Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages

This volume presents the collective work of a team of twenty-one scholars who have investigated headless relative clauses in fifteen languages from five language families—all Mesoamerican but one. Headless relative clauses have received little attention in the linguistic literature, despite the many morpho-syntactic and semantic puzzles they raise within and across languages and for our understanding of human language in general. Headless relative clauses have been even more neglected in the study of Mesoamerican languages. This volume constitutes the first in-depth, systematic study of headless relative clauses for any Mesoamerican languages we know of, and the broadest and most articulated crosslinguistic study of headless relative clauses that has been conducted so far. For most of the languages in this volume, there is no descriptive or documentary material on wh-constructions in general, let alone headless relative clauses. Many of the languages are threatened or endangered; all are understudied. All of the chapters constitute original contributions to typological and theoretical linguistics. The first chapter introduces and defines the varieties of headless relative clauses that are investigated in the other chapters, compares them to two related and better-known constructions, namely headed relative clauses and wh- interrogative clauses, summarizes the main findings in a comparative prospective, highlights the importance of studying headless relative clauses to understand human language, and provides a methodological framework for the other chapters and future work. All the other chapters are language-specific and follow a uniform format to facilitate comparisons and generalizations across languages.

Introducing Headless Relative Clauses and the Findings from Mesoamerican Languages

This introductory chapter pursues several goals. First, it introduces the characters at the center of the volume: both the main characters, i.e., varieties of headless relative clauses, and the equally important supporting characters, i.e., headed relative clauses and wh- interrogative clauses. The next chapters can, therefore, assume that the reader is already familiar with these core constructions and just focus on their manifestations in the specific languages under investigation. Second, this chapter presents the definitions, methodologies, and tests that the authors have adopted, so that each subsequent, language-specific chapter can make use of them without further introduction or justification. In doing so, this chapter also fulfills a third goal: to provide a concise guide to scholars who are interested in pursuing further investigation of headless relative clauses in Mesoamerican and other languages. Fourth, the current chapter aims to highlight commonalities and differences in the findings from the other chapters and discusses how those findings contribute to the current understanding of headless relative clauses typologically and theoretically and of human language in general.

Mesoamerica

The Mesoamerican linguistic area is rich with prosodic phenomena, including a wide variety of complex tone, phonation, stress, and intonational systems. The diversity of prosodic patterns in Mesoamerica reflects the extreme time-depth and complex history of the languages spoken there. This chapter surveys the prosody of Mesoamerican languages and some past analyses of their structures. Topics include the areal distribution of tonal complexity; interactions between stress, tone, and segmental contrasts; the phonetics of tone and phonation; metrical structure; and higher-level prosodic phenomena. Case studies from different languages also highlight interactions between morphological and word-prosodic structure. These topics underscore the importance of research on Mesoamerican languages to both phonological theory and linguistic typology.

Producing Idols

Idolatry is an accusation. Derived from ancient Greek terms for the veneration (latreia) of images (eidola), idolatry provides a framework for exploring the connections and confusions of the early modern Mediterratlantic world, where false images seemed to be everywhere. This essay surveys the social lives of idols in sixteenth-century New Spain, focusing on their destruction, creation, excavation, and commodification. Significantly, all four actions were performed by Europeans and Native Americans alike: the treatment of idols in New Spain cannot be neatly divided into Mesoamerican versus Mediterranean strategies. Understanding these shared practices requires contextualizing them in pre-Hispanic and medieval histories, as well as in Europe’s Renaissance present. But of course shared actions may conceal radically different meanings, and the essay’s final section considers how the Castilian term ídolo was translated into different Mesoamerican languages. The ancient category of the idol, imported to the Americas, was remade into something new. Connecting dictionary entries to military and missionary reports to the archives of the Inquisition, the production of idols in early modern New Spain provides an unexpected context for revisiting the classic concerns—and still generative possibilities—of James Lockhart’s concept of Double Mistaken Identity. RESUMEN La idolatría es una acusación. Derivada de los términos del griego antiguo utilizados para la veneración (latreia) de las imágenes (eidola), la idolatría brinda un marco para explorar las conexiones y confusiones del mundo Mediterratlántico de la temprana modernidad, donde las falsas imágenes parecían estar en todas partes. Este ensayo analiza la vida social de los ídolos en la Nueva España del siglo XVI, centrándose en su destrucción, creación, excavación y mercantilización. Es importante señalar que tanto los europeos como los indígenas americanos participaron en estos actos: el tratamiento de los ídolos en Nueva España no se puede dividir claramente en estrategias mesoamericanas versus mediterráneas. La comprensión de estas prácticas compartidas exige contextualizarlas en las historias prehispánicas y medievales, así como en el presente del Renacimiento europeo. No obstante, no cabe duda de que las acciones compartidas pueden ocultar significados radicalmente diferentes, y la sección final del ensayo considera cómo se tradujo el término castellano ídolo a diversos idiomas mesoamericanos. La antigua categoría del ídolo fue transformada al ser importada a las Américas. Al conectar las entradas del diccionario con los informes militares y misioneros a los archivos de la Inquisición, la producción de ídolos en la Nueva España de la temprana modernidad proporciona un contexto inesperado para revisar las preocupaciones clásicas, y las continuas posibilidades, del concepto de Doble Identidad Equivocada de James Lockhart. RESUMO Idolatria é uma acusação. Palavra derivada do termo do grego antigo para veneração (latreia) de imagens (eidola), a idolatria provém um enquadramento para explorar as conexões e confusões do mundo Mediterratlântico no início da era moderna, onde as imagens falsas pareciam estar em toda parte. Esse ensaio examina a vida social dos ídolos na Nova Espanha do século XVI, concentrando-se em sua destruição, criação, escavação e mercantilização. Significantemente, todas as quatro ações foram performadas tanto por europeus quanto por nativos-americanos: o tratamento de ídolos na Nova Espanha não pode ser claramente dividido em estratégias mesoamericanas versus mediterrâneas. Compreender essas práticas compartilhadas requer sua contextualização em histórias pré-hispânicas e medievais, bem como no presente da Renascença na Europa. Entretanto, é claro que ações compartilhadas podem esconder significados radicalmente diferentes, e a seção final do ensaio considera como o termo castelhano ídolo foi traduzido em diferentes línguas mesoamericanas. A categoria antiga do ídolo, importada para as Américas, foi transformada em algo novo. Conectando verbetes de dicionários a relatórios militares e missionários a arquivos da inquisição, a produção de ídolos no início da era moderna na Nova Espanha provém um contexto inesperado para revisitar preocupações clássicas – e ainda as possibilidades geradoras – do conceito de Identidade Duplamente Equivocada de James Lockhart.

Verb-framed spatial deixis in Mesoamerican languages and the increasing complexity of source constructions via Spanish de

This paper aims to investigate the non-overt marking of spatial relations in the Mesoamerican area with regard to the relationship between spatial interrogatives and spatial declaratives. It is argued that languages which indiscriminately employ the same word form as spatial deictic interrogative for all three basic spatial relations, place, goal and source, do not employ grammaticalized markers for allative and/or ablative functions. Instead they rely on motion verb constructions the semantics of which determine the spatial reference as well as the direction of motion. These systems, however, change via the intrusion of the Spanish preposition de.

Upright posture and the meaning of meronymy: A synthesis of metaphoric and analytic accounts

Cross-linguistic strategies for mapping lexical and spatial relations from body partonym systems to external object meronymies (as in English ‘table leg,’ ‘mountain face’) have attracted substantial research and debate over the past three decades. Due to the systematic mappings, lexical productivity, and geometric complexities of body-based meronymies found in many Mesoamerican languages, the region has become focal for these discussions, prominently including contrastive accounts of the phenomenon in Zapotec and Tzeltal, leading researchers to question whether such systems should be explained as global metaphorical mappings from bodily source to target holonym or as vector mappings of shape and axis generated “algorithmically.” I propose a synthesis of these accounts in this paper by drawing on the species-specific cognitive affordances of human upright posture grounded in the reorganization of the anatomical planes, with a special emphasis on antisymmetrical relations that emerge between arm-leg and face-groin antinomies cross-culturally. Whereas Levinson argues that the internal geometry of objects “stripped of their bodily associations” (1994: 821) is sufficient to account for Tzeltal meronymy, making metaphorical explanations entirely unnecessary, I propose a more powerful, elegant explanation of Tzeltal meronymic mapping that affirms both the geometric-analytic and the global-metaphorical nature of Tzeltal meaning construal. I do this by demonstrating that the “algorithm” in question arises from the phenomenology of movement and correlative body memories — an experiential ground that generates a culturally selected pair of inverse contrastive paradigm sets with marked and unmarked membership emerging antithetically relative to the transverse anatomical plane. These relations are then selected diagrammatically for the classification of object orientations according to systematic geometric iconicities. Results not only serve to clarify the case in question but also point to the relatively untapped potential that upright posture holds for theorizing the emergence of human cognition, highlighting in the process the nature, origins and theoretical validity of markedness and double scope conceptual integration.

Beyond Language Shift: Spatial Cognition among the Ixcatecs in Mexico

Recently there has been a renewed interest surrounding the role that language plays in the shaping of cognition based on the study of spatial relations with a particular attention to Mesoamerican languages. Since Brown and Levinson (1993), several studies have shown that speakers of Mesoamerican languages largely prefer non-egocentric strategies in the solution of nonverbal tasks and that this preference strongly aligns to the spatial expressions found in these languages. Moreover, it has been argued that contact with Spanish increases the use of egocentric responses. This paper engages in this discussion with new evidence from a Mexican community which has shifted from a Mesoamerican language, Ixcatec, to Spanish during the twentieth century. It presents three studies consisting of nonverbal, memorization tasks, conducted with a total of 52 monolingual Spanish speakers from the community of Santa María Ixcatlán. According to the neo-Whorfian approach, the residents of Santa María Ixcatlán should strongly favour the Spanish-related egocentric responses. Against this assumption, however, our study shows that the geocentric responses are predominant among the Ixcatecs. This result clearly indicates that frames of reference are culturally-defined and do not disappear in case of language shift but persist in cognitive representations among the members of a stable, rural community.