Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Náhuatl Y Español: Un Caso De Convergencia Sintáctica, Alma Ramirez-Trujillo

Alma P Ramirez-Trujillo

Recent research suggests that, when the two languages spoken by bilinguals share certain features, but one of the languages favors the use of a particular structure, possibly due to pragmatic reasons, the two languages may converge in the relevant domain (Hulk and Müller 2000; Müller and Hulk 2001; Sánchez 2003; Sánchez, 2004; Toribio 2001). This in turn may lead to convergence between the two languages in a society where most of the speakers are bilingual, assuming bilinguals and second language learners are often the agents of language change (Winford, 2003). Classical Nahuatl is a polysynthetic language (Baker, 2001) with variable …