Patterns in Mesoamerican morphology

Mesoamerican languages have long attracted the attention of linguists. Their often bewildering morphosyntactic complexity, in terms of number of possible forms and constructions as well as of systemic opacity, presents an exciting challenge for all theories aiming to devise models of how humans know, acquire and process their languages.

Although they belong to several, apparently unrelated stocks - Mayan, Mixe-Zoque, Otomanguean, Totonac, Uto-Aztecan, and isolates (Huave or Ombeayiüts, Purepecha) - most or all Amerindian languages spoken between the Northern border of Mexico and Costa-Rica share a number of grammatical features, probably as a result of having coexisted in similar natural and cultural environments for thousands of years. Mesoamerican languages thus offer rich material for research in historical and areal linguistics.

Many of these languages are still thriving despite the enduring and pervasive presence of the originally colonial language, Spanish. Recent years have even seen a renewal of the efforts to promote at least some of them to the status of written languages and to use them as teaching media in local schools. Rich opportunities are thus offered not only to specialists in language development, but to all field linguists who consider social benefits to the people they study a crucial aspect of their work.

In this volume, the focus on inflectional morphology is easily justified by the already mentioned attribute many of these languages share, namely dauntingly complex paradigms, especially in the verbal domain. Not only are the various, semantically distinct forms assumed by one lexeme extremely numerous, but the phonological relations between the forms are often complex, sometimes quite opaque. Such a state of affairs makes Mesoamerican languages a central piece in current debates in morphological theory.

We hope this book will provide seminal insight into the complexity of morphological patterns in Mesoamerican languages from a plurality of prospects (language by itself, formal grammars, pragmatic and semiotic embedding of categories, interfaces between phonology, morphology and syntax, language in society, complexity theory), and will substantially contribute to foster interdisciplinary research in the field.