{
  "id": "zambrano-bonilla-arte-de-lengua-totonaca-1752",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Zambrano Bonilla, Arte de lengua totonaca (1752) — the only Totonac grammar that reached a press",
  "summary": "A parish priest's grammar of Totonac, printed in 1752 with a doctrina in the Naolingo dialect bound in, and the only one of at least seven described Totonac works to be printed at all. Its author says he knew two earlier grammars and chose not to follow them. It carries a 1752 articulatory description of the Totonac lateral fricative, and a nineteenth-century grammarian's audit of its self-contradictions.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "language",
    "books",
    "printing",
    "new-spain",
    "puebla",
    "veracruz",
    "translation",
    "eighteenth-century",
    "indigenous-peoples"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "matlatzinca-pirinda-missionary-philology"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "olmos-arte-lengua-mexicana-1547"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mixtec-printed-philology-1593"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "nebrija-gramatica-1492"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "hervas-catalogo-lenguas-americanas-1800"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Was there ever a printed grammar of the Totonac language?",
    "Who was José Zambrano Bonilla?",
    "What is the Arte de lengua totonaca of 1752?",
    "Which Totonac grammars were written before 1752 and never printed?",
    "How did an eighteenth-century Spanish priest describe the Totonac lh sound?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Ludewig transcribes the title at length: \"Arte de Lengua Totonaca, conforme el Arte de Antonio Nebrija. Compuesto por D. Joseph Zambrano Bonilla, Cura beneficiado\", dedicated to the archbishop and bishop of the diocese Domingo Pantaleón Álvarez de Abreu, and carrying bound in \"una doctrina de la Lengua Naolingo, con algunas voces de la Lengua de aquella Sierra y de esta de Aca\", printed by order of the same prelate and written by the Lic. D. Francisco Domínguez, cura de Xalpam de los Angelos. He gives the imprint as Puebla, 1752, octavo, pages 134 and 79 — two works, separately paginated, in one volume.",
      "sources": [
        "ludewig-totonaka-1858"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The two sources disagree about where the book was printed. Ludewig's entry gives Puebla, 1752; Pimentel, describing the copy he worked from, gives \"(México, 1752.)\". Both men had the book or a description of it in front of them and neither is checked against the other here, so the corpus prints both readings rather than choosing. Nothing else in the two descriptions conflicts.",
      "sources": [
        "ludewig-totonaka-1858",
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.6
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The grammar announces its own frame in its title — conforme al Arte de Antonio de Nebrija — and Pimentel, who used it as his source for the language, treats that as its central fault: the book \"está lleno de defectos en el método y en las explicaciones, porque ninguno como su autor se empeñó en imitar la Gramática latina\", and its title reads \"como si este gramático hubiera formado un molde para todas las lenguas\". Having said so he keeps it: the work \"contiene las reglas bastantes para conocer el idioma, así es que no obstante sus defectos me parece apreciable\".",
      "sources": [
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The 1752 book was not the first Totonac grammar, only the first to reach a press. Zambrano says so himself: he mentions the artes of Pinelo and of Zurita and writes \"No nos ha parecido seguirlos por llevar nosotros distinto rumbo\" — he knew earlier grammars existed and set out on a different course.",
      "sources": [
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Around that single printed book stands a list of works that were described and not printed, or printed and never found. Pimentel records that Clavijero cites Andrés de Olmos and Cristóbal Díaz de Anaya as each having composed a grammar and a dictionary, and that he has seen cited a grammar by Toral, another by the cura D. Eugenio Romero, a catechism and confessionary by Antonio Santoyo, and an arte and vocabulary by Fr. Francisco Tobar. Ludewig's independent list adds the detail that Toral was bishop of Yucatán and died in Mexico in 1571, that Díaz Anaya was cura of Olintla in Puebla, and that these were manuscripts.",
      "sources": [
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862",
        "ludewig-totonaka-1858"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "One of those entries is a bibliographic ghost worth naming as such. Ludewig's separate TOTONACA section lists \"Andreas de Olmoz, Grammatica et Lexicon Linguæ Mexicanæ, Totonaquæ et Huastecæ, Mexico, 1560, 2 vols. 4to\" and adds that \"Both Barcia-Pinelo and Clavigero mention this book as printed\" — a form of words that reports the claim without endorsing it, and Ludewig cites no copy. Whether a printed Totonac grammar of 1560 ever existed is therefore open on this evidence.",
      "sources": [
        "ludewig-totonaka-1858"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.6
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The book covers two varieties, and the sources let one see why. The language was spoken in the districts of Zacatlán in the state of Puebla and in the state of Veracruz, in four dialects — Tatiquilhati, Chacahuaxti, Ypapana and Tatimolo — and Ludewig notes that \"Naolingo is the dialect generally called Tatimolo\". The grammar describes one variety; the doctrina bound in with it is in another, with words from the sierra and from the lowland added.",
      "sources": [
        "ludewig-totonaka-1858"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The most durable thing in the book is a piece of articulatory phonetics. Pimentel quotes Zambrano on a sound Spanish does not have: \"para la pronunciacion de la lh se dobla la lengua tocando con la punta el paladar, dilatando los labios sobre los dientes á medio abrir la boca, y difundiendo la voz á modo de silbo por los dos lados de los labios que se mueven y suenan, segun la vocal á que se juntan\" — the lateral fricative of Totonac described by tongue, lips and airstream in 1752. The same passage describes tz. The alphabet Pimentel prints from the book runs a, ch, e, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, t, u, v, x, y, z, tz, lh.",
      "sources": [
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Pimentel's notes are an audit of the book against itself, with the page of every charge. Zambrano says at page 2 that b, d, f and r are lacking and then adds that there is no ñ or ll; at page 1 that h is used in place of g and at page 2 that the letter is not used in writing, while pages 3 and 4 explain its pronunciation and the work is full of gg; at page 3 that there is no v, while at pages 2 and 127 he states that Totonac authors used it. Pimentel keeps g, because h will not express the sound, and drops j and s on the author's own statements that h serves for j and z for s.",
      "sources": [
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The book's list of homonyms runs to more than one hundred and thirty, and Pimentel judges that many must be struck off it because the words are in fact distinguished by accent or by the different letters with which they are written and pronounced. The figure is given here because it shows what the grammar was for: a working priest's aid to not being misunderstood.",
      "sources": [
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The name of the people is glossed in the volume itself, and the gloss comes from the second author. Pimentel cites Francisco Domínguez's Doctrina de Naolingo for the statement that \"Totonaco significa á la letra, tres corazones en un sentido, y tres panales en otro\", toto being three and naco heart, and observes that the literal translation does not explain the sense, which is plainly metaphorical. Pimentel adds that three seems to have held something mysterious for the Totonacs, citing a solemn sacrifice of three children every three years; that last statement is his, unsourced in his text, and is reported here as his rather than as fact.",
      "sources": [
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.5
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "The 1752 imprint itself was not reachable from this container. Every statement above is read through a bibliography compiled in New York and printed in London in 1858 and a comparative grammar printed in Mexico in 1862; the quotations from Zambrano are quotations as Pimentel set them. The evidence tier is secondary for that reason and not because the book is doubtful.",
      "sources": [
        "ludewig-totonaka-1858",
        "pimentel-cuadro-descriptivo-1862"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Totonac is missing from most accounts of colonial missionary philology, which run from Nahuatl to Quechua and stop; where the 1752 Arte appears at all it is a one-line catalogue entry. This object gives the book its contents and its context: the transcribed title page with the doctrina in a second dialect bound in, the author's own admission that two earlier grammars existed and he chose another course, the six further works that never reached print, a printed-in-1560 grammar that no one can produce a copy of, the four dialects and which one Naolingo is, and the 1752 articulatory description of the Totonac lateral fricative. It also carries the criticism with the achievement — Pimentel's page-by-page list of the book's contradictions — and prints the unresolved disagreement between its two sources about whether the thing was printed at Puebla or at Mexico.",
  "confidence": 0.8,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-16",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/zambrano-bonilla-arte-de-lengua-totonaca-1752",
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  "jsonld": {
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    "name": "Zambrano Bonilla, Arte de lengua totonaca (1752) — the only Totonac grammar that reached a press",
    "description": "A parish priest's grammar of Totonac, printed in 1752 with a doctrina in the Naolingo dialect bound in, and the only one of at least seven described Totonac works to be printed at all. Its author says he knew two earlier grammars and chose not to follow them. It carries a 1752 articulatory description of the Totonac lateral fricative, and a nineteenth-century grammarian's audit of its self-contradictions.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/zambrano-bonilla-arte-de-lengua-totonaca-1752",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-16",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Cuadro descriptivo y comparativo de las lenguas indígenas de México (1862) — the chapters EL TOTONACO and EL MATLATZINCA Ó PIRINDA",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=tnl9gHdM3NIC&pg=PA227"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "The TOTONAKA and TOTONACA entries in The Literature of American Aboriginal Languages",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=BA9bAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA190"
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Zambrano Bonilla, Arte de lengua totonaca (1752) — the only Totonac grammar that reached a press"
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}