Matthias Urban
Biographic Data
| ID | 135664 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthias Urban |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthias |
| FAMILY NAME | Urban |
| SIGNATURE | URBAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tübingen |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7633-7433 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 57 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Reconstructing Word Meaning in Historical Linguistics
This article concerns a methodologically and empirically neglected aspect of historical linguistic practice: the reconstruction of word meaning. Following a general introduction that contextualizes the topic with background on semantic change, I discuss lexical semantic reconstruction (i) within the diachronic trajectory of a single language; (ii) as part of the historical-comparative reconstruction of language families and/or subgroups; and (iii…
How oral traditions develop
While large-scale comparative and historical analysis of folktales has largely disappeared from anthropological inquiry after the wane of diffusionism in the early 20th century, such approaches are experiencing a revival in the framework of cultural evolution. In that context, questions asked include to what extent narrative traditions are transmitted horizontally from generation to generation; influenced by practices of neighbors; and form large…
Roberto Zariquiey and Pilar M. Valenzuela
International audience
Spatial effects with missing data
In recent years, there has been an increased attention and interest in quantitative and statistical models of language contact and language diffusion in space. This article presents an improved model, multivAreate 2, to estimate spatial and contact relations between languages and dialects based on work by Guzmán Naranjo and Mertner ((2022). Estimating areal effects in typology: A case study of african phoneme inventories. Journal of Linguistic Ty…
Red, black, and white hearts
On the basis of a sample of 424 languages or dialects, this article provides a typological-comparative investigation of designations for three major internal organs of the torso, the ‘heart’, the ‘liver’, and the ‘lungs’. While colexification patterns are relatively unconstrained, the data show a skewing in morphologically complex terms: ‘heart’ and ‘liver’ often serve as head nouns in complex terms for ‘lungs’, but the reverse is rare. Another r…
Y Su Trampa Etimológica
La presente contribución concierne de nuevo el nombre de Chan Chan, la ciudad prehispánica más grande en toda América. Recientemente, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino sostuvo que el nombre debe ser etimologizado a través de una combinación de material quechua, que tuvo una presencia tenue y efímera en la costa norte peruana, y aimara, una lengua que no cuenta con ninguna presencia conocida allá en absoluto. Además de esta falla básica, discuto otros aspec…
Términos de parentesco diádicos en cholón (noreste de los Andes peruanos)
En esta contribución se analiza el morfema derivativo -pulleŋ en cholón, una lengua casi extinta del nororiente de los Andes peruanos, considerando que crea lo que en la literatura tipológica se llama 'términos de parentesco diádicos'. Estos morfemas derivan términos de parentesco que denotan la unión diádica de personas emparentadas por consanguinidad o por parentesco afín -por ejemplo, madre e hija, o esposo y esposa-. Este tipo de morfema es c…
Una nueva lista de palabras de la lengua mochica del siglo XIX
En el presente artículo se da a conocer una lista de 125 palabras de la lengua mochica, redactada en el año 1865 por iniciativa de Santiago C. Montjoy, entonces cónsul de los Estados Unidos en Lambayeque. La lista fue descubierta en los años setenta del siglo pasado por el arqueólogo James B. Richardson III entre la correspondencia diplomática de los cónsules estadounidenses en Lambayeque, archivada en los National Archives (Archivos Nacionales) …
Cholón and the linguistic prehistory of Northern Peru
At the eve of Spanish conquest, northern Peru is thought to have been home to a multitude of languages of relatively modest geographical extension, especially when compared with the widespread Quechuan and Aymaran languages. In this contribution, I suggest the possibility that a language or several languages relatively closely related to Choln were spoken in a much wider part of northern Peru than that in which Choln is historically attested. A p…
Linguistic and cultural divisions in pre-Hispanic Northern Peru
Interdisciplinary research at the interface of linguistics and archaeology is often concerned with relationships between archaeological cultures and language families, their subgroups, or their proto-languages. This often makes the problematic assumption of a one-to-one correspondence between groupings from the two disciplines. Here, I show how evidence from Northern Peru, a region which once hosted a myriad of well-differentiated local languages…
Mochica pronouns
This article embeds an attempt at internal reconstruction of the pronominal roots of Mochica, an extinct language of the north coast of Peru, into broader comparative perspectives on the consonantism of pronominal paradigms. Mochica presents a case of so-called m-t pronouns (i.e., featuring a bilabial nasal in the first-person pronoun and an alveolar stop or affricate in the second-person pronoun), which is common in Eurasia but rare in the Ameri…
Language classification, language contact and Andean prehistory
The northern half of the Andes-from Venezuela to Northern Peru-has seen dramatic losses of language diversity since the 16th century. Even so, the region's linguistic fabric is complex and multifaceted, and the impression of relatively low levels of diversity vis-à-vis Amazonia is to a perhaps considerable extent the result of different post-conquest trajectories rather than a reflection of pre-existing differences. As in Amazonia, branches of wi…
Mountain linguistics
Language use in mountainous areas often exhibits special social dynamics. This contribution sketches some of the most salient patterns of language use in upland Southeast Asia ,the greater Himalayas, the Caucasus, the Central Andes, the New Guinea highlands, and touches upon the Alps and some highland areas of Africa and North America. Accumulated over long time, such patterns of use yield particular-often highly diverse, fragmented, and disconti…
North and South in the ancient Central Andes
The Central Andes are characterized by the early emergence of complex societies and a chequered yet continuous cultural tradition. However, at least for certain points of time in the cultural development, the overall cohesiveness of this 'culture area' has been called into question, favoring an alternative perspective that emphasizes the existence of several relatively independent nuclei of development on the North Coast, the southern Peruvian Hi…
The impact of language contact on the Quechua varieties of Northern Peru
Studies of language contact in the Central Andes of Peru and Bolivia have focused strongly on the present-day contact situation between Quechua and Spanish, and the intricate and multilayered contact relationship between the Quechua and Aymara lineages. There are fewer studies of the influence of Quechua on minor non-Quechua languages of the Andes, and still fewer studies which, conversely, explore the influence of non-Quechua languages on Quechu…
Notes on Yurumanguí grammar and lexicon
In this article, I offer a contribution to the philological study of premodern materials of languages of South America that have already become extinct. I am concerned with the Yurumanguí language, whose speakers were encountered in the 18th century in the western lowlands of Colombia by a Spanish expedition. This encounter resulted in the production of a short collection of words and phrases by a priest which is analyzed here anew. Problems of i…
Is there a Central Andean Linguistic Area? A View from the Perspective of the "Minor" Languages
In this article, I reconsider the evidence for a Central Andean linguistic area. I suggest that there is no evidence for a clear-cut linguistic area comprising the entire Central Andes narrowly defined, and that perceived homogeneity is partially due to an overemphasis on the largest and surviving Central Andean language families, Quechuan and Aymaran. I show that none of the other Central Andean languages known sufficiently well match their typo…
The areal typology of western Middle and South America
Against a multidisciplinary background this contribution explores the areal typology of western Middle and South America. Based on a new language sample and a typological questionnaire that is specifically designed to bring some of the poorly documented and extinct languages into the debate, we explore the areal distribution of 77 linguistic traits in 44 languages. While one of the goals of the present article is to provide a general up-to-date v…
Spotlights on the notion of lexical motivation across languages in the Western linguistic tradition, from the 16th century to the present
This article shows that an interest in differences and similarities in patterns of lexical motivation across languages has a long, if discontinuous, history in Western linguistic thought. The aim of the article is to trace this history by presenting examples that highlight the enduring fascination of authors from very different traditions with recurrent patterns of lexico-semantic associations. It also discusses the significance attributed to the…
Quechuan terms for internal organs of the torso
This article discusses the terminology for the major internal organs of the torso across the Quechuan language family. From both semasiological and onomasiological points of view, differences in the synchronic organization of the semantic field across individual Quechua varieties as well as the diachronic developments that brought them about are described. Particular attention is also paid to semantic reconstruction within the field at the proto-…
Observaciones etimológicas acerca del nombre de la ciudad antigua de Chan Chan y sus estructuras arquitectónicas
Este artículo facilita comentarios onomásticos y etimológicos acerca de la ciudad prehispánica de Chan Chan en la costa norte peruana. El escrito se centra específi camente en los nombres propios Chan Chan y Chimú, que de modo parcial compiten uno con el otro. Se discute ambas denominaciones desde sus aspectos formales, semánticos y etimológicos. Luego, el artículo también considera un nombre posible de una de las estructuras arquitectónicas dent…
Ñaimlap, the Birds, and the Sea
Among the most intriguing oral testimonies of the late pre-Hispanic cultures of the Peruvian North Coast are the legends of origin that the Spanish were still able to record. In this article, we explore the names of the (mythological) first rulers and their associates which figure in one particularly famous North-Coast legend, that of Ñaimlap, the mythological founder of Lambayeque. We show that the name of Ñaimlap, as well as those of his courti…
Lexical semantic change and semantic reconstruction
El vocabulario sechurano de Richard Spruce
Esta nota hace accesible una nueva transcripción del vocabulario de la lengua de Sechura recolectado por Richard Spruce. Elaborado a mediados del siglo XIX por el botanista inglés, constituye una de las solo dos fuentes para esta lengua del extremo norte del Perú. La comparación del original con versiones publicadas anteriormente hace evidente graves errores de transcripción, particularmente en las versiones de Otto von Buchwald, y Jacinto Jijón …
Asymmetries in overt marking and directionality in semantic change
This article is a contribution to the long standing issue of identifying directionality in semantic change. Drawing on evidence from a sample of morphologically complex terms in basic vocabulary for 149 globally distributed languages, it is argued that cross-linguistically preferred synchronic relationships of word-formation provide clues to likely directions of diachronic semantic developments. The hypothesis is tested against diachronic data fr…
Automated Dating of the World's Language Families Based on Lexical Similarity
This paper describes a computerized alternative to glottochronology for estimating elapsed time since parent languages diverged into daughter languages. The method, developed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) consortium, is different from glottochronology in four major respects: (1) it is automated and thus is more objective, (2) it applies a uniform analytical approach to a single database of worldwide languages, (3) it is base…
North and South in the ancient Central Andes
The Central Andes are characterized by the early emergence of complex societies and a chequered yet continuous cultural tradition. However, at least for certain points of time in the cultural development, the overall cohesiveness of this 'culture area' has been called into question, favoring an alternative perspective that emphasizes the existence of several relatively independent nuclei of development on the North Coast, the southern Peruvian Hi…
Is there a Central Andean Linguistic Area? A View from the Perspective of the "Minor" Languages
In this article, I reconsider the evidence for a Central Andean linguistic area. I suggest that there is no evidence for a clear-cut linguistic area comprising the entire Central Andes narrowly defined, and that perceived homogeneity is partially due to an overemphasis on the largest and surviving Central Andean language families, Quechuan and Aymaran. I show that none of the other Central Andean languages known sufficiently well match their typo…
Cholón and the linguistic prehistory of Northern Peru
At the eve of Spanish conquest, northern Peru is thought to have been home to a multitude of languages of relatively modest geographical extension, especially when compared with the widespread Quechuan and Aymaran languages. In this contribution, I suggest the possibility that a language or several languages relatively closely related to Choln were spoken in a much wider part of northern Peru than that in which Choln is historically attested. A p…
Linguistic and cultural divisions in pre-Hispanic Northern Peru
Interdisciplinary research at the interface of linguistics and archaeology is often concerned with relationships between archaeological cultures and language families, their subgroups, or their proto-languages. This often makes the problematic assumption of a one-to-one correspondence between groupings from the two disciplines. Here, I show how evidence from Northern Peru, a region which once hosted a myriad of well-differentiated local languages…
Terms for the Unique Beginner
This study is a cross-linguistic survey of terms for the ‘unique beginner’, defined as the highest and most inclusive rank in an ethnozoological taxonomy. Drawing on data from a world-wide sample of 149 languages, I show that terms corresponding to this category are often formally complex or characterized by polysemy. In addition, languages often lack a term for the unique beginner category altogether, confirming claims to this effect in the lite…
Language classification, language contact and Andean prehistory
The northern half of the Andes-from Venezuela to Northern Peru-has seen dramatic losses of language diversity since the 16th century. Even so, the region's linguistic fabric is complex and multifaceted, and the impression of relatively low levels of diversity vis-à-vis Amazonia is to a perhaps considerable extent the result of different post-conquest trajectories rather than a reflection of pre-existing differences. As in Amazonia, branches of wi…
Mountain linguistics
Language use in mountainous areas often exhibits special social dynamics. This contribution sketches some of the most salient patterns of language use in upland Southeast Asia ,the greater Himalayas, the Caucasus, the Central Andes, the New Guinea highlands, and touches upon the Alps and some highland areas of Africa and North America. Accumulated over long time, such patterns of use yield particular-often highly diverse, fragmented, and disconti…
Notes on Yurumanguí grammar and lexicon
In this article, I offer a contribution to the philological study of premodern materials of languages of South America that have already become extinct. I am concerned with the Yurumanguí language, whose speakers were encountered in the 18th century in the western lowlands of Colombia by a Spanish expedition. This encounter resulted in the production of a short collection of words and phrases by a priest which is analyzed here anew. Problems of i…
The areal typology of western Middle and South America
Against a multidisciplinary background this contribution explores the areal typology of western Middle and South America. Based on a new language sample and a typological questionnaire that is specifically designed to bring some of the poorly documented and extinct languages into the debate, we explore the areal distribution of 77 linguistic traits in 44 languages. While one of the goals of the present article is to provide a general up-to-date v…
Asymmetries in overt marking and directionality in semantic change
This article is a contribution to the long standing issue of identifying directionality in semantic change. Drawing on evidence from a sample of morphologically complex terms in basic vocabulary for 149 globally distributed languages, it is argued that cross-linguistically preferred synchronic relationships of word-formation provide clues to likely directions of diachronic semantic developments. The hypothesis is tested against diachronic data fr…
Sun' and 'Moon' in the Circum-Pacific Language Area
This article reports on the peculiar distribution of languages lacking lexical differentiation for the concepts 'sun' and 'moon', i.e., languages that express both concepts with the same term or use terms that share lexical material. The phenomenon is largely confined to the Americas, but it is also found in indigenous languages of northeastern Eurasia ("Paleosiberian" languages) and languages of New Guinea. A representative sample of the world's…
Terms for the Unique Beginner
This study is a cross-linguistic survey of terms for the ‘unique beginner’, defined as the highest and most inclusive rank in an ethnozoological taxonomy. Drawing on data from a world-wide sample of 149 languages, I show that terms corresponding to this category are often formally complex or characterized by polysemy. In addition, languages often lack a term for the unique beginner category altogether, confirming claims to this effect in the lite…
Asymmetries in overt marking and directionality in semantic change
This article is a contribution to the long standing issue of identifying directionality in semantic change. Drawing on evidence from a sample of morphologically complex terms in basic vocabulary for 149 globally distributed languages, it is argued that cross-linguistically preferred synchronic relationships of word-formation provide clues to likely directions of diachronic semantic developments. The hypothesis is tested against diachronic data fr…
Automated Dating of the World's Language Families Based on Lexical Similarity
This paper describes a computerized alternative to glottochronology for estimating elapsed time since parent languages diverged into daughter languages. The method, developed by the Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) consortium, is different from glottochronology in four major respects: (1) it is automated and thus is more objective, (2) it applies a uniform analytical approach to a single database of worldwide languages, (3) it is base…
Lexical semantic change and semantic reconstruction
El vocabulario sechurano de Richard Spruce
Esta nota hace accesible una nueva transcripción del vocabulario de la lengua de Sechura recolectado por Richard Spruce. Elaborado a mediados del siglo XIX por el botanista inglés, constituye una de las solo dos fuentes para esta lengua del extremo norte del Perú. La comparación del original con versiones publicadas anteriormente hace evidente graves errores de transcripción, particularmente en las versiones de Otto von Buchwald, y Jacinto Jijón …
Observaciones etimológicas acerca del nombre de la ciudad antigua de Chan Chan y sus estructuras arquitectónicas
Este artículo facilita comentarios onomásticos y etimológicos acerca de la ciudad prehispánica de Chan Chan en la costa norte peruana. El escrito se centra específi camente en los nombres propios Chan Chan y Chimú, que de modo parcial compiten uno con el otro. Se discute ambas denominaciones desde sus aspectos formales, semánticos y etimológicos. Luego, el artículo también considera un nombre posible de una de las estructuras arquitectónicas dent…
Ñaimlap, the Birds, and the Sea
Among the most intriguing oral testimonies of the late pre-Hispanic cultures of the Peruvian North Coast are the legends of origin that the Spanish were still able to record. In this article, we explore the names of the (mythological) first rulers and their associates which figure in one particularly famous North-Coast legend, that of Ñaimlap, the mythological founder of Lambayeque. We show that the name of Ñaimlap, as well as those of his courti…
Quechuan terms for internal organs of the torso
This article discusses the terminology for the major internal organs of the torso across the Quechuan language family. From both semasiological and onomasiological points of view, differences in the synchronic organization of the semantic field across individual Quechua varieties as well as the diachronic developments that brought them about are described. Particular attention is also paid to semantic reconstruction within the field at the proto-…
The impact of language contact on the Quechua varieties of Northern Peru
Studies of language contact in the Central Andes of Peru and Bolivia have focused strongly on the present-day contact situation between Quechua and Spanish, and the intricate and multilayered contact relationship between the Quechua and Aymara lineages. There are fewer studies of the influence of Quechua on minor non-Quechua languages of the Andes, and still fewer studies which, conversely, explore the influence of non-Quechua languages on Quechu…
Notes on Yurumanguí grammar and lexicon
In this article, I offer a contribution to the philological study of premodern materials of languages of South America that have already become extinct. I am concerned with the Yurumanguí language, whose speakers were encountered in the 18th century in the western lowlands of Colombia by a Spanish expedition. This encounter resulted in the production of a short collection of words and phrases by a priest which is analyzed here anew. Problems of i…
Is there a Central Andean Linguistic Area? A View from the Perspective of the "Minor" Languages
In this article, I reconsider the evidence for a Central Andean linguistic area. I suggest that there is no evidence for a clear-cut linguistic area comprising the entire Central Andes narrowly defined, and that perceived homogeneity is partially due to an overemphasis on the largest and surviving Central Andean language families, Quechuan and Aymaran. I show that none of the other Central Andean languages known sufficiently well match their typo…
The areal typology of western Middle and South America
Against a multidisciplinary background this contribution explores the areal typology of western Middle and South America. Based on a new language sample and a typological questionnaire that is specifically designed to bring some of the poorly documented and extinct languages into the debate, we explore the areal distribution of 77 linguistic traits in 44 languages. While one of the goals of the present article is to provide a general up-to-date v…
Spotlights on the notion of lexical motivation across languages in the Western linguistic tradition, from the 16th century to the present
This article shows that an interest in differences and similarities in patterns of lexical motivation across languages has a long, if discontinuous, history in Western linguistic thought. The aim of the article is to trace this history by presenting examples that highlight the enduring fascination of authors from very different traditions with recurrent patterns of lexico-semantic associations. It also discusses the significance attributed to the…
Mountain linguistics
Language use in mountainous areas often exhibits special social dynamics. This contribution sketches some of the most salient patterns of language use in upland Southeast Asia ,the greater Himalayas, the Caucasus, the Central Andes, the New Guinea highlands, and touches upon the Alps and some highland areas of Africa and North America. Accumulated over long time, such patterns of use yield particular-often highly diverse, fragmented, and disconti…
North and South in the ancient Central Andes
The Central Andes are characterized by the early emergence of complex societies and a chequered yet continuous cultural tradition. However, at least for certain points of time in the cultural development, the overall cohesiveness of this 'culture area' has been called into question, favoring an alternative perspective that emphasizes the existence of several relatively independent nuclei of development on the North Coast, the southern Peruvian Hi…
Una nueva lista de palabras de la lengua mochica del siglo XIX
En el presente artículo se da a conocer una lista de 125 palabras de la lengua mochica, redactada en el año 1865 por iniciativa de Santiago C. Montjoy, entonces cónsul de los Estados Unidos en Lambayeque. La lista fue descubierta en los años setenta del siglo pasado por el arqueólogo James B. Richardson III entre la correspondencia diplomática de los cónsules estadounidenses en Lambayeque, archivada en los National Archives (Archivos Nacionales) …
Cholón and the linguistic prehistory of Northern Peru
At the eve of Spanish conquest, northern Peru is thought to have been home to a multitude of languages of relatively modest geographical extension, especially when compared with the widespread Quechuan and Aymaran languages. In this contribution, I suggest the possibility that a language or several languages relatively closely related to Choln were spoken in a much wider part of northern Peru than that in which Choln is historically attested. A p…
Linguistic and cultural divisions in pre-Hispanic Northern Peru
Interdisciplinary research at the interface of linguistics and archaeology is often concerned with relationships between archaeological cultures and language families, their subgroups, or their proto-languages. This often makes the problematic assumption of a one-to-one correspondence between groupings from the two disciplines. Here, I show how evidence from Northern Peru, a region which once hosted a myriad of well-differentiated local languages…
Mochica pronouns
This article embeds an attempt at internal reconstruction of the pronominal roots of Mochica, an extinct language of the north coast of Peru, into broader comparative perspectives on the consonantism of pronominal paradigms. Mochica presents a case of so-called m-t pronouns (i.e., featuring a bilabial nasal in the first-person pronoun and an alveolar stop or affricate in the second-person pronoun), which is common in Eurasia but rare in the Ameri…
Language classification, language contact and Andean prehistory
The northern half of the Andes-from Venezuela to Northern Peru-has seen dramatic losses of language diversity since the 16th century. Even so, the region's linguistic fabric is complex and multifaceted, and the impression of relatively low levels of diversity vis-à-vis Amazonia is to a perhaps considerable extent the result of different post-conquest trajectories rather than a reflection of pre-existing differences. As in Amazonia, branches of wi…
Red, black, and white hearts
On the basis of a sample of 424 languages or dialects, this article provides a typological-comparative investigation of designations for three major internal organs of the torso, the ‘heart’, the ‘liver’, and the ‘lungs’. While colexification patterns are relatively unconstrained, the data show a skewing in morphologically complex terms: ‘heart’ and ‘liver’ often serve as head nouns in complex terms for ‘lungs’, but the reverse is rare. Another r…
Y Su Trampa Etimológica
La presente contribución concierne de nuevo el nombre de Chan Chan, la ciudad prehispánica más grande en toda América. Recientemente, Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino sostuvo que el nombre debe ser etimologizado a través de una combinación de material quechua, que tuvo una presencia tenue y efímera en la costa norte peruana, y aimara, una lengua que no cuenta con ninguna presencia conocida allá en absoluto. Además de esta falla básica, discuto otros aspec…
Términos de parentesco diádicos en cholón (noreste de los Andes peruanos)
En esta contribución se analiza el morfema derivativo -pulleŋ en cholón, una lengua casi extinta del nororiente de los Andes peruanos, considerando que crea lo que en la literatura tipológica se llama 'términos de parentesco diádicos'. Estos morfemas derivan términos de parentesco que denotan la unión diádica de personas emparentadas por consanguinidad o por parentesco afín -por ejemplo, madre e hija, o esposo y esposa-. Este tipo de morfema es c…
Spatial effects with missing data
In recent years, there has been an increased attention and interest in quantitative and statistical models of language contact and language diffusion in space. This article presents an improved model, multivAreate 2, to estimate spatial and contact relations between languages and dialects based on work by Guzmán Naranjo and Mertner ((2022). Estimating areal effects in typology: A case study of african phoneme inventories. Journal of Linguistic Ty…
Linguistics (18 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (15 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · History (12 works) · Geography (11 works) · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies (10 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (10 works) · Language and cultural evolution (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works) · Sociology (8 works)