The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia

The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia PDF Author: R.M.W. Dixon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199270678
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 661

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Book Description
R. M. W. Dixon, author of acclaimed grammars of Australian Aboriginal languages and Fijian, here describes the hauntingly complex structure of Jarawara, spoken by just 170 Indians. Professor Dixon shared their daily lives, deep in the Amazonian jungle, during seven field trips. He explains how their unusual language reflects their environment and their mental attitudes: for example, when someone describes something that has happened the grammar obliges that person to state whether or not he or she saw it happen. His account brings to life the culture of this tribe of slash-and-burn agriculturalists.

The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia

The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia PDF Author: R.M.W. Dixon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199270678
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 661

Get Book

Book Description
R. M. W. Dixon, author of acclaimed grammars of Australian Aboriginal languages and Fijian, here describes the hauntingly complex structure of Jarawara, spoken by just 170 Indians. Professor Dixon shared their daily lives, deep in the Amazonian jungle, during seven field trips. He explains how their unusual language reflects their environment and their mental attitudes: for example, when someone describes something that has happened the grammar obliges that person to state whether or not he or she saw it happen. His account brings to life the culture of this tribe of slash-and-burn agriculturalists.

The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia

The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia PDF Author: Robert M. W. Dixon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia

The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia PDF Author: R. M. W. Dixon
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191515078
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 661

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Book Description
This is the first account of Jarawara, a Southern Amazonia language of great complexity and unusual interest, and now spoken by less than two hundred people. It has only two open lexical classes, noun and verb, and a closed adjective class with fourteen members which can only modify a noun. Verbs have a complex structure with three prefix and some twenty-five suffix slots. There is an eleven-term tense-modal system with an evidentiality contrast (eyewitness/non-eyewitness) in the three past tenses. Of the two genders, feminine and masculine, feminine is unmarked. There are at least eight types of subordinate clause constructions, including complement clauses, relative clauses, coreferential dependent clauses, and 'when', 'if', 'due to the lack of' and 'because of' clauses.There are only eleven consonants and four vowels but an extensive set of ordered phonological rules of lenition, vowel assimilation and unstressed syllable omission. There are four imperative inflections (with different meanings) and three explicit interrogative suffixes within the mood system. The book is entirely based on field work by the authors.

Languages of the Amazon

Languages of the Amazon PDF Author: Aleksandra I︠U︡rʹevna Aĭkhenvalʹd
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199593566
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 549

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Book Description
This guide and introduction to the extraordinary range of languages in Amazonia includes some of the most fascinating in the world and many of which are now teetering on the edge of extinction.

The Languages of the Amazon

The Languages of the Amazon PDF Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191007994
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This is the first guide and introduction to the extraordinary range of languages in Amazonia, which include some of the most the most fascinating in the world and many of which are now teetering on the edge of extinction. Alexandra Aikhenvald, one of the world's leading experts on the region, provides an account of the more than 300 languages. She sets out their main characteristics, compares their common and unique features, and describes the histories and cultures of the people who speak them. The languages abound in rare features. Most have been in contact with each other for many generations, giving rise to complex patterns of linguistic influence. The author draws on her own extensive field research to tease out and analyse the patterns of their genetic and structural diversity. She shows how these patterns reveal the interrelatedness of language and culture; different kinship systems, for example, have different linguistic correlates. Professor Aikhenvald explains the many unusual features of Amazonian languages, which include evidentials, tones, classifiers, and elaborate positional verbs. She ends the book with a glossary of terms, and a full guide for those readers interested in following up a particular language or linguistic phenomenon. The book is free of esoteric terminology, written in its author's characteristically clear style, and brought vividly to life with numerous accounts of her experience in the region. It may be used as a resource in courses in Latin American studies, Amazonian studies, linguistic typology, and general linguistics, and as reference for linguistic and anthropological research.

The Amazonian Languages

The Amazonian Languages PDF Author: R. M. W. Dixon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521570213
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
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.

HANDBOOK AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES

HANDBOOK AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES PDF Author: Desmond C. Derbyshire
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110822121
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 660

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Book Description
No detailed description available for "HANDBOOK AMAZONIAN LANGUAGES".

The Amazonian Languages

The Amazonian Languages PDF Author: R. M. W. Dixon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521570213
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
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.

Linguistics and Archaeology in the Americas

Linguistics and Archaeology in the Americas PDF Author: Eithne B. Carlin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047427084
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book offers a state of the art overview of current linguistic and archaeological research from the Caribbean and Meso America, through Amazonia and the Andes to Argentina, ranging from historical comparative through descriptive and socio-linguistics to new discoveries in archaeological research.

Language at Large

Language at Large PDF Author: Alexandra Aikhenvald
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004207686
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 630

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Book Description
The volume brings together important essays on syntax and semantics by Aikhenvald and Dixon. It focusses on topics in linguistic typology, the analysis of previously undescribed languages and issues in the grammar and lexicography of English.