The Mesoamerican Indian Languages

The Mesoamerican Indian Languages
Author: Jorge A. Suarez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1983-04-14
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521296694

At least a hundred indigenous Indian languages are known to have been spoken in Mesoamerica, but it is only in the past fifty years that many of them have been adequately described. Professor Suárez draws together this considerable mass of scholarship in a general survey that will provide an invaluable source of reference.

Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond

Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond
Author: Karen Dakin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2017-06-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027265712

Language-contact phenomena in Mesoamerica and adjacent regions present an exciting field for research that has the potential to significantly contribute to our understanding of language contact and the role that it plays in language change. This volume presents and analyzes fresh empirical data from living and/or extinct Mesoamerican languages (from the Mayan, Uto-Aztecan, Totonac-Tepehuan and Otomanguean groups), neighboring non-Mesoamerican languages (Apachean, Arawakan, Andean languages), as well as Spanish. Language-contact effects in these diverse languages and language groups are typically analyzed by different subfields of linguistics that do not necessarily interact with one another. It is hoped that this volume, which contains works from different scholarly traditions that represent a variety of approaches to the study of language contact, will contribute to the lessening of this compartmentalization. The volume is relevant to researchers of language contact and contact-induced change and to anyone interested both in the historical development and present features of indigenous languages of the Americas and Latin American Spanish.

Learning Indigenous Languages: Child Language Acquisition in Mesoamerica

Learning Indigenous Languages: Child Language Acquisition in Mesoamerica
Author: Barbara Pfeiler
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2011-12-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110923149

This book includes six studies on the acquisition of single Mesoamerican indigenous languages, (Huichol, Zapotec, and the Mayan languages Ch'ol, Tzeltal, K'iche', and Yukatek); and a crosslinguistic study of five Mayan languages (K'anjob'al, K'iche', Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Yukatek). Three topics are theoretically and methodologically discussed and empirically demonstrated: with respect to ergativity, the ergative-absolutive cross-referencing pattern on the morphological level, noun-verb distinction and the acquisition of body-part locatives in the early lexicon, and the role of semantic properties and cultural context in language acquisition and socialization. This book makes important claims regarding the methodology of cross-linguistic studies as well as the results of these studies and the comparative method used in the book (structural and discursive factors in language acquisition, cross-linguistic relationships and variation).

In the Language of Kings

In the Language of Kings
Author: Miguel Leon-Portilla
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 762
Release: 2002-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780393324075

The first anthology in any language to represent the full trajectory of this remarkable literature.

Mesoamerican Voices

Mesoamerican Voices
Author: Matthew Restall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2005-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316224295

Mesoamerican Voices, first published in 2006, presents a collection of indigenous-language writings from the colonial period, translated into English. The texts were written from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries by Nahuas from central Mexico, Mixtecs from Oaxaca, Maya from Yucatan, and other groups from Mexico and Guatemala. The volume gives college teachers and students access to important new sources for the history of Latin America and Native Americans. It is the first collection to present the translated writings of so many native groups and to address such a variety of topics, including conquest, government, land, household, society, gender, religion, writing, law, crime, and morality.

Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

Mexican Indigenous Languages at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century
Author: Margarita Hidalgo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2008-08-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110197677

This volume explores the reversing language shift (RLS) theory in the Mexican scenario from various viewpoints: The sociohistorical perspective delves into the dynamics of power that emerged in the Mexican colony as a result of the presence of Spanish. It examines the processes of external and internal Indianization affecting the early European protagonists and the varied dimensions of language shift and maintenance of the Mexican colonial period. The Mexican case sheds light upon language contact from the time in which Western civilization came into contact with the Mesoamerican peoples, for the encounter began with a demographic catastrophe that motivated a recovery mission. While the recovery of Mexican indigenous languages (MIL) was remarkable, RLS ended after fifty years of abundant productivity in MIL. Since then, the slow process of recovery is related to demographic changes, socioreligious movements, rebellion, confrontation, and survival strategies that have fostered language maintenance with bilingualism and language shift with culture preservation. The causes of the Chiapas uprising are analyzed in connection with the language attitudes of the indigenous peoples, while language policy is discussed in reference to the new Law of Linguistic Rights of the Indigenous Peoples (2003). A quantitative classification of the MIL is offered with an overview of their geographic distribution, trends of macrosocietal bilingualism, use in the home domain, and permanence in the original Mesoamerican settlements. Innovative models of bilingual education are presented along with relevant data on several communities and the philosophies and methodologies justifying the programs. A model of Mazahua language use is presented along the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale.

Indian Languages of Mexico and Central America

Indian Languages of Mexico and Central America
Author: Cyrus Thomas
Publisher: Palala Press
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2015-09-18
Genre:
ISBN: 9781343025738

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