While early dictionaries of Indigenous languages in New Spain have received consistent scholarly attention, the early grammars (artes) have, until recently, been dismissed as error-filled, prescriptivist texts. In other words, previous scholars have argued that these grammars did not accurately describe Indigenous languages because of their reliance on Latin grammatical frameworks. However, scholars of missionary linguistics, a subfield of historical linguistics, began to challenge this notion in the 1990s. Since then, scholars more familiar with Indigenous languages have rebutted this claim and have shown the innovative, often descriptivist, approaches friar linguists employed in describing the grammar of Indigenous languages.
I present a brief overview of my dissertation research on five Nahuatl grammars and four K’iche’an (Kaqchikel, K’iche’, and Tz’utujil in this case) language grammars. I argue that these texts reveal the intellectual network among friars, their evolving debates regarding grammar, and the translation methodologies of different religious orders.
Nicolas Barnum is a PhD candidate in the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies. His research, inspired by the study of Nahuatl and Mayan languages, is rooted in the disciplines of linguistic anthropology, history, and religious studies. His dissertation focuses on the Nahuatl and K’iche’an grammars produced by friars and Indigenous collaborators during the early part of the viceregal period in New Spain (1521-1821). He has received generous research support from Dumbarton Oaks (Summer Fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies, 2025), the American Philosophical Society (Daythal L. Kendall Short-Term Fellow, 2026), and the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane University. He will present his research at the upcoming 13th International Conference on Missionary Linguistics held jointly in Spain and Portugal in March and April of 2027.
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