Towards an Analysis of Complex Motion Event Packaging in South Eastern Huastec (Maya, Mexico)

Abstract

This paper presents an underdescribed way of encoding the Path component of complex motion events in South Eastern Huastec (HSF), a Mayan language spoken in Mexico. The collected data show that HSF does not have directionals (contrary to most Mayan languages), and no real adpositions. Instead, HSF has a typically Mayan general locational preposition, and some relational nouns. HSF also lacks gerunds. These properties lead this language to segment complex motion events into multiple clauses. HSF event segmentation is interesting typologically because this language is one of thefew that are knownto segment events into sub-events. From the perspective of comparative Mayan Linguistics, Huastecan languages, along with Yucatecan languages, differ from other Mayan language groups in that the grammaticalization process of directionals expressing Path did not take place.

Keywords

• Huastec
• Mayan languages
• motion events
• space
• typology
• complex prepositions