Learning from Mayan Tzotzil: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022)

Abstract

In response to Kidd and Garcia’s survey that shows the paucity of authors and languages from the Global South in four leading journals of language acquisition, I argue that Mayan language acquisition has contributed in important ways to test theories in the field at large. I specifically outline major contributions from Mayan Tzotzil acquisition to topics of input, lexical, semantic and morphological development. Research on Mesoamerican languages is invaluable in understanding the implications of linguistic typology in language acquisition.