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Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond
Edited by Karen Dakin, Claudia Parodi and Natalie Operstein
[Studies in Language Companion Series 185] 2017
► pp. 336–353

Chapter 16
The Mesoamerican linguistic area revisited

| University of California, Los Angeles

Campbell, Kaufman & Smith Stark (1986; henceforth CKSS) propose a number of criterial traits for identifying “a particularly strong linguistic area” in Mesoamerica, showing that diverse languages from different language families of the region share enough morphological, syntactic, and lexical features to be legitimately considered a Sprachbund. In this paper, I present data suggesting that another language of Central America explicitly excluded from CKSS’s Mesoamerican list, the Arawakan language Garifuna, should be added to the Mesoamerican typological grouping. I also discuss several additional syntactic features characteristic of languages in the region which may be added to the list of characteristic Mesoamerican traits.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.CKSS’s prototypical defining MA features
    • 2.1Word order
    • 2.2Nominal possession
    • 2.3“Relational nouns”
    • 2.4Number systems
    • 2.5“Calques”
  • 3.Additional MA traits
    • 3.1Phonological traits
    • 3.2Morphological and syntactic traits
  • 4.Potential additional MA syntactic similarities
    • 4.1“Gapping” in subject extraction constructions
    • 4.2Pied-Piping with Inversion (PPI)
      • 4.2.1PPI in oblique questions
      • 4.2.2PPI failure in quirky subject questions
    • 4.3Absence of prepositions with “large locations”
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.185.16mun
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