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In this pioneering study Paul D. Kroeber examines the history of an array of important syntactic constructions in the Salish language family. This group of some twenty-three languages, centrally located in the Northwest Coast and Plateau Regions, is noted for its intriguing differences from European languages, including the possible irrelevance of a noun/verb distinction to grammatical structure and the existence of distinctive systems of articles, which also often function as marks of subordination. ø Kroeber draws on and analyzes data from a wide range of textual and other sources. Centering his detailed investigation on patterns of subordination and focusing, he situates these against the broader background of Salish syntax, examines their interrelationships, and reconstructs their historical development. The result is a study that significantly enhances understanding of the structure and history of Salish. As important, Kroeber?s critical command of sources and well-considered historical proposals are exemplary, setting a methodological standard for Americanist scholarship.
Linguistics, as a social science, should have something to teach us about humans as social beings. However, modern grammatical theories regard languages as autonomous systems, so these theories are little concerned with speakers and hearers, their interactions, and their relationship to the world around them. Further, these theories tend toward excessive concern with methodology and the properties of linguistic systems, neglecting, in fact, the languages themselves and those who use them in everyday life. Even the shift toward cognitive approaches, promising for their new insights into the brain, still misses an equally important aspect of language, namely a framework which would account for...
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.
Among Asian languages, Tibetan is second only to Chinese in the depth of its historical record, with texts dating back as far as the eighth and ninth centuries, written in an alphabetic script that preserves the contemporaneous phonological features of the language. The Classical Tibetan Language is the first comprehensive description of the Tibetan language and is distinctive in that it treats the classical Tibetan language on its own terms rather than by means of descriptive categories appropriate to other languages, as has traditionally been the case. Beyer presents the language as a medium of literary expression with great range, power, subtlety, and humor, not as an abstract object. He also deals comprehensively with a wide variety of linguistic phenomena as they are actually encountered in the classical texts, with numerous examples of idioms, common locutions, translation devices, neologisms, and dialectal variations.
This book represents the first comprehensive examination of templatic constructions - namely, linguistic structures involving unexpected linear stipulation - in both morphology and syntax from a typological perspective. It provides a state-of-the-art overview of the previous literature, develops a new typology for categorizing templatic constructions across grammatical domains, and examines their cross-linguistic variation by employing cutting-edge computational methods. It will be of interest to descriptive linguists seeking to gain a better sense of the diversity of the world's templatic constructions, theoretical linguists developing restrictive models of possible templates, and typologists interested in the attested range of patterns of linear stipulation and the application of new kinds of multivariate methods to cross-linguistic data. The new typological framework is illustrated in detail via a number of case studies involving languages of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and numerous other templatic constructions are also considered over the course of the book.
Frederic W. Gleach offers the most balanced and complete accounting of the early years of the Jamestown colony to date. When English colonists established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown in 1607, they confronted a powerful and growing Native chiefdom consisting of over thirty tribes under one paramount chief, Powhatan. For the next half-century, a portion of the Middle Atlantic coastal plain became a charged and often violent meeting ground between two very different worlds.
In this volume some of the leading scholars working in Native North America explore contemporary perspectives on Native culture, history, and representation. Written in honor of the anthropologist Raymond D. Fogelson, the volume charts the currents of contemporary scholarship while offering an invigorating challenge to researchers in the field. The essays employ a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and range widely across time and space. The introduction and first section consider the origins and legacies of various strands of interpretation, while the second part examines the relationship among culture, power, and creativity. The third part focuses on the cultural construction and experience of history, and the volume closes with essays on identity, difference, and appropriation in several historical and cultural contexts. Aimed at a broad interdisciplinary audience, the volume offers an excellent overview of contemporary perspectives on Native peoples.
During the summer of 1963, Harvard linguist Karl V. Teeter traveled along the Saint John River, the great thoroughfare of Native New Brunswick, Canada, with his principal Maliseet consultant, Peter Lewis Paul. Together they recorded a series of tales from Maliseet elders whom Paul regarded as among the best Maliseet storytellers born before 1900, including Charles Laporte, Matilda Sappier, Solomon Polchies, William Saulis, and Alexander Sacobie. Paul also contributed eleven narratives of his own.øTales from Maliseet Country presents the transcripts and translations of the texts Teeter collected, together with one tale recorded by linguist Philip S. LeSourd in 1977. The stories range from ch...
This book presents two of the most important traditions of the Dakota people, the Red Road and the Holy Dance, as told by Samuel Mniyo and Robert Goodvoice, two Dakota men from the Wahpeton Dakota Nation near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. Their accounts of these central spiritual traditions and other aspects of Dakota life and history go back seven generations and help to illuminate the worldview of the Dakota people for the younger generation of Dakotas, also called the Santee Sioux. “The Good Red Road,” an important symbolic concept in the Holy Dance, means the good way of living or the path of goodness. The Holy Dance (also called the Medicine Dance) is a Dakota ceremony of ear...
This is the second volume of work that introduces a new and fundamentally different conception of language structure and linguistic investigation. This volume suggests how to use the theoretical tools presented in Volume One.