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

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

and in northern

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

along the

Rio Grande The Rio Grande ( or ) in the United States or the Río Bravo (del Norte) in Mexico (), also known as Tó Ba'áadi in Navajo language, Navajo, is one of the principal rivers (along with the Colorado River) in the Southwestern United States a ...

of which ''Comecrudo'' is the best known. These were spoken by the

Comecrudo people The Comecrudo people were an Indigenous people of Mexico, who lived in the northern state of Tamaulipas. They were a Coahuiltecan people. Territory The Comecrudo lived in northern Tamaulipas in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the late 18th cent ...

. Very little is known about these languages or the people who spoke them. Knowledge of them primarily consists of word lists collected by

European European, or Europeans, may refer to: In general * ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe ** Ethnic groups in Europe ** Demographics of Europe ** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe and other West ...

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Miss ...

and explorers. All Comecrudan languages are

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

Family division

The three languages were: * Comecrudan **

Comecrudo Comecrudan refers to a group of possibly related languages spoken in the southernmost part of Texas and in northern Mexico along the Rio Grande of which ''Comecrudo'' is the best known. These were spoken by the Comecrudo people. Very little is ...

( Mulato or Carrizo) ** Garza ** Mamulique ( 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 The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas Pre-Columbian era, before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while m ...

, Comecrudo was grouped together with the

Cotoname Cotoname is an Indigenous language of Mexico and the American state of Texas formerly spoken by Native Americans indigenous to the lower Rio Grande Valley of northeastern Mexico and extreme southern Texas (United States). Today it is extinct, a ...

and

Coahuilteco Coahuilteco was one of the Indigenous languages that was spoken in southern Texas (United States) and northeastern Coahuila (Mexico). It is now extinct, and is typically considered to be a language isolate, but has also been proposed to be part o ...

languages into a family called

Coahuiltecan The Coahuiltecan were various small, autonomous bands of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Native Americans who inhabited the Rio Grande valley in what is now northeastern Mexico and southern Texas. The various Coahuiltecan groups were hunter ga ...

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 ethn ...

(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 Joh ...

Tonkawa The Tonkawa are a Native American tribe from Oklahoma and Texas. Their Tonkawa language, now extinct language, extinct, is a linguistic isolate. Today, Tonkawa people are enrolled in the Federally recognized tribes, federally recognized Tonkawa ...

Atakapa The Atakapa Sturtevant, 659 or Atacapa were an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, who spoke the Atakapa language and historically lived along the Gulf of Mexico in what is now Texas and Louisiana. They included several distinct b ...

, and Maratino languages into a Coahuiltecan grouping.

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American anthropologist-linguistics, 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 ...

(1920) accepted Swanton's proposal and grouped this hypothetical Coahuiltecan into his 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 Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (laboratory), a highly specialized shared research resource * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber), ...

constitutes the complete evidence given by Goddard (1979: 380) in support of a Comecrudan family.

Berlandier Jean-Louis Berlandier (1803 – 1851) was a French-Mexican naturalist, physician, and anthropologist. Early life Berlandier was born in Geneva, and later trained as a botanist there. During this time he probably served an apprenticeship to a pha ...

'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.