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Introduction: On typological change in Mesoamerica

The Sprachbund known as Mesoamerica comprises a wealth of mega-linguistic diversity. Spread throughout a vast territory, Mesoamerica not only occupies what today we call Mexico. It ranges in its northern frontier from Arid America (roughly the regions linked to desert areas to the North of Mexico), passing through the Mexican central plateau (in and around where Mexico City is today), to reach Central America, around the limits of El Salvador and Honduras (see Map 1). Historically, previous to the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century, it is estimated that the Mesoamerican territory encompassed at least 100 and up to 300 languages (see Suárez 1983; versus the upper figure close to what is reckoned in contemporary sources: e.g. INALI, cf. Garza Cuarón and Lastra 1991). Yet the Mesoamerican linguistic landscape is of course very different today. In passing, it is interesting to notice that these figures are related to the complex question of what is understood as a language, where it ends, and where a dialect or another language starts. A good example is provided thinking of the 365 “variants” listed today by the INALI (Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas: The National Institute of Indigenous Languages), which politically are conceived as “languages”, against the 68 linguistic “clusters” recognized by the same official institution. This could be rephrased as 68 languages, with 365 dialects. Actually, this is a very multifaceted issue. It involves several sociolinguistic constraints, which cannot be reduced to a single criterion, such as the conventional approach to define a language versus a dialect, intelligibility. In practice this constitutes a heated debate, more of a political and ideological one. For instance, some linguists consider Nahuatl, one of the major languages of Mesoamerica, as several languages, while other actors, especially high educated Nahuatl speakers, conceive it as a single language. This will also become clear in the present volume, especially although not exclusively considering the contributions on Nahuatl and Mazatec (see infra).