Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages

Headless relative clauses have received little attention in the linguistic literature, despite the many morpho-syntactic and semantic puzzles they raise. These clauses have been even more neglected in the study of Mesoamerican languages. Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages constitutes the first in-depth, systematic study of the topic. Spanning fifteen languages from five language families, it is the broadest crosslinguistic study of headless relative clauses yet conducted. For most of these languages there is no previous 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. Each chapter in this volume constitutes an original contribution to typological and theoretical linguistics. The first chapter provides a comprehensive introduction to the varieties of headless relative clauses and their importance to the study of human language, while the other chapters are language-specific and follow a uniform format to facilitate comparisons and generalizations across languages. Through the collective work of a team of twenty-one scholars, Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages presents a clear and systematic introduction to relative and interrogative clauses in Mesoamerican languages.

Ivano Caponigro is Associate Professor of linguistics at the University of California, San Diego. He is interested in formal semantics and its interfaces with syntax and pragmatics across languages. He has conducted extensive crosslinguistic work on relative clauses and wh- clauses, with special emphasis on free relative clauses and other headless relative clauses. Harold Torrence is Associate Professor of linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the syntax and morphology of African and Mesoamerican languages. He has worked extensively on wh- questions, relativization, focus, and complementation. Roberto Zavala Maldonado is Professor of linguistics at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. He is interested in Mesoamerican languages, typology, language documentation, syntax, and lexicography. He has conducted extensive research on several morphosyntactic aspects of Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean languages.