Download or read book A Grammar of Cavine a written by Antoine Guillaume and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-10-31 with total page 937 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a detailed high-quality descriptive grammar of the endangered Cavineña language (less than 1200 speakers), spoken in the Amazonian rainforest of Lowland Bolivia, an area where the indigenous languages are virtually unknown. Cavineña belongs to the Tacanan family, comprising five languages, none of which has been the subject of an adequate descriptive grammar. The grammar is based mostly on the extensive fieldwork conducted by the author in traditional Cavineña communities. Cast in the functional-typological framework, and based on natural discourse data, the grammar presents a detailed and copiously exemplified account of most aspects of the language, building up from basic levels (phonetic and phonological) to higher levels (morphological and syntactic), and from brief descriptions of each level to a more comprehensive description of the same level in specific chapters. The language contains a number of unusual features that will be of interest to typologist linguists, such as an unusual pitch accent system, a morpho-phonological rule that deletes case markers, an intricate predicate structure, a system of verbal suffixes coding associated motion, a specific causative of involvement marker, a peculiar prefix e- that attaches to nouns coding body parts and a complex system of second position clitic pronouns. The grammar will also be of interest to historical-comparative linguists, as for the first time one has sufficiently detailed grammatical information to make possible a reliable comparison with other languages with which Tacanan languages might be related, in particular the Panoan family, and to serve as input into hypotheses regarding the population history of this part of South America.

Download or read book Typology of Pluractional Constructions in the Languages of the World written by Simone Mattiola and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is to give the first large-scale typological investigation of pluractionality in the languages of the world. Pluractionality is defined as the morphological modification of the verb to express a plurality of situations that can additionally involve a plurality of participants and/or spaces. Based on a 246-language sample, the main characteristics of pluractionality are described and discussed throughout the book. Firstly, a description of the functions that pluractional markers cross-linguistically express is presented and the relationships occurring among them are explained through the semantic map model. Then, the marking strategies that languages display to express such functions are illustrated and some issues concerning the formal identification are briefly discussed as well. The typological generalizations are corroborated showing how pluractional markers work in three specific languages (Akawaio, Beja, Maa). In conclusion, the theoretical conceptualization of pluractionality is discussed referring to the Radical Construction Grammar approach.

Download or read book Word Formation in South American Languages written by Swintha Danielsen and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-11-15 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on word formation processes in smaller and so far underrepresented indigenous languages of South America. The data for the analyses have been mainly collected in the field by the authors. The several language families described here, among them Arawakan, Takanan, and Guaycuruan, as well as language isolates, such as Yurakaré and Cholón, reflect the linguistic diversity of South America. Equally diverse are the topics addressed, relating to word formation processes like reduplication, nominal and verbal compounding, clitic compounding, and incorporation. The traditional notions of the processes are discussed critically with respect to their implementation in minor indigenous languages. The book is therefore not only of interest to readers with an Amerindian background but also to typologists and historical linguists, and it is a supplement to more theory-driven approaches to language and linguistics.

Download or read book Rethinking the Andes Amazonia Divide written by Adrian J. Pearce and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2020-10-21 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nowhere on Earth is there an ecological transformation so swift and so extreme as between the snow-line of the high Andes and the tropical rainforest of Amazonia. The different disciplines that research the human past in South America have long tended to treat these two great subzones of the continent as self-contained enough to be taken independently of each other. Objections have repeatedly been raised, however, to warn against imagining too sharp a divide between the people and societies of the Andes and Amazonia, when there are also clear indications of significant connections and transitions between them. Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide brings together archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians and historians to explore both correlations and contrasts in how the various disciplines see the relationship between the Andes and Amazonia, from deepest prehistory up to the European colonial period. The volume emerges from an innovative programme of conferences and symposia conceived explicitly to foster awareness, discussion and co-operation across the divides between disciplines. Underway since 2008, this programme has already yielded major publications on the Andean past, including History and Language in the Andes (2011) and Archaeology and Language in the Andes (2012).

Download or read book Advances in Contact Linguistics written by Norval Smith and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Issues in multilingualism and its implications for communities and society at large, language acquisition and use, language diversification, and creative language use associated with new linguistic identities have become hot topics in both scientific and popular debates. A ubiquitous aspect of multilingualism is language contact. This book contains twelve articles that discuss specific aspects of Contact Linguistics. These articles cover a wide range of topics in the field, including creoles, areal linguistics, language mixing, and the sociolinguistic aspects of interactions with audiences. The book is dedicated to Pieter Muysken whose work on pidgin and creole languages, mixed languages, code-switching, bilingualism, and areal linguistics has been ground-breaking and inspirational for the authors in this book, as well as numerous other scholars working on the various facets of this rapidly expanding field.

Download or read book Number in the World s Languages written by Paolo Acquaviva and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 822 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strong development in research on grammatical number in recent years has created a need for a unified perspective. The different frameworks, the ramifications of the theoretical questions, and the diversity of phenomena across typological systems, make this a significant challenge. This book addresses the challenge with a series of in-depth analyses of number across a typologically diverse sample, unified by a common set of descriptive and analytic questions from a semantic, morphological, syntactic, and discourse perspective. Each case study is devoted to a single language, or in a few cases to a language group. They are written by specialists who can rely on first-hand data or on material of difficult access, and can place the phenomena in the context of the respective system. The studies are preceded and concluded by critical overviews which frame the discussion and identify the main results and open questions. With specialist chapters breaking new ground, this book will help number specialists relate their results to other theoretical and empirical domains, and it will provide a reliable guide to all linguists and other researchers interested in number.

Download or read book Borrowed Morphology written by Francesco Gardani and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-12-11 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By integrating novel developments in both contact linguistics and morphological theory, this volume pursues the topic of borrowed morphology by recourse to sophisticated theoretical and methodological accounts. The authors address fundamental issues, such as the alleged universal dispreference for morphological borrowing and its effects on morphosyntactic complexity, and corroborate their analyses with strong cross-linguistic evidence.

Download or read book Voice syncretism written by Nicklas N. Bahrt and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive typological account of voice syncretism, focusing on resemblance in formal verbal marking between two or more of the following seven voices: passives, antipassives, reflexives, reciprocals, anticausatives, causatives, and applicatives. It covers voice syncretism from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and has been structured in a manner that facilitates convenient access to information about specific patterns of voice syncretism, their distribution and development. The book is based on a survey of voice syncretism in 222 geographically and genealogically diverse languages, but also thoroughly revisits previous research on the phenomenon. Voice syncretism is approached systematically by establishing and exploring patterns of voice syncretism that can logically be posited for the seven voices of focus in the book: 21 simplex patterns when one considers two of the seven voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal syncretism), and 99 complex patterns when one considers more than two of the voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal-anticausative syncretism). In a similar vein, 42 paths of development can logically be posited if it is assumed that voice marking in each of the seven voices can potentially develop one of the other six voice functions (e.g. reflexive voice marking developing a reciprocal function). This approach enables the discussion of both voice syncretism that has received considerable attention in the literature (notably middle syncretism involving the reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative and/or passive voices) and voice syncretism that has received little or not treatment in the past (including seemingly contradictory patterns such as causative-anticausative and passive-antipassive syncretism). In the survey almost all simplex patterns are attested in addition to seventeen complex patterns. In terms of diachrony, evidence is presented and discussed for twenty paths of development. The book strives to highlight the variation found in voice syncretism across the world’s languages and encourage further research into the phenomenon.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect written by Robert I. Binnick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tense and aspect are means by which language refers to time--how an event takes place in the past, present, or future. They play a key role in understanding the grammar and structure of all languages, and interest in them reaches across linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect is a comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible guide to the topics and theories that currently form the front line of research into tense, aspect, and related areas. The volume contains 36 chapters, divided into 6 sections, written by internationally known experts in theoretical linguistics.

Download or read book A Grammar of Tariana from Northwest Amazonia written by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-07 with total page 744 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from the northwest Amazonian jungle.

Download or read book A Grammar of Murui Bue written by Katarzyna I. Wojtylak and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Grammar of Murui (Bue) by Katarzyna Wojtylak is the first complete description of Murui (Witoto, Huitoto) spoken in Colombia and Peru. It is an important contribution to the study of Witotoan languages and linguistic typology of Northwest Amazonia.

Download or read book A Grammar of Aguaruna Iini Chicham written by Simon E. Overall and published by De Gruyter Mouton. This book was released on 2018-11-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a descriptive grammar of Aguaruna, known to its speakers as Iiniá Chicham, a Jivaroan language spoken by some 55,000 people in the northwest Peruvian Amazon. Aguaruna is typologically and historically significant because of its location in the eastern foothills of the Andes, right between the Andean and Amazonian linguistic areas. Some typologically unusual syntactic phenomena, for example in the areas of grammatical relations and case marking, make this description relevant beyond the areal context. This is the first full grammar of a Jivaroan language, covering phonology, morphology and syntax as well as addressing some issues in discourse structure. It is an important work for specialists in South American languages as well as for linguists working in more general typological fields.

Download or read book A Grammar of Cavine a written by Antoine Guillaume and published by De Gruyter Mouton. This book was released on 2008 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality.

Download or read book Handbook of Amazonian Languages written by Desmond C. Derbyshire and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1986 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth volume in a series on the languages of Amazonia. This volume includes grammatical descriptions of Wai Wai, Warekena, a comparative survey of morphosyntactic features of the Tupi-Guarani languages, and a paper on interclausal reference phenomena in Amahuaca.

Download or read book A grammar of Paunaka written by Lena Terhart and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-02-14 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first detailed grammatical description of Paunaka, an Arawakan language spoken (in 2023) by eight people in the Chiquitania region in the lowlands of Eastern Bolivia. The grammar builds on material collected during several fieldwork trips between 2009 and 2020 by the team of the Paunaka Documentation Project, which was funded by the ELDP from 2011–2013. This material includes roughly 120 hours of audio and video recordings, which have been archived at ELAR. In 2022, the dissertation on which this book is based received the annual Research Award at the Europa-Universität Flensburg. The grammar provides a description of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Paunaka, including numerous comparative remarks to closely related languages. It includes over 1500 examples, most of them accompanied by a brief description of their original linguistic or extralinguistic context.

Download or read book A Grammar of Kulina written by Stefan Dienst and published by ISSN. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality.

Download or read book M ku written by Chris Rogers and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Mâaku: A Comprehensive Grammar is a comprehensive reference grammar of the Mâaku language, spoken by the jukudeitse who once lived in Venezuela and Brazil. Based on fieldwork with the final two speakers of the language, it describes all core aspects of the grammatical system as they have been recorded; presented through lexical items, example sentences and texts. This book offers a description of the now-extinct language. It was written in response to the loss of linguistic information generally and the significance this language has for the study of the sociolinguistic history of the region specifically. This information contributes to our understanding of linguistic diversity and the indigenous linguistic ecologies in the Americas. Also included is data about language contact via loanwords with other indigenous language spoken in the Northern Amazonian region. The resources in this book are essential for language comparisons and language histories in Venezuela and Brazil. Mâaku: A Comprehensive Grammar is an important reference for researchers and students in the fields of linguistics, anthropology, sociology, history and the study of Amazonian languages"--