Language Contact, Inherited Similarity and Social Difference

The story of linguistic interaction in the Maya lowlands

Danny Law | University of Texas at Austin

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027248473 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027270474 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

This book offers a study of long-term, intensive language contact between more than a dozen Mayan languages spoken in the lowlands of Guatemala, Southern Mexico and Belize. It details the massive restructuring of syntactic and semantic organization, the calquing of grammatical patterns, and the direct borrowing of inflectional morphology, including, in some of these languages, the direct borrowing of even entire morphological paradigms. The in-depth analysis of contact among the genetically related Lowland Mayan languages presented in this volume serves as a highly relevant case for theoretical, historical, contact, typological, socio- and anthropological linguistics. This linguistically complex situation involves serious engagement with issues of methods for distinguishing contact-induced similarity from inherited similarity, the role of social and ideological variables in conditioning the outcomes of language contact, cross-linguistic tendencies in language contact, as well as the effect that inherited similarity can have on the processes and outcomes of language contact.

[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 328] 2014. xi, 206 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 20 May 2014

https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.328

Table of Contents

Preface & acknowledgements | pp. ix–x

List of abbreviations | pp. xi–xii

Chapter 1. Language contact in the Maya Lowlands | pp. 1–30

Chapter 2. Mayan languages and linguistic areas: Areal phonology | pp. 31–46

Chapter 3. Mayan languages and linguistic areas: Syntactic, semantic and morphological features | pp. 47–72

Chapter 4. Person marking and pattern borrowing in Lowland Mayan languages | pp. 73–96

Chapter 5. Cholan, Yukatekan and matter borrowing  in person markers | pp. 97–108

Chapter 6. Contact effects in the Lowland Mayan aspectual systems: Direct borrowing | pp. 109–128

Chapter 7. Pattern borrowing and split ergativity | pp. 129–142

Chapter 8. Secondary contact effects | pp. 143–156

Chapter 9. Language ideology and contact | pp. 157–174

Chapter 10. Conclusions: Contact among related languages | pp. 175–186

References

Index | pp. 205–206

“[This monograph] explores old ideas and advances new ones that contribute to the theory of contact-induced borrowing. It is a reservoir of concepts that will long be cited by Mayanists and by theorists of language contact alike.”

John S. Robertson, Brigham Young University, in Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 57:1 (2015)

“Law analyzes language contact between lowland Mayan languages, demonstrating that the study of contact between related languages is not only possible, but that such studies have important implications for understanding language contact more broadly. [...] Indeed, such research may reveal patterns that are quite different from those typically found in research on contact between unrelated languages. In addition to providing a unique and interesting case study, the book challenges a number of common assumptions within the field and makes a major theoretical contribution to the study of language contact.”

Rusty Barret, University of Kentucky, in Journal of Language Contact Vol. 2016, pp. 1-3

Cited by (27)

Cited by 27 other publications

Order by:

Looper, Matthew

2024. From History to Cultural Diversity: The Changing Roles of the Maya Script as Archaeological Data. Journal of Archaeological Research

Matsumoto, Mallory E.

2024. Graphemic Variation in Morphosyntactic Context: The Syllable u in Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. Topics in Cognitive Science

Meyer, Robin

2023. Towards a Typology of Contact‐Induced Change: Questions, Problems and the Path Ahead. Transactions of the Philological Society 121:3 ► pp. 336 ff.

Tandy, James

2023. Tracing Eastern Mayan Perfect ‐maχ: Outcomes of Direct Affix Borrowing in the Sacapulas Corridor. Transactions of the Philological Society 121:3 ► pp. 495 ff.

Muysken, Pieter

2022. Reconstructing the Sociolinguistic History of Expansion Languages in the Americas: A Research Program. In The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 344 ff.

Hakimov, Nikolay & Michael Rießler

2021. Partial fusion in long-term bilingualism: The case of vernacular Kildin Saami. International Journal of Bilingualism 25:2 ► pp. 401 ff.

Heaton, Raina

2021. Chapter 17. Antipassive and antipassive-like constructions in Mayan languages. In Antipassive [Typological Studies in Language, 130], ► pp. 549 ff.

Hickey, Raymond

2020. Language Contact and Linguistic Research. In The Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 1 ff.

McKinnon, Sean

2020. Un análisis sociofonético de la aspiración de las oclusivas sordas en el español guatemalteco monolingüe y bilingüe (español-kaqchikel). Spanish in Context 17:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

McKinnon, Sean

2023. Las vocales glotalizadas en el español guatemalteco: Un análisis sociofonético entre los hablantes bilingües (español-kaqchikel) y monolingües. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 16:1 ► pp. 171 ff.

Rodríguez‐Ordóñez, Itxaso

2019. The role of linguistic ideologies in language contact situations. Language and Linguistics Compass 13:10

Bennett, Ryan, Boris Harizanov & Robert Henderson

2018. Prosodic Smothering in Macedonian and Kaqchikel. Linguistic Inquiry 49:2 ► pp. 195 ff.

Cole, Marcelle

2018. A native origin for Present-Day Englishthey, their, them. Diachronica 35:2 ► pp. 165 ff.

Tada, Mitsuhiro

2018. Language, ethnicity, and the nation-state: on Max Weber’s conception of “imagined linguistic community”. Theory and Society 47:4 ► pp. 437 ff.

Dakin, Karen & Natalie Operstein

2017. Chapter 1. Language contact in Mesoamerica and beyond. In Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond [Studies in Language Companion Series, 185], ► pp. 1 ff.

Law, Danny

2017. Language mixing and genetic similarity. Diachronica 34:1 ► pp. 40 ff.

Law, Danny

2020. Pattern borrowing, linguistic similarity, and new categories: Numeral classifiers in Mayan. Morphology 30:4 ► pp. 347 ff.

Law, Danny

2020. Contact and Mayan Languages. In The Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 613 ff.

Vinogradov, Igor

2017. From enclitic to prefix: diachrony of personal absolutive markers in Q’eqchi’. Morphology 27:1 ► pp. 105 ff.

Vinogradov, Igor

2019. The history of the Poqomchi’ language description. Language & History 62:1 ► pp. 14 ff.

Vinogradov, Igor

2022. Evangelization and Language Change: A Transition from the Progressive Aspect to the Future Tense in Two Mayan Languages. Transactions of the Philological Society 120:3 ► pp. 375 ff.

Vinogradov, Igor

2023. Pioneers of contrastive linguistics. Languages in Contrast 23:1 ► pp. 34 ff.

Bennett, Ryan

2016. Mayan phonology. Language and Linguistics Compass 10:10 ► pp. 469 ff.

Bennett, Ryan, Jessica Coon & Robert Henderson

2016. Introduction to Mayan Linguistics. Language and Linguistics Compass 10:10 ► pp. 455 ff.

Munson, Jessica, Jonathan Scholnick, Matthew Looper, Yuriy Polyukhovych & Martha J. Macri

2016. Ritual Diversity and Divergence of Classic Maya Dynastic Traditions: A Lexical Perspective on Within-Group Cultural Variation. Latin American Antiquity 27:1 ► pp. 74 ff.

Law, Danny, John Robertson, Stephen Houston, Marc Zender & David Stuart

2014. AREAL SHIFTS IN CLASSIC MAYAN PHONOLOGY. Ancient Mesoamerica 25:2 ► pp. 357 ff.

[no author supplied]

2022. Contact, Emergence, and Language Classification. In The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 255 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Subjects