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Dying Words
The next century will see more than half of the world’s 6,000 languages become extinct, and most of these will disappear without being adequately recorded. Written by one of the leading figures in language documentation, this fascinating book explores what humanity stands to lose as a result. Explores the unique philosophy, knowledge, and cultural assumptions of languages, and their impact on our collective intellectual heritage Questions why such linguistic diversity exists in the first place, and how can we can best respond to the challenge of recording and documenting these fragile oral traditions while they are still with us Written by one of the leading figures in language documentation, and draws on a wealth of vivid examples from his own field experience Brings conceptual issues vividly to life by weaving in portraits of individual ‘last speakers’ and anecdotes about linguists and their discoveries
A Grammar of Semelai
Semelai is a previously undescribed and endangered Aslian (Mon-Khmer) language of the Malay Peninsula. This book - the first in-depth description of an Aslian language - provides a comprehensive reference grammar of Semelai. Semelai intertwines two types of morphological system: a concatenative system of prefixes, suffixes and a circumfix - acquired through extended contact with Malay - and a nonconcatenative system of prefixes and infixes (including infix reduplication), inherited from Mon-Khmer. There are distinctive word classes - Nominals, Verbs and Expressives - the latter iconic utterances which simultaneously provide information about the predicate and its arguments. Semelai has many derivational processes which change word class or affect transitivity, and it combines both head-marking and dependent-marking profiles. It also has a rich phonemic system of 20 vowels and 32 consonants. Nicole Kruspe's discussion is complemented with a generous number of illustrative examples and texts, creating a reference work that will be welcomed by descriptivists and typologists alike.
The Language of Hunter-Gatherers
Offers a linguistic window into contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, looking at how they survive and interface with agricultural and industrial societies.
Loanwords in the World's Languages
This book is the first work to address the question of what kinds of words get borrowed in a systematic and comparative perspective. It studies lexical borrowing behavior on the basis of a world-wide sample of 40 languages, both major languages and minor languages, and both languages with heavy borrowing and languages with little lexical influence from other languages. The book is the result of a five-year project bringing together a unique group of specialists of many different languages and areas. The introductory chapters provide a general up-to-date introduction to language contact at the word level, as well as a presentation of the project's methodology. All the chapters are based on sa...
Adjective Classes
This book shows that every language has an adjective class and how such classes vary. Thirteen scholars report original research on languages from North, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The book throws new light on the nature and classification of adjectives and redefines the cross-linguistic parameters of their variation.
Malaysia's Original People
The Malay-language term for the indigenous minority peoples of Peninsular Malaysia, “Orang Asli”, covers at least 19 culturally and linguistically distinct subgroups. This volume is a comprehensive survey of current understandings of Malaysia’s Orang Asli communities (including contributions from scholars within the Orang Asli community), looking at language, archaeology, history, religion and issues of education, health and social change, as well as questions of land rights and control of resources. Until about 1960 most Orang Asli lived in small camps and villages in the coastal and interior forests, or in isolated rural areas, and made their living by various combinations of hunting...
The Articulatory Basis of Locality in Phonology
This work elucidates the nature of the notion of Locality in phonology, describing the minimal conditions under which sounds assimilate to one another. The central thesis is that a sound can assimilate to another sound only if gestural contiguity is established between these two sounds. The argument supporting the central thesis of this book is unique in bringing evidence from articulatory dynamics, electromyography, and cross-linguistic sound patterns to converge on the same notion of locality in phonology. This book will be of particular interest to researchers in phonetics, phonology, and morphology, as well as to cognitive scientists interested in how the grammar may include constraints that emerge from the physical aspects of speech.
The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages (2 vols)
The Handbook of the Austroasiatic Languages is the first comprehensive reference work on this important language family of South and Southeast Asia. Austroasiatic languages are spoken by more than 100 million people, from central India to Vietnam, from Malaysia to Southern China, including national language Cambodian and Vietnamese, and more than 130 minority communities, large and small. The handbook comprises two parts, Overviews and Grammar Sketches: Part 1) The overview chapters cover typology, classification, historical reconstruction, plus a special overview of the Munda languages. Part 2) Some 27 scholars present grammar sketches of 21 languages, representing 12 of the 13 branches. The sketches are carefully prepared according to the editors’ unifying typological approach, ensuring analytical and notational comparability throughout.
Sensing Others
Sensing Others explores the lives of Indigenous Batek people in Peninsular Malaysia amid the strange and the new in the borderland between protected national park and oil palm plantation. As their ancestral forests disappear around them, Batek people nevertheless attempt to live well among the strange Others they now encounter: out-of-place animals and plants, traders, tourists, poachers, and forest guards. How Batek people voice their experiences of the good and the strange in relation to these Others challenges essentialized notions of cultural and species difference and the separateness of ethical worlds. Drawing on meticulous, long-term ethnographic research with Batek people, Alice Rudg...
Reciprocals and Semantic Typology
Is there a single, Platonic 'reciprocal' meaning found in all languages, or is there a cluster of related concepts which are nonetheless impossible to characterize in any single way? This title develops and explains techniques for tackling this question. It confronts a general problem facing semantic typology.
