Meso-America as a Linguistic Area

Y‐chromosome diversity in Native Mexicans reveals continental transition of genetic structure in the Americas

“…These populations belong to four different linguistic families (Campbell 1997;1986;and Mithun 1990;1999), Uto-Aztecan including Tarahumara, Pima and the Nahua languages;…”

Wallacea, a Linguistic Area

“…Some of the most well-described and best known are: the South Asian Linguistic Area (Emeneau 1956, 1974, Masica 1976, the Ethiopian Linguistic Area (Leslau 1945, 1952, Hetzron 1975, Ferguson 1976, Tosco 2000, the Meso-American Linguistic Area (Campbell, Kaufman & Smith-Stark 1986, Campbell 1992, van der Auwera 1998), the "Standard Average" European Linguistic Area (Whorf 1956, Haspelmath 1998, and the Mainland Southeast Asian Linguistic Area (Clark 1992, Matisoff 2001, Enfield 2005.…”

The Areal Linguistics of Amazonia

“…These factors allow us to attribute similarities within the area to contact rather than to common inheritance, especially where the shared features are too numerous and/or too unusual to be easily explained as independent innovations (see Campbell et al 1986, Epps et al 2013. While this historically grounded approach yields relatively robust evidence of contact-induced change, cases where related languages are undocumented or do not occur outside the region require us to fall back on the identification of a set of features shared among languages within the area.…”