A Grammar of Misantla Totonac

Carolyn MacKay

6 x 9, 459 pp.
7 illustrations
Cloth $55.00
978-0-87480-455-3
Linguistics

Winner of the annual Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas Book Award

The Totonac-Tepehua Language family, though typologically similar to some other Mesoamerican languages, has not yet been demonstrated to be related to any other language family. Misantla Totonac is the southernmost variety of Totonac and is spoken in Veracruz, Mexico, in the area between Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz, and Misantla. In 1974, a newly paved road connected Xalapa and Misantla , bringing a relatively isolate area into contact with mainstream Mexican language and culture. Consequently, Misantla Totonac is no longer acquired as a first language by the local children and is rapidly being replaced by Spanish.

A Grammar of Misantla Totonac presents the phonological structure of the language and the most productive morphological process. It describes inflection and derivation of all major word classes (verbs, nominals, and statives) in detail. It introduces grammatical agreement and word-order phenomena, presenting the most salient and significant aspects of Misantla Totonac grammar.

Although various Totonac-Tepehua grammars exist in Spanish, this is the only published grammar of the Totonac-Tepehua language family currently available in English.

Carolyn MacKay is associate professor in applied linguistics at Ball State University.