Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond
Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond

Author: Karen Dakin

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-06-30

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 9027265712

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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.

Syntactic Complexity
Syntactic Complexity

Author: T. Givón

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009-04-22

Total Pages: 561

ISBN-13: 9027290148

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Complex hierarchic syntax is considered one of the hallmarks of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the apex of the uniquely-human language faculty – evolutionary but somehow immune to adaptive selection. This volume, coming out of a symposium held at Rice University in March 2008, tackles syntactic complexity from multiple developmental perspectives. We take it for granted that grammar is an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic cognition. Most of the papers in the volume deal with the two grand developmental trends of human language: diachrony, the communal enterprise directly responsible for fashioning synchronic morpho-syntax; and ontogeny, the individual endeavor directly responsible for the acquisition of competent grammatical performance. The genesis of syntactic complexity along these two developmental trends is considered alongside with the cognition and neurology of grammar and of syntactic complexity, and the evolutionary relevance of diachrony, ontogeny and pidginization is argued on general bio-evolutionary grounds. Lastly, several of the contributions to the volume suggest that recursive embedding is not in itself an adaptive target, but rather the by-product of two distinct adaptive gambits: the recruitment of conjoined clauses as modal operators on other clauses and the subsequent condensation of paratactic into syntactic structures.

Relative Clauses in Languages of the Americas
Relative Clauses in Languages of the Americas

Author: Bernard Comrie

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2012-09-20

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 9027273391

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Patterns of relative clause formation tend to vary according to the typological properties of a language. Highly polysynthetic languages tend to have fully nominalized relative clauses and no relative pronouns, while other typologically diverse languages tend to have relative clauses which are similar to main or independent clauses. Languages of the Americas, with their rich genetic diversity, have all been under the influence of European languages, whether Spanish, English or Portuguese, a situation that may be expected to have influenced their grammatical patterns. The present volume focuses on two tasks: The first deals with the discussion of functional principles related to relative clause formation: diachrony and paths of grammaticalization, simplicity vs. complexity, and formalization of rules to capture semantic-syntactic correlations. The second provides a typological overview of relative clauses in nine different languages going from north to south in the Americas.

The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity
The Genesis of Syntactic Complexity

Author: T. Givón

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009-02-04

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 9027290059

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Complex hierarchic syntax is a hallmark of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the evolutionary apex of the uniquely - human language faculty - evolutionary yet mysteriously immune to Darwinian adaptive selection. Prof. Givón's book treats syntactic complexity as an integral part of the evolutionary rise of human communication. The book first describes grammar as an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic object- and-event cognition and mental representation. It then surveys the two grand developmental trends of human language: diachrony, the communal enterprise directly responsible for fashioning synchronic morpho-syntax and cross-language diversity; and ontogeny, the individual endeavor directly responsible for acquiring the competent use of grammar. The genesis of syntactic complexity along these two developmental trends is compared with second language acquisition, pre-grammatical pidgin and pre-human communication. The evolutionary relevance of language diachrony, language ontogeny and pidginization is argued for on general bio-evolutionary grounds: It is the organism's adaptive on-line behavior- invention, learning and skill acquisition - that is the common thread running through all three developmental trends. The neuro-cognitive circuits that underlie language, and their evolutionary underpinnings, are described and assessed. Recursive embedding turns out to be not an adaptive target on its own, but the by-product of two distinct adaptive moves: (i) the recruitment of conjoined clauses as modal operators on, or referential specifiers of, other clauses; and (ii) the subsequent condensation of paratactic into syntactic structures.

Upper Necaxa Totonac Dictionary
Upper Necaxa Totonac Dictionary

Author: David Beck

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2011-07-27

Total Pages: 872

ISBN-13: 3110238233

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The Upper Necaxa Totonac Dictionary represents to-date the most extensive collection of lexical material for any member of the Totonac-Tepehua family and the only such record for this previously-undescribed polysynthetic language, currently spoken in two principal dialects by some 3,400 people, mainly adults, in the Sierra Norte of Puebla State, Mexico. As well as a short grammatical sketch, the dictionary comprises 9,000 lexical entries, including numerous fixed expressions, idioms, and ideophones; each lexical entry is accompanied by part-of-speech information and phonetic transcriptions as well as, where appropriate, dialectal information, grammatical notes (including plurals and classifiers for nouns), literal morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, example sentences, and cross-references to derived forms and semantically-related words. The accompanying DVD includes additional illustrative sentences, audio recordings of headwords and examples, and interlinear glosses for many of the sentences included in lexical entries. This book is the first Totonacan dictionary to be structured for the academic linguist, with special attention paid to the morphological structure of words and the organization of the Totonacan lexicon. Glosses are constructed so as to reflect the underlying complement-structure of words, with careful indication of the number of arguments required by particular lexical items, and all verbs are classified by dynamicity and valency. This dictionary is of interest to linguists working on American indigenous languages, as well as those concerned with the structure of morphologically complex words and the role of derivation in the lexicon of polysynthetic languages. It is also of use to historical linguists and Mesoamericanists interested in the reconstruction of the pre-Columbian history and ethnogeography of Mexico.