37.3646, Confs: Workshop at 59 Congress of Americanists: The Changing Geographies of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas / La geografía cambiante de las lenguas indígenas del continente americano (Colombia)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3646. Thu 05 Nov 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3646, Confs: Workshop at 59 Congress of Americanists: The Changing Geographies of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas / La geografía cambiante de las lenguas indígenas del continente americano (Colombia)

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Date: 03-Nov-2026
From: Matthias Urban [matthias.urban at cnrs.fr]
Subject: Workshop at 59 Congress of Americanists: The Changing Geographies of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas / La geografía cambiante de las lenguas indígenas del continente americano


Workshop at 59 Congress of Americanists: The Changing Geographies of
the Indigenous Languages of the Americas / La geografía cambiante de
las lenguas indígenas del continente americano
Short Title: ICA

Date: 05-Jul-2027 - 09-Jul-2027
Location: Medellín, Colombia
Contact: Matthias Urban
Contact Email: matthias.urban at cnrs.fr
Meeting URL:
https://congresoica.org/inicio/simposios/?simposio=7289850

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; General Linguistics;
Historical Linguistics

Submission Deadline: 31-Jan-2027

Workshop description (version española abajo):
As is well known, the Americas constitute one of the world's most
linguistically rich regions. Although estimates vary, conservative
reconstructions suggest the existence—in South America alone—of up to
one thousand languages belonging to no fewer than 110 linguistic
lineages (Kaufman 1990), 40% of which are represented by a single
language (Seifart and Hammarström 2017). In North America, California
alone was home to no fewer than 78 languages (Golla 2011), many
belonging to small, local families; the rest of the continent
significantly increases the number of both languages and families. As
in the rest of the world, this diversity is not evenly distributed:
large areas of high diversity can be observed, such as Amazonia or
California, in contrast to others where diversity is lower.
At the same time, these distributions are not static, and maps such as
those by Haynie and Gavin (2019) or Kaufman (2007) represent a generic
"contact-point" situation that may never have actually existed. This
is because such contact points can differ by hundreds of years,
meaning these maps run the risk of indirectly portraying Indigenous
peoples as though they had no history prior to European colonization
(Wolf 1982). European contact has often drastically altered the
distribution of Indigenous languages and continues to do so across the
entirety of the Americas. On the one hand, state-backed settler
colonialism frequently displaced Indigenous peoples from the most
economically attractive lands, drastically impacting both demographic
and linguistic structures. On the other hand, for some groups,
European impact opened new opportunities to expand beyond their
traditional homelands (e.g., Rhodes 2020). Although nearly ubiquitous,
these shifts in language ranges have rarely been investigated in
detail, despite their importance for understanding the complex
linguistic history of the Americas and for studying patterns and
asymmetries in linguistic diversity at a continental (e.g., Pacheco
Coelho et al. 2019) or global scale (Nettle 1999, Hua et al. 2019).
In this workshop, our goal is to trace these developments at local,
regional, or continental levels. We welcome contributions presenting
case studies on how the distribution of a language or language family
has changed. This can be grounded in various lines of evidence,
whether historical-linguistic, ethnographic, based on historical
documents, or using place-name (toponymic) analysis—which often
conservatively preserves earlier stages of linguistic distributions
(Urban 2023)—and, where appropriate, archaeological evidence. We also
welcome broader-scope contributions that attempt to reconstruct the
ancient linguistic landscape of a region at a given point in time,
such as Urban (2019) for the northern coast of Peru. In both cases,
the objective is to gather material to improve the historical mapping
of linguistic diversity across the continent. In line with the main
theme of the conference, we also accept papers exploring how the bond
between language and territory continues to be represented in cultural
memory, a recurring phenomenon in both North America (e.g., Basso
1996) and South America (e.g., Santos-Granero 1998).
---
Como se sabe, el continente americano constituye una de las regiones
del mundo con mayor riqueza lingüística. Aunque las estimaciones
difieren, reconstrucciones conservadoras proponen la existencia, solo
en América del Sur, de hasta mil lenguas pertenecientes a no menos de
110 linajes lingüísticos (Kaufman 1990), de los cuales un 40 % está
representado por una sola lengua (Seifart y Hammarström 2017). En
América del Norte, solo California contaba con no menos de 78 lenguas
(Golla 2011), muchas pertenecientes a familias pequeñas y locales; el
resto del continente incrementa significativamente la cantidad de
lenguas y familias. Al igual que en el resto del mundo, esta
diversidad no se distribuye de manera homogénea: se observan amplias
zonas de alta diversidad, como Amazonia o California, en contraste con
otras donde es menor.
Al mismo tiempo, estas distribuciones no son estáticas, y mapas como
los de Haynie y Gavin (2019) o Kaufman (2007) representan una
situación genérica de "punto de contacto" que quizá nunca existió.
Esto se debe a que dicho punto puede diferir por cientos de años, por
lo que tales mapas corren el riesgo de indirectamente retratar a los
pueblos indígenas como si no tuvieran historia antes de la
colonización europea (Wolf 1982). Muchas veces el impacto europeo ha
cambiado drásticamente la distribución de las lenguas indígenas y
continúa haciéndolo en el continente americano en su totalidad. Por un
lado, el colonialismo de asentamiento respaldado por el Estado
desplazó a menudo a los pueblos indígenas de las tierras
económicamente más atractivas, impactando de forma drástica la
estructura demográfica y lingüística. Por otro, para algunos grupos,
el impacto europeo abrió nuevas oportunidades para expandirse más allá
de sus tierras tradicionales (p.ej., Rhodes 2020). Aunque casi
ubicuos, estos cambios en el alcance de las lenguas rara vez se han
investigado en detalle, pese a su importancia para comprender la
compleja historia lingüística del continente americano y estudiar
patrones y asimetrías en la diversidad lingüística a escala
continental (p.ej., Pacheco Coelho et al. 2019) o global (Nettle 1999,
Hua et al. 2019).
En este taller, nuestro objetivo es rastrear estos desarrollos a nivel
local, regional o continental. Recibimos contribuciones que presenten
estudios de caso sobre cómo cambió la distribución de una lengua o
familia lingüística. Esto puede basarse en distintas líneas de
evidencia, ya sea histórico-lingüística, etnográfica, basada en
documentos históricos, análisis de topónimos --a menudo conservadores
y preservadores de etapas anteriores de las distribuciones
lingüísticas (Urban 2023)-- y, cuando corresponda, evidencia
arqueológica. También recibimos contribuciones de mayor alcance que
intenten reconstruir el antiguo paisaje lingüístico de una región en
un momento dado, como Urban (2019) para la costa norte de Perú. En
ambos casos, el objetivo es obtener material para mejorar la
cartografía histórica de la diversidad lingüística del continente. En
línea con el tema central del congreso, aceptamos además trabajos
sobre cómo el vínculo entre lengua y territorio puede seguir
representado en la memoria cultural, fenómeno recurrente tanto en
América del Norte (p.ej., Basso 1996) como en América del Sur (p.ej.,
Santos-Granero 1998).
Referencias:
Basso, Keith H. 1996. Wisdom sits in places: landscape and language
among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Golla, Victor. 2011. California Indian languages. Berkeley/Los
Angeles: University of California Press.
Haynie, Hannah J., and Michael C. Gavin. 2019. Modern language range
mapping for the study of language diversity. doi:
10.31235/osf.io/9fu7g.
Hua, Xia, Simon J. Greenhill, Marcel Cardillo, Hilde Schneemann, and
Lindell Bromham. 2019. Nature Communications 10: 2047 (2019
Kaufman, Terrence. 1990. Language History in South America: What we
know and how to know more. En: Doris L. Payne (ed.). Amazonian
linguistics: studies in lowland Amazonian languages, 13–74. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Kaufman, Terrence. 2007. South America. In: R. E. Asher and
Christopher Moseley (eds.): Atlas of the World‘s Languages, 2nd ed.
59-94. London: Routledge.
Nettle, Daniel. 1999. Linguistic diversity. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Pacheco Coelho, Marco Túlio, Elisa Barreto Pereira, Hannah J. Haynie,
Thiago F. Rangel, Patrick Kavanagh, Kathryn R. Kirby, Simon J.
Greenhill, Claire Bowern, Russell D. Gray, Robert K. Colwell, Nicholas
Evans, and Michael C. Gavin. 2019. Drivers of geographical patterns of
North American language diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
Biological Sciences 286 (1899): 20190242
Rhodes, Richard. 2020. Language shift in the Subarctic and Central
Plains. En: Tom Güldemann, Patrick McConvell, and Richard A. Rhodes
(eds.): The language of hunter-gatherers, 552-576. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Santos-Granero, Fernando. 1998. Writing history into the landscape:
space, myth, and ritual in contemporary Amazonia. American Ethnologist
25 (2): 128-148.
Seifart, Frank, and Harald Hammarström. 2017. Language isolates in
South America. In: Lyle Campbell (ed.): Language isolates, 260–286.
London: Routledge.
Urban, Matthias. 2019. Lost languages of the Peruvian North Coast.
Berlin: Iberoamerikanisches Institut.
Urban, Matthias. 2023. Linguistic stratigraphy: recovering traces of
lost languages in the Central Andes. New York: Springer.
Wolf, Eric R. 1982. Europe and the people without history.
Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press.


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