Investigating the Indigenous languages of the Americas: History and prospects

Résumé En

In this paper we address the state of the art in the study of the Indigenous languages of the Americas (henceforth American languages) and reflect on the perspectives for future research. Since the first 16th-century grammatical descriptions, new data have contributed to the development of language study and the birth of modern linguistics and continue to inform linguistic theory. Ongoing documentation helps language preservation, while historical data improve our understanding of present-day languages and contribute to their revitalization. Linguistic descriptions have also affected the perception of Indigenous languages and cultures over time, reflecting beliefs and prejudices about less familiar languages. Sections 2 and 3 illustrate the genetic and typological diversity of American languages and Section4 reflects on their contribution to linguistic theory, which is illustrated in Section 5 with a fewselected features. Finally, Section 6 concludes and offers some remarks about ongoing documentation.