The aim of this book is to offer an overall view of Mesoamerican Indian languages. Although the approach is basically synchronic, in view of the importance of the cultural development of the area before discovery, a historical perspective is adopted in the last three chapters. No previous knowledge of any Mesoamerican language is assumed on the part of the reader, but familiarity with basic linguistic notions and terminology is expected.

The presentation throughout the book is strongly descriptive with little, if any, room for theoretical considerations or generalizations. It has not been the author's intention to give his views on Mesoamerican languages, but to characterize them by adopting a view as neutral as possible. Consequently, except for changes in terminology, the discussion of the data has been kept close to the analyses given in the sources. This procedure runs the risk of a certain heterogeneity in the treatment of the materials, but this seemed preferable to the misinterpretation that might result from a reanalysis of languages which are often known only indirectly from a few descriptions.

The choice of topics dealt with, especially in chapters 5–8, has been largely dictated by the availability of minimally comparable data in the various linguistic families. In some cases important studies have been neglected because they were an almost unique contribution to a certain topic. The distribution of materials has aimed at keeping a balance between characterization of the whole area and a characterization of each linguistic family.