The focus of this unique publication is on Ethiopian languages and linguistics. Not only major languages such as Amharic and Oromo receive attention, but also lesser studied ones like Sezo and Nuer are dealt with. The Gurage languages, that often present a descriptive and sociolinguistic puzzle to researchers, have received ample coverage. And for the first time in the history of Ethiopian linguistics, two chapters are dedicated to descriptive studies of Ethiopian Sign Language, as well as two studies on acoustic phonetics. Topics range over a wide spectrum of issues covering the lexicon, sociolinguistics, socio-cultural aspects and micro-linguistic studies on the phonology, morphology and syntax of Ethiopian languages.

This handbook provides a comprehensive account of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, exploring both their structures and features and their function and use in society. The first part of the volume provides background and general information relating to Ethiopian languages, including their demographic distribution and classification, language policy, scripts and writing, and language endangerment. Subsequent parts are dedicated to the four major language families in Ethiopia - Cushitic, Ethiosemitic, Nilo-Saharan, and Omotic - and contain studies of individual languages, with an initial introductory overview chapter in each part. Both major and less-documented languages are included, ranging from Amharic and Oromo to Zay, Gawwada, and Yemsa. The final part explores languages that are outside of those four families, namely Ethiopian Sign Language, Ethiopian English, and Arabic. With its international team of senior researchers and junior scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages will appeal to anyone interested in the languages of the region and in African linguistics more broadly.

Understanding Signed Languages provides a broad and accessible introduction to the science of language, with evidence drawn from signed languages around the world. Readers will learn about language through a unique set of signed language studies that will surprise them with the diversity of ways human languages achieve the same functional goals of communication. Designed for students with no prior knowledge of signed languages or linguistics, this book features: A comprehensive introduction to the sub-fields of linguistics, including sociolinguistics, linguistic structure, language change, language acquisition, and bilingualism; Examples from more than 50 of the world’s signed languages and a brief “Language in Community” snapshot in each chapter highlighting one signed language and the researchers who are documenting it; Opportunities to reflect on how language ideologies have shaped scientific inquiry and contributed to linguistic bias; Review and discussion questions, useful websites, and pointers to additional readings and resources at the end of each chapter. Understanding Signed Languages provides instructors with a primary or secondary text to enliven the discourse in introductory classes in linguistics, interpreting, deaf education, disability studies, cognitive science, human diversity, and communication sciences and disorders. Students will develop an appreciation for the language-specific and universal characteristics of signed languages and the global communities in which they emerge.

In our increasingly multilingual modern world, understanding how languages beyond the first are acquired and processed at a brain level is essential to design evidence-based teaching, clinical interventions and language policy. Written by a team of world-leading experts in a wide range of disciplines within cognitive science, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the study of third (and more) language acquisition and processing. It features 30 approachable chapters covering topics such as multilingual language acquisition, education, language maintenance and language loss, multilingual code-switching, ageing in the multilingual brain, and many more. Each chapter provides an accessible overview of the state of the art in its topic, while offering comprehensive access to the specialized literature, through carefully curated citations. It also serves as a methodological resource for researchers in the field, offering chapters on methods such as case studies, corpora, artificial language systems or statistical modelling of multilingual data.

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 samples of 1000-2000 words, elicited by a uniform meaning list of 1460 meanings. The combined database, comprising over 70,000 words, is published online at the same time as the book is published. For each word, information about loanword status is given in the database, and the 40 case studies in the book describe the social and historical contact situations in detail. The final chapter draws general conclusions about what kinds of words tend to get borrowed, what kinds of word meanings are particularly resistant to borrowing, and what kinds of social contact situations lead to what kinds of borrowing situations.

The author of this essay confesses that she has practised an exhumation exercise: an overwhelming work of research in which many names are hardly known (let alone recognised). The challenges of a work for which there is little precedent, and which was absolutely necessary, are numerous and varied: from the absence of documentation (or the difficulty of accessing it) to the over-representation of a large handful of linguists as opposed to the practical invisibility of the majority, to cite only the most obvious. Nevertheless, the result is an enjoyable and pedagogical read which documents the existence and contributions of more than 200 women who have worked in language-related disciplines. The book explores Western and Eastern sources in order to do justice to all those women who make this book meaningful.

This book offers sociological and structural descriptions of language varieties used in over 2 dozen Jewish communities around the world, along with synthesizing and theoretical chapters. Language descriptions focus on historical development, contemporary use, regional and social variation, structural features, and Hebrew/Aramaic loanwords. The book covers commonly researched language varieties, like Yiddish, Judeo-Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic, as well as less commonly researched ones, like Judeo-Tat, Jewish Swedish, and Hebraized Amharic in Israel today.

People in many African communities live within a series of concentric circles when it comes to language. In a small group, a speaker uses an often unwritten and endangered mother tongue that is rarely used in school. A national indigenous language—written, widespread, sometimes used in school—surrounds it. An international language like French or English, a vestige of colonialism, carries prestige, is used in higher education, and promises mobility—and yet it will not be well known by its users. The essays in Languages in Africa explore the layers of African multilingualism as they affect language policy and education. Through case studies ranging across the continent, the contributors consider multilingualism in the classroom as well as in domains ranging from music and film to politics and figurative language. The contributors report on the widespread devaluing and even death of indigenous languages. They also investigate how poor teacher training leads to language-related failures in education. At the same time, they demonstrate that education in a mother tongue can work, linguists can use their expertise to provoke changes in language policies, and linguistic creativity thrives in these multilingual communities.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.