Relatively little is known about the languages spoken at the heart of the American continent, at least in the English-speaking (and hence most widespread) linguistic literature. As a result, confusion about the typological, areal and even genetic relationships existing among those languages and language families is rampant. The languages of Central America are more often than not regarded as residual languages of either Mesoamerica or Amazonia, the surrounding linguistic areas of Central and northern South America, respectively; and within this tradition, the name Chibchan has played the role of a "ragbag"; the terms Macro-Chibchan, Chibchan-Paezan among others represent a case in point. Thus, in the past, languages as disparate as Paez (Ecuador), Tarasco (Mexico), isolate Warao (Venezuela), as well as members of other language families (e.g. Carib or Aztec), and even languages from as far as Chile (e.g. Atacama) or Argentina (e.g. Allentiac) have been given the label of "Chibchan". Such an easy-going attitude shows not only the lack of a strong Chibchan linguistics tradition, but, especially, the need for an up to date, coherent, and modern linguistics-oriented description of this language family.

Prefaced by W. Adelaar (University of Leiden), the book offers a thorough presentation of the Chibchan family of languages, with data from all living members of the family, plus extinct Muisca. Chapter 1, The Chibchan languages in areal perspective, introduces this language family in its wider areal dimension, a necessary step given the widespread ignorance in the mainstream literature about both the family per se and its areal affiliation. Chapters 2 and 3, The languages of Central America and The languages of Colombia (and Venezuela), respectively, offer a thorough description of the main structural features of these languages. Each of these chapters opens with a brief description of the main phonological aspects, followed by a comparative description of morphological (e.g. word classes, nominal and verbal categories) and syntactic (word order, grammatical relations, syntactic operations) patterns. The division of the family into Central America and Colombia has to do with important differences that recent archaeological, anthropological and linguistic research has established between these two geographic zones of the Chibchan world. Chapter 4, Relevant topics in Chibchan linguistics, treats in considerable detail three of the most relevant themes of Chibchan: ergativity, participant-highlighting (how prominence is expressed in Chibchan), and intermittent marking of grammatical categories. Chapter 5 wraps up the conclusions of the book in terms of the likely relation between the lack of prominence of grammatical relations and the wealth of participant-encoding and highlighting strategies.