We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
The aim of this book is to offer an overall view of Mesoamerican Indian languages. Although the approach is basically synchronic, in view of the importance of the cultural development of the area before discovery, a historical perspective is adopted in the last three chapters. No previous knowledge of any Mesoamerican language is assumed on the part of the reader, but familiarity with basic linguistic notions and terminology is expected.
The presentation throughout the book is strongly descriptive with little, if any, room for theoretical considerations or generalizations. It has not been the author's intention to give his views on Mesoamerican languages, but to characterize them by adopting a view as neutral as possible. Consequently, except for changes in terminology, the discussion of the data has been kept close to the analyses given in the sources. This procedure runs the risk of a certain heterogeneity in the treatment of the materials, but this seemed preferable to the misinterpretation that might result from a reanalysis of languages which are often known only indirectly from a few descriptions.
The choice of topics dealt with, especially in chapters 5–8, has been largely dictated by the availability of minimally comparable data in the various linguistic families. In some cases important studies have been neglected because they were an almost unique contribution to a certain topic. The distribution of materials has aimed at keeping a balance between characterization of the whole area and a characterization of each linguistic family.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
