Frances Esther Karttunen (born 1942), also known as Frances Ruley Karttunen, is an American academic linguist, historian and author.

Education and career

She received her BA in 1964 from Harvard and her PhD in 1970 from

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

, with a dissertation entitled ''Problems in Finnish Phonology''. Most of her academic career was spent in association with the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

, where she held researcher and lecturer positions for over 30 years, until her retirement in 2000, as senior university research scientist at the Linguistics Research Center. In her

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

career Karttunen has specialised in the study of

Mesoamerican languages Mesoamerican languages are the languages Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The ar ...

such as

Mayan Mayan most commonly refers to: * Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Mayan languages, language family spoken ...

but in particular

Nahuatl Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...

, on which topic she has authored seven books and numerous academic papers. She has also written about

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a " dead langua ...

linguistic diversity Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is ch ...

and

language translation Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...

. Early in her career Karttunen also produced several studies of

Finnish phonology Unless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to Standard Finnish language, Finnish, which is based on the dialect spoken in the former Häme Province in central south Finland. Standard Finnish is used by professional speakers, such a ...

and

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

, including her 1970 dissertation. As a historian Karttunen has published research in areas such as historical

Mesoamerican literature The traditions of indigenous Mesoamerican literature extend back to the oldest-attested forms of early writing in the Mesoamerican region, which date from around the mid- 1st millennium BCE. Many of the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica are kn ...

, colonial-era

Aztec The Aztecs ( ) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the Post-Classic stage, post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central ...

and

Nahua The Nahuas ( ) are a Uto-Nahuan ethnicity and one of the Indigenous people of Mexico, with Nahua minorities also in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. They comprise the largest Indigenous group in Mexico, as well as ...

history, and the social organizations,

socio-political Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how ...

concerns and

literacy rate Literacy is the ability to read and write, while illiteracy refers to an inability to read and write. Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was ...

s of

indigenous peoples of Mexico Indigenous peoples of Mexico (), Native Mexicans () or Mexican Native Americans (), are those who are part of communities that trace their roots back to populations and communities that existed in what is now Mexico before the arrival of Europe ...

. Karttunen has also written and lectured about the local history of

Nantucket Nantucket () is an island in the state of Massachusetts in the United States, about south of the Cape Cod peninsula. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck Island, Tuckernuck and Muskeget Island, Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and Co ...

. Her 1976 publication ''Nahuatl in the Middle Years: Language Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period,'' with James Lockhart, is a foundational text for the

New Philology New Philology can refer to: * The nineteenth-century intellectual movement in philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary ...

. She followed this by an article on

literacy, showing how the

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El S ...

n tradition of pictorial writing then transitioned to alphabetic writing in Latin letters by local-level notaries in a self-perpetuating tradition. Her 1997 article, "Rethinking Malinche", on

La Malinche Marina () or Malintzin (; 1500 – 1529), more popularly known as La Malinche (), was a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who became known for contributing to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519–1521), by acting as an int ...

, known in the colonial era as Doña Marina, is a significant revisionist take on the choices that Cortés' cultural translator and consort faced and took. She also published ''An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl'' and several iterations of a ''Foundation Course in Nahuatl Grammar'', culminating in the 1994 edition (with linguist R. Joe Campbell). She was married to historian

Alfred W. Crosby Alfred Worcester Crosby Jr. (January 15, 1931 – March 14, 2018) was a professor of History, Geography, and American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and University of Helsinki. He was the author of books including '' The Columbian ...

Selected publications

*''Between Worlds: Interpreters, Guides and Survivors''. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 199

*"From Court Yard to the Seat of Government: The Career of Antonio Valeriano, Nahua Colleague of Bernardino de Sahagún". ''Amerindia Revue d'Etholonguistique Amérindienne'', n. 20, 1995, pp. 113–12

*"Interpreters Snatched from the Shore: The Successful and The Others". In Edward G. Gray and Norman Fiering (eds.) ''The Language Encounter in the Americas, 1492-1800.'' New Work: Berghahn Books, 2000, pp. 215–229.

References

External links

Photograph of Frances Karttunen
by Philip Spalding III
Frances Karttunen's websiteAudio file of "Rethinking Malinche" Part 1, read by Frances KarttunenAudio file of "Rethinking Malinche" Part 2, read by Frances Karttunen
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karttunen, Frances 1942 births Living people 20th-century Mesoamericanists 21st-century American historians 21st-century American women Linguists from the United States American women linguists American Mesoamericanists Women Mesoamericanists Linguists of Mesoamerican languages Scholars of the Aztecs People from Nantucket, Massachusetts Radcliffe College alumni Indiana University Bloomington alumni University of Texas at Austin faculty Linguists of Uto-Aztecan languages Historians from Massachusetts American women historians