A Comparative Study of Proto-Mongolian and Proto-Sahaptian

A Comparative Study of Proto-Mongolian and Proto-Sahaptian PDF Author: Qiuju Yu
Publisher: National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada
ISBN:
Category : Comparative linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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A Comparative Study of Proto-Mongolian and Proto-Sahaptian

A Comparative Study of Proto-Mongolian and Proto-Sahaptian PDF Author: Qiuju Yu
Publisher: National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada
ISBN:
Category : Comparative linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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California Indian Languages

California Indian Languages PDF Author: Victor Golla
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520389670
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Nowhere was the linguistic diversity of the New World more extreme than in California, where an extraordinary variety of village-dwelling peoples spoke seventy-eight mutually unintelligible languages. This comprehensive illustrated handbook, a major synthesis of more than 150 years of documentation and study, reviews what we now know about California's indigenous languages. Victor Golla outlines the basic structural features of more than two dozen language types and cites all the major sources, both published and unpublished, for the documentation of these languages—from the earliest vocabularies collected by explorers and missionaries, to the data amassed during the twentieth-century by Alfred Kroeber and his colleagues, to the extraordinary work of John P. Harrington and C. Hart Merriam. Golla also devotes chapters to the role of language in reconstructing prehistory, and to the intertwining of language and culture in pre-contact California societies, making this work, the first of its kind, an essential reference on California’s remarkable Indian languages.

Newsletter

Newsletter PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indians
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Language

Language PDF Author: George Melville Bolling
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Comparative linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Tongue Root Harmony and Vowel Contrast in Northeast Asian Languages

Tongue Root Harmony and Vowel Contrast in Northeast Asian Languages PDF Author: Seongyeon Ko
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783447109703
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
This book investigates the synchrony and diachrony of the vocalism of a variety of Northeast Asian languages, especially Korean, Mongolic, and Tungusic languages, traditionally known as ?Altaic? and more recently as ?Transeurasian.? 0After careful examinations of the phonetics and phonology of vowels in each variety, the author presents a formal synchronic analysis of more than 35 languages and dialects, past and present, within the framework of Contrastive Hierarchy (CH).

The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics

The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics PDF Author: Raymond Hickey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316839451
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1687

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Book Description
Providing a contemporary and comprehensive look at the topical area of areal linguistics, this book looks systematically at different regions of the world whilst presenting a focussed and informed overview of the theory behind research into areal linguistics and language contact. The topicality of areal linguistics is thoroughly documented by a wealth of case studies from all major regions of the world and, with chapters from scholars with a broad spectrum of language expertise, it offers insights into the mechanisms of external language change. With no book currently like this on the market, The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics will be welcomed by students and scholars working on the history of language families, documentation and classification, and will help readers to understand the key area of areal linguistics within a broader linguistic context.

The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages

The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages PDF Author: Martine Robbeets
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198804628
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 984

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Book Description
The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages provides a comprehensive account of the Transeurasian languages, and is the first major reference work in the field since 1965. The term 'Transeurasian' refers to a large group of geographically adjacent languages that includes five uncontroversial linguistic families: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic. The historical connection between these languages, however, constitutes one of the most debated issues in historical comparative linguistics. In the present book, a team of leading international scholars in the field take a balanced approach to this controversy, integrating different theoretical frameworks, combining both functional and formal linguistics, and showing that genealogical and areal approaches are in fact compatible with one another. The volume is divided into five parts. Part I deals with the historical sources and periodization of the Transeurasian languages and their classification and typology. In Part II, chapters provide individual structural overviews of the Transeurasian languages and the linguistic subgroups that they belong to, while Part III explores Transeurasian phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis, and semantics from a comparative perspective. Part IV offers a range of areal and genealogical explanations for the correlations observed in the preceding parts. Finally, Part V combines archaeological, genetic, and anthropological perspectives on the identity of speakers of Transeurasian languages. The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages will be an indispensable resource for specialists in Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages and for anyone with an interest in Transeurasian and comparative linguistics more broadly.

Voice syncretism

Voice syncretism PDF Author: Nicklas N. Bahrt
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961103194
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive typological account of voice syncretism, focusing on resemblance in formal verbal marking between two or more of the following seven voices: passives, antipassives, reflexives, reciprocals, anticausatives, causatives, and applicatives. It covers voice syncretism from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and has been structured in a manner that facilitates convenient access to information about specific patterns of voice syncretism, their distribution and development. The book is based on a survey of voice syncretism in 222 geographically and genealogically diverse languages, but also thoroughly revisits previous research on the phenomenon. Voice syncretism is approached systematically by establishing and exploring patterns of voice syncretism that can logically be posited for the seven voices of focus in the book: 21 simplex patterns when one considers two of the seven voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal syncretism), and 99 complex patterns when one considers more than two of the voices sharing the same marking (e.g. reflexive-reciprocal-anticausative syncretism). In a similar vein, 42 paths of development can logically be posited if it is assumed that voice marking in each of the seven voices can potentially develop one of the other six voice functions (e.g. reflexive voice marking developing a reciprocal function). This approach enables the discussion of both voice syncretism that has received considerable attention in the literature (notably middle syncretism involving the reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative and/or passive voices) and voice syncretism that has received little or not treatment in the past (including seemingly contradictory patterns such as causative-anticausative and passive-antipassive syncretism). In the survey almost all simplex patterns are attested in addition to seventeen complex patterns. In terms of diachrony, evidence is presented and discussed for twenty paths of development. The book strives to highlight the variation found in voice syncretism across the world’s languages and encourage further research into the phenomenon.

The Races of Man

The Races of Man PDF Author: Joseph Deniker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 662

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The Emergence of Distinctive Features

The Emergence of Distinctive Features PDF Author: Jeff Mielke
Publisher: Oxford Studies in Typology and
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This book makes a fundamental contribution to phonology, linguistic typology, and the nature of the human language faculty. Distinctive features in phonology distinguish one meaningful sound from another. Since the mid-twentieth century they have been seen as a set characterizing all possible phonological distinctions and as an integral part of Universal Grammar, the innate language faculty underlying successive versions of Chomskyan generative theory. The usefulness of distinctive features in phonological analysis is uncontroversial, but the supposition that features are innate and universal rather than learned and language-specific has never, until now, been systematically tested. In his pioneering account Jeff Mielke presents the results of a crosslinguistic survey of natural classes of distinctive features covering almost six hundred of the world's languages drawn from a variety of different families. He shows that no theory is able to characterize more than 71 percent of classes, and further that current theories, deployed either singly or collectively, do not predict the range of classes that occur and recur. He reveals the existence of apparently unnatural classes in many languages. Even without these findings, he argues, there are reasons to doubt whether distinctive features are innate: for example, distinctive features used in signed languages are different from those in spoken languages, even though deafness is generally not hereditary. The author explains the grouping of sounds into classes and concludes by offering a unified account of what previously have been considered to be natural and unnatural classes. The data on which the analysis is based are freely available in a program downloadable from the publisher's web site.