The Mesoamerican Indian Languages

The volume will be of interest and importance both to general linguists and to others with a serious interest in Mesoamerican culture and society.

Jorge A. Suarez (Author)

9780521296694, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 April 1983

228 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.342 kg

At least a hundred indigenous Indian languages are known to have been spoken in Mesoamerica, the cultural area that includes most of Mexico and part of South America, but it is only in the past fifty years that many of them have been adequately described. For some we still have no more than a partial description, often in an obscure source. Professor Suárez draws together this considerable mass of scholarship in a general survey that will provide an invaluable source of reference. The approach is primarily descriptive, and a major part of the volume is concerned with synchronic descriptions of phonology, morphology and syntax. The volume will be of interest and importance both to general linguists and to others with a serious interest in Mesoamerican culture and society.

List of illustrations
List of tables
Preface
Notational conventions
1. The study of Mesoamerican Indian languages
2. Dialects, languages and linguistic families
3. Phonology I
4. Phonology II
5. Morphology I
6. Morphology II
7. Syntax I
8. Syntax II
9. Preconquest literary traditions
10. The prehistory of Mesoamerican Indian languages
11. Indian languages after the conquest
Appendix
References
Language index
Subject index.

Subject Areas: Linguistics [CF]