Viejos nuevos datos. Un corpus para el estudio histórico del cambio lingüístico en una lengua indígena

Abstract

In this paper I explore the process by which a corpus for the study of the linguistic change in a native language in Mexico; the purépecha; was constituted. The characteristics of the material (data from 16th and 20th centuries); the limited knowledge—or; shall we say; lack of it—of its object of study and the dynamic point of view that guides this analysis define the specificity of the gaze. The reflection on the following stages of the work that needed to be developed and the criteria that lead us to finally integrate a real corpus that were useful in order to explain the history of this native language with little written tradition aims to show a moment of the research that inevitably is shared by other fields of the discipline.