Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is characterized by its cultural and historical diversity, with significant variations observed between cultures and across time. Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.
The Huastec or Téenek are an indigenous people of Mexico, living in the La Huasteca region including the states of Hidalgo, Veracruz, San Luis Potosí and Tamaulipas concentrated along the route of the Pánuco River and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
A sprachbund, also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness.
The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica, both in the south of Mexico and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least six million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory.
Mesoamerican languages are the languages indigenous to the Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers southern Mexico, all of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The area is characterized by extensive linguistic diversity containing several hundred different languages and seven major language families. Mesoamerica is also an area of high linguistic diffusion in that long-term interaction among speakers of different languages through several millennia has resulted in the convergence of certain linguistic traits across disparate language families. The Mesoamerican sprachbund is commonly referred to as the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area.
The Balkan sprachbund or Balkan language area is an ensemble of areal features—similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology—among the languages of the Balkans. Several features are found across these languages though not all apply to every single language. The Balkan sprachbund is a prominent example of the sprachbund concept.
The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of the family, which is now extinct, was spoken as far south as Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Oto-Manguean is widely viewed as a proven language family.
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, i.e. a common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted with lingual-genealogically determined similarity within the same language family. Features may diffuse from one dominant language to neighbouring languages.
The Mixe–Zoque languages are a language family whose living members are spoken in and around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. The Mexican government recognizes three distinct Mixe–Zoquean languages as official: Mixe or ayook with 188,000 speakers, Zoque or o'de püt with 88,000 speakers, and the Popoluca languages of which some are Mixean and some Zoquean with 69,000 speakers. However, the internal diversity in each of these groups is great. Glottolog counts 19 different languages, whereas the current classification of Mixe–Zoquean languages by Wichmann (1995) counts 12 languages and 11 dialects. Extinct languages classified as Mixe–Zoquean include Tapachultec, formerly spoken in Tapachula, along the southeast coast of Chiapas.
This rather technical article provides a typological sketch of the Pipil language. Another related article outlines Pipil grammar in fuller detail. The distinctive purpose of the present article is to single out those specific features of Nawat linguistic structure that are relevant to this language's general typological classification and characterization, answering the question: What major features make this language similar to or different from other languages? Most of the assertions in this article are generalizations from information found in the Pipil grammar article.
Terrence Kaufman was an American linguist specializing in documentation of unwritten languages, lexicography, Mesoamerican historical linguistics and language contact phenomena. He was an emeritus professor of linguistics and anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.
Standard Average European (SAE) is a concept originally introduced in 1939 by American linguist Benjamin Whorf to group the modern Indo-European languages of Europe with shared common features. Whorf argued that the SAE languages were characterized by a number of similarities, including syntax and grammar, vocabulary and its use, as well as the relationship between contrasting words and their origins, idioms, and word order, which all made them stand out from many other language groups around the world which do not share these similarities, in essence creating a continental sprachbund. His intention was to argue that the disproportionate amount of SAE-specific knowledge in linguistics created a substantial SAE-centric bias, leading to generalization errors, such as mistaking linguistic features idiosyncratic to the SAE language group for universal tendencies.
Relational nouns or relator nouns are a class of words used in many languages. They are characterized as functioning syntactically as nouns, although they convey the meaning for which other languages use adpositions. In Mesoamerica, the use of relational nouns constitutes an areal feature of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area, including the Mayan languages, Mixe–Zoquean languages, and Oto-Manguean languages. Relational nouns are also widespread in South-East Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, Armenian, the Munda languages of South Asia, and in Micronesian languages.
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America.
Pied-piping with inversion is a special word order phenomenon found in some languages, such as those in the Mesoamerican linguistic area.
The Pueblo linguistic area is a Sprachbund consisting of the languages spoken in and near North American Pueblo locations. There are also many shared cultural practices in this area. For example, these cultures share many ceremonial vocabulary terms meant for prayer or song.
Macro-Mayan is a proposal linking the clearly established Mayan family with neighboring families that show similarities to Mayan. The term was apparently coined by McQuown (1942), but suggestions for historical relationships relevant to this hypothesis can be traced back to the Squier (1861), who offered comparisons between Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean languages, and Radin, who did the same for Mixe-Zoquean, Huave, and Mayan.
Nahuatl, Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller populations in the United States.
The indigenous languages of the Americas form various linguistic areas or Sprachbunds that share various common (areal) traits. The following list of linguistic areas is primarily based on Campbell.
Thomas Cedric Smith-Stark, also known as Thomas Smith-Stark or Thomas C. Smith-Stark was an American linguist known for his researches on Mesoamerican languages. Most of his academic career was developed in Mexico, where he lived for 28 years and he collaborated on 96 papers. Along with Terrence Kaufman and Lyle Campbell, he helped to define Mesoamerica as a linguistic area.
