A Grammar of South Eastern Huastec, a Mayan Language from Mexico

Abstract

This dissertation consists of a description of the South Eastern Huastec grammatical features: Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and expression of Space. South Eastern Huastec is a Mayan language spoken by about 12 thousand people in the area of the mountain range Sierra de Otontepec, in the north of the state of Veracruz, Mexico. The highest concentration of speakers is found in the village of San Francisco, Municipality of Chontla. South Eastern Huastec has not been passed to the new generations for about 25-30 years; children do not speak this language any more. It is difficult to find anybody younger than 30 who can speak it.

This is the first grammatical description of South Eastern Huastec. This descriptive work is based on the 12 months of field work and the documentation program that has been financed by a SOAS HRELP grant, an 8-month Mexican government scholarship and financial support from the DDL University of Lyon 2, France.

South Eastern Huastec is of a particular interest for Mayan linguistics as well as for linguistic theory in general. This language is the only Mayan language that has developed a particularly interesting person marking: it has a unique pattern of an Ergative system with embedded inverse alignment; South Eastern Huastec has a very elaborate Middle voice developed from the Proto-Maya antipassive. Apart from this, HSF has other features that are of a high typological interest: this language does not have directionals (like Yucatec) or serial verbs, and as a consequence it sequences events.

South Eastern Huastec is a language with several features of interest. This dissertation represents a detailed description of its grammatical structure. Chapters 2 to 11 take a semasiological approach as they are based on the HSF grammatical structure, and Chapter 12 is based on a cognitive function of this language. This is the outline of this grammar’s chapters: Chapter 1 describes the HSF Phonology, while Chapter 2 outlines word classes, Chapter 3 Verbal Morphology and Chapter 4 Nominal Morphology. Personal marking is particularly interesting in this language; details on this topic are found in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 deals with HSF valency-decreasing operations, and Chapter 7 with HSF valency-increasing operations. In Chapter 8 the HSF basic clause structure is described; Chapter 9 is dedicated to complex predication, and Chapter 10 to complementation. HSF complex sentences are outlined in Chapter 11, and Space in Chapter 12. HSF stories, a dictionary, details on the language documentation project and the HSF teaching materials, as well as a summary in French are found in Volume 2 of this dissertation.