Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Judith Aissen, Nora C. England, Roberto Zavala Maldonado

Part 1: Language Development, History, and Change

Chapter 2: Mayan Language Acquisition

Clifton Pye, Barbara Pfeiler, Pedro Mateo Pedro

Chapter 3: Mayan History and Comparison

Lyle Campbell

Chapter 4: Aspects of the Lexicon of proto-Mayan and its Earliest Descendants

Terrence Kaufman

Chapter 5: Language Contacts with(in) Mayan

Danny Law

Chapter 6: Classic Mayan: An Overview of Language in Ancient Hieroglyphic Script

Danny Law and David Stuart

Part 2: Grammar

Chapter 7: Phonology and Phonetics

Nora C. England and Brandon O. Baird

Chapter 8: Morphology

Gilles Polian

Chapter 9: Alignment Patterns

Roberto Zavala Maldonado

Chapter 10: Complement Clauses

Judith Aissen

Chapter 11: Information Structure in Mayan

Judith Aissen

Part 3: Semantics

Chapter 12: Organization of Space

Jürgen Bohnemeyer

Chapter 13: Focus, Interrogation, and Indefinites

Scott AnderBois

Chapter 14: Pluractionality in Mayan

Robert Henderson

Part 4: Language in Context

Chapter 15: The Labyrinth of Diversity: the Sociolinguistics of Mayan Languages Sergio Romero

Chapter 16: Mayan Conversation and Interaction

John B. Haviland

Chapter 17: Poetics

Rusty Barrett

Part 5: Grammar Sketches

Chapter 18: K’iche’

Telma Can Pixabaj

Chapter 19: Mam

Nora C. England

Chapter 20: Q’anjob’al

Eladio Mateo Toledo

Chapter 21: Tojolabal

Alejandro Curiel Ramírez del Prado

Chapter 22: Tseltal and Tsotsil

Gilles Polian

Chapter 23: Chol

Jessica Coon

Chapter 24: Comparative Maya (Yucatec, Lacandon, Itzaj and Mopan Maya)

Charles Andrew Hofling

Abbreviations

Contributors

About the Author

Judith Aissen is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Nora C. England is Dallas TACA Centennial Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also Director of the Center for Indigenous Languages of Latin America at the University of Texas at Austin.

Roberto Zavala Maldonado is Researcher and Professor at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in Mexico. He was also Joint-Director of the Project for the Documentation of Languages of Meso-America.