Author: Michael Fortescue
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110925389
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 508
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Book Description
This volume is the first comprehensive comparative dictionary to cover the whole of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family. The genealogical status of this family (whether from a common source or due to convergence) has long been controversial, but its coherence as a family can now be taken as proven. Its geographical position between Siberia and northernmost America renders it crucial in any attempt to relate the languages and peoples of these large linguistic regions. The dictionary consists of cognate sets arranged alphabetically according to reconstructed proto-forms and covers all published lexical sources for the languages concerned (plus a good deal of unpublished material). The criterion for setting up Proto-Chukotian sets is the existence of clear cognates in at least two of the four languages: Chukchi, Koryak, Alutor, and (now extinct) Kerek, and for Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan sets cognates in at least one of these plus Itelmen. Internal loans between the two branches of the family are indicated - this is particularly important in the case of the many loans from Koryak to modern western Itelmen. Proto-Itelmen sets without clear cognates in Chukotian are listed separately, without reconstructions. The data is presented in a reader-friendly format, with each set divided into separate lines for the individual languages concerned and with a common orthography for all reliable modern forms (given as full word stems, not just 'roots'). The introduction contains information on the distribution of the individual languages and dialects and all sound correspondences relating them, plus a sketch of what is known of their (pre)historical background. Inflections and derivational affixes are treated in separate sections, and Chukchi and English proto-form indexes allows multiple routes of access to the data. A full reference list of sources is included.
Author: Michael Fortescue
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
ISBN: 8763535688
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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Book Description
Orientation Systems of the North Pacific Rim is an extension of the author's earlier volume Eskimo Orientation Systems (also published in the series Monographs on Greenland - Meddelelser om Gronland, Man & Society, 1988). This time it covers all the contiguous languages ? and cultures ? across the northern Pacific rim from Vancouver Island in Canada to Hokkaido in northern Japan, plus the adjacent Arctic coasts of Alaska and Chukotka. These form a testing ground for recent theories concerning the nature and classification of orientation systems and their shared ?frames of reference?, in particular the many varieties of ?landmark? systems typifying the Arctic and sub-Arctic. Despite the wide variety of languages spoken here (all of them endangered), there is much in common as regards their overlapping geographical settings and the ways in which terms for orientation within the microcosm (the house) and within the macrocosm (the surrounding environment) mesh throughout the region. This is illustrated with numerous maps and diagrams, from both coastal and inland sites. Attention is paid to ambiguities and anomalies within the systems revealed by the data, as these may be clues to pre-historic movements of the populations concerned ? from a riverine setting to the coast, from the coast to inland, or more complex successive displacements. Cultural factors over and beyond environmental determinism are discussed within this broad context."
Author: Michael Fortescue
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847141641
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
In building up a scenario for the arrival on the shores of Alaska of speakers of languages related to Eskimo-Aleut with genetic roots deep within Sineria, this book touches upon a number of issues in contemporary historical linguistics and archaeology. The Arctic "gateway" to the New World, by acting as a bottleneck, has allowed only small groups of mobile hunter-gatherers through during specific propitious periods, and thus provides a unique testing ground for theories about population and language movements in pre-agricultural times. Owing to the historically attested prevalence of language shifts and other contact phenomena in the region, it is arguable that the spread of genes and the spread of language have been out of step since the earliest reconstructable times, contrary to certain views of their linkage. Proposals that have been put forward in the past concerning the affiliations of Eskimo-Aleut languages are followed up in the light of recent progress in reconstructing the proto-languages concerned. Those linking Eskimo-Aleut with the Uralic languages and Yukagir are particularly promising, and reconstructions for many common elements are presented. The entire region "Great Beringia" is scoured for typological evidence in the form of anomalies and constellations of uncommon traits diagnostic of affiliation or contact. The various threads lead back to mesolithic times in south central Siberia, when speakers of a "Uralo-Siberian" mesh of related languages appears to have moved along the major waterways of Siberia. Such a scenario would acount for the present distribution of these languages and the results of their meeting with remnants of earlier linguistic waves from the Old World to the New.
Author: Edward Vajda
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110554062
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 792
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Book Description
The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia: A Comprehensive Guide surveys the indigenous languages of Asia’s North Pacific Rim, Siberia, and adjacent portions of Inner Eurasia. It provides in-depth descriptions of every first-order family of this vast area, with special emphasis on family-internal subdivision and dialectal differentiation. Individual chapters trace the origins and expansion of the region’s widespread pastoral-based language groups as well as the microfamilies and isolates spoken by northern Asia’s surviving hunter-gatherers. Separate chapters cover sparsely recorded languages of early Inner Eurasia that defy precise classification and the various pidgins and creoles spread over the region. Other chapters investigate the typology of salient linguistic features of the area, including vowel harmony, noun inflection, verb indexing (also known as agreement), complex morphologies, and the syntax of complex predicates. Issues relating to genealogical ancestry, areal contact and language endangerment receive equal attention. With historical connections both to Eurasia’s pastoral-based empires as well as to ancient population movements into the Americas, the steppes, taiga forests, tundra and coastal fringes of northern Asia offer a complex and fascinating object of linguistic investigation.
Author: Michael Fortescue
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004449523
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Verbs of mental states or activity constitute a subject of considerable interest to both Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology. They promise to open a window on the invisible workings of the mind, while at the same time displaying a wide variety of historical sources across languages. In this book Michael Fortescue presents an innovative approach to the semantics and diachronic source of cognitive verbs across a representative array of the world’s languages. The relationship among the cognitive verbs of individual languages is essentially one of metonymy, and the book investigates in detail the specific metonymic relationships involved, as revealed largely by the polysemous spread of word meanings. The data is projected against a circular ‘map’ of interrelated cognitive categories.
Author: Andreas Hölzl
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961101027
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 546
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Book Description
This study investigates the distribution of linguistic and specifically structural diversity in Northeast Asia (NEA), defined as the region north of the Yellow River and east of the Yenisei. In particular, it analyzes what is called the grammar of questions (GQ), i.e., those aspects of any given language that are specialized for asking questions or regularly combine with these. The bulk of the study is a bottom-up description and comparison of GQs in the languages of NEA. The addition of the phrase and beyond to the title of this study serves two purposes. First, languages such as Turkish and Chuvash are included, despite the fact that they are spoken outside of NEA, since they have ties to (or even originated in) the region. Second, despite its focus on one area, the typology is intended to be applicable to other languages as well. Therefore, it makes extensive use of data from languages outside of NEA. The restriction to one category is necessary for reasons of space and clarity, and the process of zooming in on one region allows a higher resolution and historical accuracy than is usually the case in linguistic typology. The discussion mentions over 450 languages and dialects from NEA and beyond and gives about 900 glossed examples. The aim is to achieve both a cross-linguistically plausible typology and a maximal resolution of the linguistic diversity of Northeast Asia.
Author: Louis-Jacques Dorais
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773581766
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410
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Book Description
The culmination of forty years of research, The Language of the Inuit maps the geographical distribution and linguistic differences between the Eskaleut and Inuit languages and dialects. Providing details about aspects of comparative phonology, grammar, and lexicon as well as Inuit prehistory and historical evolution, Louis-Jacques Dorais shows the effects of bilingualism, literacy, and formal education on Inuit language and considers its present status and future. An enormous task, masterfully accomplished, The Language of the Inuit is not only an anthropological and linguistic study of a language and the broad social and cultural contexts where it is spoken but a history of the language's speakers.
Author: Martine Robbeets
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192526782
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.
Author: Hannah Sarvasy
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264449
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 185
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Book Description
In Word Hunters, eleven distinguished linguists reflect on their career-spanning linguistic fieldwork. Over decades, each has repeatedly stood up to physical, intellectual, interpersonal, intercultural, and sometimes political challenges in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. These scholar-explorers have enlightened the world to the inner workings of languages in remote communities of Africa (West, East, and South), Amazonia, the Arctic, Australia, the Caucasus, Oceania, Siberia, and East Asia. They report some linguistic eureka moments, but also discuss cultural missteps, illness, and the other challenges of pursuing linguistic data in extreme circumstances. They write passionately about language death and their responsibilities to speech communities. The stories included here—the stuff of departmental and family legends—are published publicly for the first time.
Author: Michael Fortescue
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027247196
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Although major cognitively based studies of SPACE and TIME in language have appeared in terms of “Frames of Reference”, these do not extend to a wide selection of the world’s languages, nor do they combine SPACE and TIME in the overarching concept of WORLD, which has its own corresponding frames of reference. The aim of relating and unifying these concepts and their expression across languages constitutes the unique thrust of the present book, which will represent a significant extension of earlier approaches. Among its main conclusions will be that the complete separation of terms for SPACE and TIME is a relatively recent cultural phenomenon, rather than just a metaphorical extension of the latter from the former. The book will be of interest to all students and practitioners of Linguistics, in particular Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistic typology, but also to a more general readership interested in the historical evolution of concepts of SPACE and TIME.
