Yolanda Lastra de Suárez (born 1932) is a Mexican

linguist 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 ...

specializing in the descriptive linguistics of the indigenous languages of Mexico. She obtained her

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

degree in 1963 from

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, her dissertation written under the guidance of Charles F. Hockett treating the

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 ...

of Cochabamba Quechua in

Bolivia Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...

. She was married to Argentinian linguist Jorge A. Suárez (1927-1985). Lastra has worked with linguistic documentation and dialectology of the

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 ...

and

Otomi language Otomi ( ; ) is an Oto-Pamean languages, Oto-Pamean language spoken by approximately 240,000 indigenous Otomi people in the Mexican Plateau, central ''altiplano'' region of Mexico. Otomi consists of several closely related languages, many of whi ...

s and is recognized as a leading authority in the studies of Oto-Pamean languages in general. Her 1986 book ''Áreas dialectales del Náhuatl moderno'' is the single most comprehensive work on the dialectology of modern Nahuatl ever published. Lastra is currently a senior investigator at the Institute of Anthropology at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México. Since May 2014 she is a full member of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua, the Mexican Language Academy.

Partial bibliography

Lastra's published works include: * * * * * * * * *

References

External sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lastra, Yolanda Mexican Mesoamericanists Women Mesoamericanists Cornell University alumni 1932 births Linguists from Mexico 20th-century Mesoamericanists Living people Linguists of Mesoamerican languages Linguists of Uto-Aztecan languages Linguists of Oto-Manguean languages Members of the Mexican Academy of Language