The typology of Pame number systems and the limits of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area Heriberto Avelino Department of Linguistics University of California, Berkeley 1203 Dwinelle Hall University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-2650
[email protected] Abstract Pamean languages have been considered to be outside of the Mesoamerican linguistic area. However, the number systems of Pame show typical Mesoamerican structures: order of constituents Multiplier-Base-Addend, and the base ‘10’, ‘20’ systems. Pamean languages have a typologically unusual, but consistent base ‘8’. The present study presents a formal characterization of Pame number systems. The distribution and peculiarities of Pame number systems are explained as a result of their location at the border of a major linguistic area. Northern Pame presents a base ‘8’ as the only productive base, whereas Central Pame and Southern Pame show a greater influence of Mesoamerican traits. keywords: Pame, Otomanguean, Mesoamerica, Number systems, linguistic areas 100 words 2 1. Introduction In this paper I present an analysis of the cardinal number systems of the Pamean languages Northern Pame, Central Pame and Southern Pame. The goals of this work are twofold. On the one hand, I offer a formal characterization of Pame number systems in terms of the typology of number systems in natural languages. On the other hand, I discuss the particularities of Pamean number systems as a result of their location at the border of a major linguistic area, namely Mesoamerica.1 I show that Pamean systems present the typical Mesoamerican structures with the order of constituents Multiplier-Base-Addend, and base ‘20’ and ‘10’ systems.