Headless Relative Clauses in Mesoamerican Languages

A ground-breaking volume -- the first exclusively on headless relatives, the first on semantic issues in Mesoamerican languages. An excellent introduction and detailed explorations of individual languages paint a rich and exciting picture of how wh structures without nominal heads can have referential import. Typologists, syntacticians, semanticists and anyone studying microvariation in relativization strategies will find a wealth of hidden gems in this outstanding contribution to the vibrant field of cross-linguistic semantics. * Veneeta Dayal, Dorothy R. Diebold Professor of Linguistics, Yale University *
This book presents a thorough analysis of headless relative clauses in fourteen Mesoamerican language from four families, plus one Central American language. The cast of twenty-one authors is superlative and includes nine who are native speakers of one of the languages under consideration, as well as other linguists from around the world. The resulting book is a model of collaborative linguistics. * Nora C. England, Professor of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin *
This book is a crowning achievement of research on headless relatives, a model of the micro-typological approach to language, and an inspiring example of careful semantic work on lesser-known languages. By showing how much can be accomplished in describing such languages, the authors set an important precedent for future studies in cross-linguistic semantics. The introduction to the book stands out as a state-of-the art overview of headless relatives, from the questions that need to be asked to a painstaking analysis of their semantic properties. An absolute must for semanticists, syntacticians interested in relativization, typologists, and Mesoamerican scholars. * Maria Polinsky, Professor of Linguistics, University of Maryland *