6. The Languages of Middle America Harry van der Hulst, Keren Rice, and Leo Wetzels 1. Introduction 1 In this chapter, we present a survey of word prosodic systems in the lan- guages of Middle America (Campbell 1997: Chapter 5). Middle America includes Central America and Mexico. The term ‘Middle America’, refer- ring to a geographical unit, is not synonymous to ‘Mesoamerica,’ which refers to a culture area ‘‘defined on the basis of common characteristics that were present during the conquest times’’ (Sua ´rez 1983: 11). Bearing this di¤erence in mind, we here o¤er a survey of the families and isolate languages that Sua ´rez groups within the Mesoamerican group and that Campbell (1997) considers in his chapter on ‘Middle American’ languages; this does not include the ‘West Indies’ (Antilles, Bahamas, Turks and Caico islands) or Cuba. 2. The language families Some language families fall almost completely within the Middle American region, while others only have a few representatives. To the former group belong: (1) – Oto-Manguean (section 5.1.) – Mixe-Zoquean (section 5.2.) – Totonacan (section 5.3.) – Tequistlatecan (section 5.4.) – Mayan (section 5.5.) – Misumalpan (section 5.6.) 1. During the writing of this chapter we have received useful input from various people, including Lyle Campbell, Esther Herrera, Diane Hintz, Jean-Le ´o Le ´onard, Inga McKendry, Irina Monich, Keith Snider, and Rebecca Yarrish. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 (V9 27/8/10 15:52) WDG (155mm230mm) TimesNRMT 1201 Goedemans pp. 249–312 1201 Goedemans_06_Ch06 (p. 249)