Mesoamerican Linguistic Area Totally Explained

Everything about The Mesoamerican Linguistic Area totally explained

The Mesoamerican Linguistic Area is a sprachbund containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethnolinguistic traits found in the languages of Mesoamerica, which belong to a number of linguistic families, such as Uto-Aztecan, Mayan, Totonacan, Oto-Manguean and Mixe-Zoquean languages as well as some language isolates and unclassified languages known to the region.

History of Mesoamerican areal linguistics

The similarities noted between many of the languages of Mesoamerica have led linguistic scholars to propose the constitution of a sprachbund, from as early as 1959 . The proposal wasn't consolidated until 1986 however, when Lyle Campbell, Terrence Kaufman and Thomas Smith-Stark employed a rigid linguistic analysis which demonstrated that the similarities between a number of languages were indeed considerable, with the conclusion that their origins were very likely caused by diffusion rather than inheritance - the standard criteria for defining a sprachbund.
In their 1986 paper "Meso-America as a Linguistic Area" the above-mentioned authors explored several proposed areal features of which they discarded most as being weakly attested, possibly due to chance or inheritance or not confined to the Mesoamerican region. However, five traits in particular were shown to be widely-attested among the languages, with boundaries coinciding with that of the Mesoamerican region and having a probable origin through diffusion. They then compared these five traits with the traits defining other linguistic areas considered to be well-established –for example, the East Asian Sprachbund and Balkan linguistic union – and they concluded that by comparison the proposed Mesoamerican Linguistic Area could indeed be considered a well-founded area: arguably "among the very strongest that are known" (Campbell, Kaufman & Smith-Stark. 1986 p.556).
They also argued that some of the discarded traits might also be taken into consideration as strengthening the proposal but that they were not sufficient by themselves to act as foundation and other well documented traits of a more ethnolinguistic character might not be considerable as truly linguistic traits but rather cultural.

Traits defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area

The following is a brief description of the linguistic traits considered by Campbell, Kaufman and Smith-Stark as defining the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.

Nominal possession

Many of the Mesoamerican languages show a particular kind of construction for possession of nominals. The commonly found construction is "his noun1 noun2" meaning "noun2's noun1".
For example in K'iche' (Mayan) u-tzi' le achih "the man's dog" literally meaning "his-dog the man". The similar construction in Náhuatl would be i:-itzkwin in tla:katl.

Relational nouns

Another trait shared by nearly all Mesoamerican languages is relational nouns. Relational nouns are used to express spatial and other relations, much like prepositions in the Indo-European languages but composed of a noun and possessive affixes. ť For example in Pipil (Uto-Aztecan):

ť nu-wa:n "with me" (nu- means "my")

mu-wa:n "with you" (mu- means "yours") ť i-wa:n "with her" (i- means "his/her/its")

ť Or in Mam (Mayan):

n-wits-a "on me" (n- means "my") ť t-wits "on her" (t- means "his/her/its").

Pied-piping with inversion

Pied-piping with inversion is a special word order found in wh-questions. It appears to be found in all Mesoamerican languages, but is rare outside Mesoamerica.

Vigesimal numeral system

All the languages of Mesoamerica have vigesimal, or base twenty numeral systems. Some languages just outside the borders of the Meso-American cultural area also have such systems but these are also considered to have spread by diffusion.

Non verb final syntax and absence of switch-reference

No language with verb final basic word order is attested in Mesoamerica even though most of the languages bordering on Mesoamerica are Verb Final SOV languages. Also no languages with switch reference are attested in Mesoamerica, but this is supposed by Campbell, Kaufman and Smith-Stark to be a secondary effect of the Mesoamerican languages not being verb final.

Widespread semantic calques

A strong evidence of diffusion throughout Mesoamerica is provided by a number of semantic calques widely found throughout the area.
For example in many Mesoamerican languages the words for specific objects are constructed by compounding two different stems, and in many cases these two stems are semantically identical although linguistically unrelated.
Among these calques are:

leg-head meaning "knee"
deer-snake meaning "boa constrictor"
stone-ash meaning "limestone"
hand-neck meaning "wrist"
bird-stone meaning "egg"
blood-road meaning "vein"
grind-stone meaning "molar"
mouth meaning "edge"
god-excrement or sun-excrement meaning "precious metal"
hand-mother meaning "thumb"
water-mountain meaning "town"

Other traits

Other traits found in Mesoamerican languages, but not found by Campbell, Kaufman and Smith-Stark to be prominent enough to be conclusive for the proposal of the Linguistic Area are:

Use of incorporation of bodypart nouns into verbs.

Derivation of locatives through bodypart nouns.

The existence of whistled languages

Grammatical indication of intimate or inalienable possession

The existence of numeral classifiers

Grammaticalised polite forms for second person addressees.

A special ritual language register.Further Information

Get more info on 'Mesoamerican Linguistic Area'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://mesoamerican_linguistic_area.totallyexplained.com">Mesoamerican Linguistic Area Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.