Download or read book The Languages of the Amazon written by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-18 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first guide and introduction to the extraordinary range of languages in Amazonia, which include some of the most the most fascinating in the world and many of which are now teetering on the edge of extinction. Alexandra Aikhenvald, one of the world's leading experts on the region, provides an account of the more than 300 languages. She sets out their main characteristics, compares their common and unique features, and describes the histories and cultures of the people who speak them. The languages abound in rare features. Most have been in contact with each other for many generations, giving rise to complex patterns of linguistic influence. The author draws on her own extensive field research to tease out and analyse the patterns of their genetic and structural diversity. She shows how these patterns reveal the interrelatedness of language and culture; different kinship systems, for example, have different linguistic correlates. Professor Aikhenvald explains the many unusual features of Amazonian languages, which include evidentials, tones, classifiers, and elaborate positional verbs. She ends the book with a glossary of terms, and a full guide for those readers interested in following up a particular language or linguistic phenomenon. The book is free of esoteric terminology, written in its author's characteristically clear style, and brought vividly to life with numerous accounts of her experience in the region. It may be used as a resource in courses in Latin American studies, Amazonian studies, linguistic typology, and general linguistics, and as reference for linguistic and anthropological research.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2005-11-24 with total page 26924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of ELL (1993, Ron Asher, Editor) was hailed as "the field's standard reference work for a generation". Now the all-new second edition matches ELL's comprehensiveness and high quality, expanded for a new generation, while being the first encyclopedia to really exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics. * The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field * An entirely new work, with new editors, new authors, new topics and newly commissioned articles with a handful of classic articles * The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics through the online edition * Ground-breaking and International in scope and approach * Alphabetically arranged with extensive cross-referencing * Available in print and online, priced separately. The online version will include updates as subjects develop ELL2 includes: * c. 7,500,000 words * c. 11,000 pages * c. 3,000 articles * c. 1,500 figures: 130 halftones and 150 colour * Supplementary audio, video and text files online * c. 3,500 glossary definitions * c. 39,000 references * Extensive list of commonly used abbreviations * List of languages of the world (including information on no. of speakers, language family, etc.) * Approximately 700 biographical entries (now includes contemporary linguists) * 200 language maps in print and online Also available online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedirect.com. The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics Ground-breaking in scope - wider than any predecessor An invaluable resource for researchers, academics, students and professionals in the fields of: linguistics, anthropology, education, psychology, language acquisition, language pathology, cognitive science, sociology, the law, the media, medicine & computer science. The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field

Download or read book Languages of the Amazon written by Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide and introduction to the extraordinary range of languages in Amazonia includes some of the most fascinating in the world and many of which are now teetering on the edge of extinction.

Download or read book The Indigenous Languages of South America written by Lyle Campbell and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-01-27 with total page 765 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide is a thorough guide to the indigenous languages of this part of the world. With more than a third of the linguistic diversity of the world (in terms of language families and isolates), South American languages contribute new findings in most areas of linguistics. Though formerly one of the linguistically least known areas of the world, extensive descriptive and historical linguistic research in recent years has expanded knowledge greatly. These advances are represented in this volume in indepth treatments by the foremost scholars in the field, with chapters on the history of investigation, language classification, language endangerment, language contact, typology, phonology and phonetics, and on major language families and regions of South America.

Download or read book An Introduction to the Languages of the World written by Anatole Lyovin and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text is designed to introduce students to the variety of languages of the world.

Download or read book American Indian Languages written by Lyle Campbell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-21 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Native American languages are spoken from Siberia to Greenland, and from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego; they include the southernmost language of the world (Yaghan) and some of the northernmost (Eskimoan). Campbell's project is to take stock of what is currently known about the history of Native American languages and in the process examine the state of American Indian historical linguistics, and the success and failure of its various methodologies. There is remarkably little consensus in the field, largely due to the 1987 publication of Language in the Americas by Joseph Greenberg. He claimed to trace a historical relation between all American Indian languages of North and South America, implying that most of the Western Hemisphere was settled by a single wave of immigration from Asia. This has caused intense controversy and Campbell, as a leading scholar in the field, intends this volume to be, in part, a response to Greenberg. Finally, Campbell demonstrates that the historical study of Native American languages has always relied on up-to-date methodology and theoretical assumptions and did not, as is often believed, lag behind the European historical linguistic tradition.

Download or read book The Indigenous Languages of the Americas written by Lyle Campbell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indigenous Languages of the Americas is a comprehensive assessment of what is known about their history and classification. It identifies gaps in knowledge and resolves controversial issues while making new contributions of its own. The book deals with the major themes involving these languages: classification and history of the Indigenous languages of the Americas; issues involving language names; origins of the languages of the New World; unclassified and spurious languages; hypotheses of distant linguistic relationships; linguistic areas; contact languages (pidgins, lingua francas, mixed languages); and loanwords and neologisms.

Download or read book HANDBOOK AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES written by Desmond C. Derbyshire and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "HANDBOOK AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES".

Download or read book Language in the Americas written by Joseph Harold Greenberg and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is concerned primarily with the evidence for the validity of a genetic unit, Amerind, embracing the vast majority of New World languages. The only languages excluded are those belonging to the Na-Dene and Eskimo- Aleut families. It examines the now widely held view that Haida, the most distant language genetically, is not to be included in Na-Dene. It confined itself to Sapir's data, although the evidence could have been buttressed considerably by the use of more recent materials. What survives is a body of evidence superior to that which could be adduced under similar restrictions for the affinity of Albanian, Celtic, and Armenian, all three universally recognized as valid members of the Indo-European family of languages. A considerable number of historical hypotheses emerge from the present and the forthcoming volumes. Of these, the most fundamental bears on the question of the peopling of the Americas. If the results presented in this volume and in the companion volume on Eurasiatic are valid, the classification of the world's languages based on genetic criteria undergoes considerable simplification.

Download or read book Nominalization in Languages of the Americas written by Roberto Zariquiey and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent scholarship has confirmed earlier observations that nominalization plays a crucial role in the formation of complex constructions in the world’s languages. Grammatical nominalizations are one of the most salient and widespread features of languages of the Americas, yet they have not been approached as foundational grammatical structures for constructions such as relative clauses and complement clauses. This is due to an imbalance in past scholarship, which has tended to focus on these constructions at the expense of the nominalization structures underlying them. The papers in this collection treat grammatical nominalizations in their own right, and as a starting point for the investigation of their uses in complex grammatical structures. A representative sample of Amerindian languages, with focus on South America, examines properties of grammatical nominalizations such as their multiple functions, their internal and external syntax, and their diachronic development. Among the far-reaching theoretical conclusions reached by the studies in this volume is that the various types of relative clauses recognized in the typological literature are actually no more than epiphenomena arising from the different uses of grammatical nominalizations.

Download or read book Native Languages of the Americas written by Thomas Sebeok and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The publishing history of the eleven chapters that comprise the contents of this second volume of Native Languages of the Americas is rather different from that of the thirteen that appeared in Volume I of this twin set late last year. Original ver sions of five articles, respectively, by Barthel, Grimes, Longacre, Mayers, and Suarez, were first published in Part II of Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 4, subtitled lbero-A merican and Caribbean Linguistics (1968), having been com missioned by the undersigned in his capacity as editor of the fourteen volume series which was distributed in twenty-one tomes between 1963 and 1976. McClaran's article is reprinted from Part III of Vol. 10. Linguistics in North America (1973) and the two by Kaufman and Rensch were in Part I I of Vol. 11, Diachronic, A real. and Typological Linguistics (1973 ). There are three contributions by Landar: earlier versions of two appeared in Vol. 10 ("North American Indian Languages. " accompanied by William Sorsby's maps of tribal groups of North and Central America), and in Vol. 13, Historiography of Linguistics (1975); however, his checklist of South and Central American Indian languages was freshly compiled for this book. Generous financial support for preparing the materials included in this project came from several agencies of the United States government, to wit: the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation, for Vols. 10 and 13, and the Office of Education, for Vols. 4 and 11; in addition.

Download or read book International Encyclopedia of Linguistics written by William Frawley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 2198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2nd Edition encompasses the full range of the contemporary field of linguistics, including historical, comparative, formal, mathematical, functional, and philosophical linguistics with special attention given to interrelations within branches of linguistics and to relations of linguistics with other disciplines. Areas of intersection with the social and behavioral sciences--ethnolinguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and behavioral linguistics--receive major coverage, along with interdisciplinary work in language and literature, mathematical linguistics, computational linguistics, and applied linguistics.Longer entries in the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, ranging up to four thousand words, survey the major fields of study--for example, anthropological linguistics, history of linguistics, semantics, and phonetics. Shorter entries treat specific topics within these fields, such as code switching, sound symbolism, and syntactic features. Other short entries define and discuss technical terms used within the various subfields or provide sketches of the careers of important scholars in the history of linguistics, such as Leonard Bloomfield, Roman Jakobson, and Edward Sapir.A major portion of the work is its extensive coverage of languages and language families. From those as familiar as English, Japanese, and the Romance languages to Hittite, Yoruba, and Nahuatl, all corners of the world receive treatment. Languages that are the subject of independent entries are analyzed in terms of their phonology, grammatical features, syntax, and writing systems. Lists attached to each article on a language group or family enumerate all languages, extinct or still spoken, within that group and provide detailed information on the number of known speakers, geographical range, and degree of intelligibility with other languages in the group. In this way, virtually every known language receives coverage.For ease of reference and to aid research, the articles are alphabetically arranged, each signed by the contributor, supported by up-to-date bibliographies, line drawings, maps, tables, and diagrams, and readily accessible via a system of cross-references and a detailed index and synoptic outline. Authoritative, comprehensive, and innovative, the 2nd edition of the International Encyclopedia of Linguistics will be an indispensable addition to personal, public, academic, and research libraries and will introduce a new generation of readers to the complexities and concerns of this field of study.

Download or read book Ergativity in Amazonia written by Spike Gildea and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a typological/theoretical introduction plus eight papers about ergative alignment in 16 Amazonian languages. All are written by linguists with years of fieldwork and comparative experience in the region, all describe details of the synchronic systems, and several also provide diachronic insight into the evolution of these systems. The five papers in Part I focus on languages from four larger families with ergative patterns primarily in morphology. The typological contribution is in detailed consideration of unusual splits, changes in ergative patterns, and parallels between ergative main clauses and nominalizations. The three papers in Part II discuss genetically isolated languages. Two present dominant ergative patterns in both morphology and syntax, the other a syntactic inverse system that is predominantly ergative in discourse. In each, the authors demonstrate that identification of traditional grammatical relations is problematic. These data will figure in all future typological and theoretical debates about grammatical relations.

Download or read book Grammaticalization from a Typological Perspective written by Heiko Narrog and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the way in which grammaticalization processes - whereby lexical words eventually become markers of grammatical categories - converge and differ across various types of language. While grammaticalization at its core is a unidirectional phenomenon, in which the same pathways of change are replicated across languages, certain language types and language areas have distinct preferences with respect to what they grammaticalize and how. Previous work has principally addressed this question with specific reference to languages of Southeast and East Asia that do not seem to grammaticalize paradigms of categories in the same manner as Indo-European languages, or form extensive grammaticalization chains. This volume takes a broader approach and proceeds systematically area by area: specialists in the field address the processes of grammaticalization in languages of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas, and in creole languages. The studies reveal a number of unique pathways of grammaticalization in each language area, as well as identifying the universal shared features of the phenomenon.

Download or read book Secondary Predication and Adverbial Modification written by Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-09-28 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Depictive secondary predicates, such as 'raw' in 'George ate the fish raw', are central to current issues in syntactic and semantic theory - in particular predication theory, phrase structure theories, issues of control and grammatical relations, and verbal aspect. This is the first book to approach depictive secondary predication from a cross-linguistic perspective. It describes all the relevant phenomena and brings together critical surveys and new contributions on their morphosyntactic and semantic properties. It considers similarities and differences between secondary predicates and other types of adjuncts, including adverbials of manner, comparison, quantity, and location. The authors are leading scholars with a first-hand knowledge of the languages they discuss. Their approach is theory-neutral and pragmatic: they draw on insights and research traditions ranging from the minimalist program to semantic maps methodology. The book will interest scholars working on the semantics or syntax of secondary predicates, adverbials, and the role of agreement and other morphological marking. It has been designed for use in advanced syntax and typology classes.

Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 1638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia written by Alf Hornborg and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2011-10-31 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A transdisciplinary collaboration among ethnologists, linguists, and archaeologists, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia traces the emergence, expansion, and decline of cultural identities in indigenous Amazonia. Hornborg and Hill argue that the tendency to link language, culture, and biology--essentialist notions of ethnic identities--is a Eurocentric bias that has characterized largely inaccurate explanations of the distribution of ethnic groups and languages in Amazonia. The evidence, however, suggests a much more fluid relationship among geography, language use, ethnic identity, and genetics. In Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia, leading linguists, ethnographers, ethnohistorians, and archaeologists interpret their research from a unique nonessentialist perspective to form a more accurate picture of the ethnolinguistic diversity in this area. Revealing how ethnic identity construction is constantly in flux, contributors show how such processes can be traced through different ethnic markers such as pottery styles and languages. Scholars and students studying lowland South America will be especially interested, as will anthropologists intrigued by its cutting-edge, interdisciplinary approach.