in the fields of ethnology and et ...

(1915) grouped together the Comecrudo, Cotoname, Coahuilteco,

Karankawa The Karankawa were an Indigenous people concentrated in southern Texas along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, largely in the lower Colorado River and Brazos River valleys."Karankawa." In ''Cassell's Peoples, Nations and Cultures,'' edited by John ...

Tonkawa The Tonkawa are a Native American tribe indigenous to present-day Oklahoma. Their Tonkawa language, now extinct, is a linguistic isolate. Today, Tonkawa people are enrolled in the federally recognized Tonkawa Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. ...

, Atakapa, and Maratino languages into a Coahuiltecan grouping.

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sap ...

(1920) accepted Swanton's proposal and grouped this hypothetical Coahuiltecan into his

Hokan The Hokan language family is a hypothetical grouping of a dozen small language families that were spoken mainly in California, Arizona and Baja California. Etymology The name ''Hokan'' is loosely based on the word for "two" in the various Hokan ...

stock. After these proposals, documentation of the Garza and Mamulique languages was brought to light, and Goddard (1979) believes that there is sufficient similarity between them and Comecrudan for them to be considered genetically related. He rejects all other relationships. Powell's original Coahuiltecan, renamed Pakawan and extended with Garza and Mamulique, has been defended by Manaster Ramer (1996), who also sees a relationship with Karankawa probable and Atakapa as a more distant possibility. This proposal has been challenged by Campbell, who considers its sound correspondences unsupported and considers that some of the observed similarities between words may be due to borrowing.

Evidence

The following table of common core vocabulary constitutes the complete evidence given by Goddard (1979: 380) in support of a Comecrudan family. Berlandier's manuscripts contain the only existing records of Mamulique and Garza.Berlandier, Jean L.; & Chowell, Rafael (1850). Luis Berlandier and Rafael Chovell. ''Diario de viage de la Commission de Limites''. Mexico.

References

Bibliography

Secondary literature

* Campbell, Lyle. (1997). ''American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America''. New York: Oxford University Press. . * Campbell, Lyle; & Mithun, Marianne (Eds.). (1979). ''The languages of native America: Historical and comparative assessment''. Austin: University of Texas Press. * Goddard, Ives. (1979). The languages of south Texas and the lower Rio Grande. In L. Campbell & M. Mithun (Eds.) ''The languages of native America'' (pp. 355–389). Austin: University of Texas Press. * Goddard, Ives (Ed.). (1996). ''Languages''. Handbook of North American Indians (W. C. Sturtevant, General Ed.) (Vol. 17). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. . * Goddard, Ives. (1999). ''Native languages and language families of North America'' (rev. and enlarged ed. with additions and corrections). ap Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (Smithsonian Institution). (Updated version of the map in Goddard 1996). . * Manaster Ramen, Alexis. (1996). Sapir's Classifications: Coahuiltecan. ''Anthropological Linguistics'' ''38/1'', 1–38. * Mithun, Marianne. (1999). ''The languages of Native North America''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (hbk); . * Saldivar, Gabriel. (1943). ''Los Indios de Tamaulipas''. Mexico City: Pan American Institute of Geography and History. * Sapir, Edward. (1920). The Hokan and Coahuiltecan languages. ''International Journal of American Linguistics'', ''1'' (4), 280-290. * Sturtevant, William C. (Ed.). (1978–present). ''Handbook of North American Indians'' (Vol. 1-20). Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution. (Vols. 1–3, 16, 18–20 not yet published). * Swanton, John R. (1915). Linguistic position of the tribes of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico. ''American Anthropologist'', ''17'', 17–40.