The main purpose of the SIL-Mexico website is to publish information related to the languages and cultures of present-day Mexico, including both indigenous (Indian) languages and signed languages. It serves as one of the primary publication outlets for the research and service activities conducted by the Instituto Lingüístico de Verano (Summer Institute of Linguistics) in the country.
Although the indigenous groups of Mexico have a long history stretching back thousands of years, the primary focus of this site is on their modern situation: their languages and cultures as they exist today and in the recent past. (There are, however, a few materials that take a historical perspective.)
Some of the material has been prepared primarily for use by native speakers, but we anticipate it will be of interest to others as well. Other material is more specialized and will primarily be of interest to linguists and anthropologists. Some items first appeared in printed form and are being republished here; others were written especially for the web.
The site also serves some secondary purposes, providing a means of distributing information about the Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, linguistic courses that it offers, and materials for learning and teaching linguistics.
Although the SIL-Mexico website is a part of the SIL International website, it is also somewhat independent from it. It is developed and maintained by a separate editorial committee, and certain features of it (notably the use of Spanish in all the structural pages and many of the content pages) do not characterize the SIL International website as a whole.
New information and materials are being added regularly to the site (see the What's New page). Most authors whose work appears on this website are members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, but the site also benefits from the contributions of others.
All material published here is first reviewed and recommended by peers, checked for accuracy and validity, and proofread (in both English and Spanish) before publication. Except in the case of field notes or other material identified as being of "prepublication" or "work paper" quality, material on this site must meet the same standards of quality that apply to print publication. If errors remain, please inform the editorial committee.
We have tried to create web pages that display well on a wide range of browsers and computers. The core interface pages are designed to function reasonably well even on slow modem connections; major publications such as dictionaries, however, are of necessity sometimes quite large (over 1 Mb).
Many pages look best in browsers that provide good support for newer technologies such as HTML 4.0, CSS (cascading style sheets), and Dynamic HTML. (For example: Internet Explorer 4 and above, and to a lesser extent versions of Netscape Navigator released since mid-1999.) All information should be readable and usable in older browsers, as long as they support tables (version 3 browsers and above).
Graphics are sized to look good at a screen setting of between 640x480 and 1024x768 pixels.
Many items that require special fonts are presented in Adobe Acrobat PDF format, in which case the fonts are embedded in the document file and no separate download and installation is required. On HTML pages special characters are presented in Unicode format, and you will need a Unicode font including those characters (available free) to see them properly.
If you encounter problems viewing any of the materials on the site, please let us know which pages you are having trouble with, what the problem is, and what type of computer and browser you are using.
© 2008 Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, A.C.
Derechos reservados.
Puede reproducirse para fines no lucrativos
siempre y cuando no se altere en forma alguna.
All rights reserved.
May be reproduced for nonprofit use
so long as it is not modified in any way.
