No detailed description available for "HANDBOOK AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES".

Handbook of Amazonian languages. 1.

No detailed description available for "HANDBOOK AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES".

The Amazon Basin is arguably both one of the least-known and the most complex linguistic regions in the world. It is the home of some 300 languages belonging to around twenty language families, plus more than a dozen genetic isolates, and many of these languages (often incompletely documented and mostly endangered) show properties that constitute exceptions to received ideas about linguistic universals. This book provides an overview in a single volume of this rich and exciting linguistic area. The editors and contributors have sought to make their descriptions as clear and accessible as possible, in order to provide a basis for further research on the structural characteristics of Amazonian languages and their genetic and areal relationships, as well as a point of entry to important cross-linguistic data for the wider constituency of theoretical linguists.

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.

The book that tells you all the things you felt you were expected to know about linguistics, but were afraid to ask about.*What do you know about Burushaski and Miwok?*What's the difference between paradigmatic and syntagmatic?*What is E-language?*What is a language?*Do parenthetical and non-restrictive mean the same thing?*How do you write a bibiliographic entry for a work you have not seen?Every student who has asked these questions needs this book. A compendium of useful things for linguistics students to know, from the IPA chart to the Saussurean dichotomies, this book will be the constant companion of anyone undertaking studies of linguistics. Part reference work, part revision guide, and with tables providing summary information on some 280 languages, the book provides a new learning tool as a supplement to the usual textbooks and glossaries.

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.

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.

This textbook deals with the grammatical category of person, which covers the first person, the second person, and the third person. Drawing on data from over 700 languages, Anna Siewierska compares the use of person within and across different languages, and examines the factors underlying this variation. She shows how person forms vary in substance, in the nature of the semantic distinctions they convey, in how they are used in sentences and discourse, and in the way they function to convey social distinctions. By looking at different types of person forms in the grammatical and social contexts in which they are used, this book documents an underlying unity between them, arguing against the treatment of person markers based on arbitrary sets of morphological and syntactic properties. Clearly organized and accessibly written, it will be welcomed by students and scholars of linguistics, particularly those interested in grammatical categories and their use.

Máku: A Comprehensive Grammar is a comprehensive reference grammar of the Maku 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. Máku: 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.