Analysis of the nomenclature and classification of Hymenoptera in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec, an endangered language from southwest Mexico

Yoloxóchitl Mixtec (YM), spoken on the Pacific Coast of Guerrero, is one of 52 Mixtec languages listed by Ethnologue. Over the past five years, extensive work on YM language documentation (corpus development, grammar, and lexicography) included collection of over 1000 arthropods named and categorized by four YM collaborators and then identified in Western binomial nomenclature by approximately 75 specialized taxonomists.

This presentation analyzes YM knowledge of Hymenoptera (principally Apidae, Crabronidae, Formicidae, Mutillidae, Pompilidae, Sphecidae, Vespidae). Although a Western phylogenetic category, Hymenoptera have been chosen as a case study because of the large numbers of morphologically and behavioristically distinct species in relatively few families. This pool of over seventy referents offers an excellent opportunity to study cognitive processes in YM: the nomenclature and classification of the natural environment. The results demonstrate that strategies for assigning names to taxa (morphology, habitat, behavior) influence the saliency, boundaries, and internal structure of native categories.