[Lingtyp] (Not) until / (no) hasta in Mesoamerican languages

[Bastian Persohn]

Dear lingtyp members,

Reading Kockelman’s (2020) insightful analysis of Kekchí Maya =toj ‚until (spatial), until (temporal), still, etc'
I noticed an striking parallel between certain uses of this marker and regional uses of Spanish hasta ‚until that
made think if we’re maybe dealing with an areal phenomenon.

The relevant function/use is the following (simplifying slightly):

In Kekchí, with negated and imperfective predicates toj means ‚up until a certain time‘
(e.g. ’They don’t go to school until they are six years old’).

With the perfective and prospective predicates in positive polarity, the same marker means ‚at a certain time‘
(’They go to school when they are six years old’). The semantic and discourse-functional parallels are obvious
(and discussed in detail by Kockelman 2020). I assume that the use with the positive perfective and prospective
is the more innovative one, possibly through an intermediate step of implied negation ’not until a certain time’.

Exactly the latter situation appears to be the case in Mesoamerican Spanish, where (according to the
Royal Academy, https://dle.rae.es/hasta?m=form <https://dle.rae.es/hasta?m=form>) hasta ‚until‘ can be used as ’not until’:
Abrimos hasta las seis ‚We don’t open before six (lit. We open until six).‘

To cut a long story short: I wonder if anyone has observed a similar pattern in other languages of Mesoamerica, or maybe
even discussed this phenomenon from an areal perspective, possibly with regards to the influence of local
languages on Spanish?

I guess a candidate for the spreading for such a pattern could be Classical Nahuatl, but a first look at the "usual
suspects“ (Andrews 2003, Carochi 1645, Karttunen 1992, Launey 2011) has not been very fruitful thus far.

Best,
Bastian

Andrews, James Richard. 2003. Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. Rev. ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 

Carochi, Horacio. 1645. Arte de la lengua mexicana. Mexico: Ruyz.

Karttunen, Frances E. 1992. An analytical dictionary of Nahuatl. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Kockelman, Paul. 2020. Dual operators and their doubling, in Q’eqchi’ (Maya). International Journal of American Linguistics 86. 449–484.


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