Native Middle American Languages. An Areal - Typologycal Perspective

Senri Ethnological Studies, №39
National Museum of Ethnography, Osaka, 1995. - 489 p.The purpose of the present study is to investigate Native Middle American languages from an areal-typological point of view. The immediate goal of the research is to present available descriptive materials and analyze them, since a detailed study of the distribution of the phonological, morphological, and syntactical characteristics of Native Middle American languages as a whole has not yet been done. The ultimate goal of the investigation is to clarify Middle American areal
features and to contribute to Iinguistic Universals research. Regional traits across language boundaries are useful for establishing and investigating language contact. I emphasize that formal or structural borrowings can easily occur in these situations. In the concluding section, therefore, I draw brief inferences as to Mesoamerican history.