The Cotoname Language: An Analysis

The article presents all extant documentation on the extinct Cotoname language, once spoken near the Rio Grande. The primary sources are two nineteenth-century manuscripts, each containing a little more than 100 Cotoname words. The more recent source consists of field notes by the linguist Albert S. Gatschet, dating from December 1886. The earlier source is a vocabulary collected by the French naturalist Jean Louis Berlandier around 1828. Berlandier’s vocabulary has not been previously published. Both these sources were collected near Camargo, Tamaulipas, and are about as different as might be expected from two researchers recording the language of the same group 58 years apart. The vocabulary of Cotoname has some interesting loanwords and compounds which reflect the history of the region. The phonology, morphology and syntax of the language can only partially be recovered, but some tentative conclusions are presented.