A grammar of Choguita Rarámuri: In collaboration with Luz Elena León Ramírez, Sebastián Fuentes Holguín, Bertha Fuentes Loya and other Choguita Rarámuri language experts
A grammar of Choguita Rarámuri: In collaboration with Luz Elena León Ramírez, Sebastián Fuentes Holguín, Bertha Fuentes Loya and other Choguita Rarámuri language experts

Author: Gabriela Caballero

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2022-11-22

Total Pages: 686

ISBN-13: 3961103992

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This book provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Choguita Rarámuri, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in the Sierra Tarahumara, a mountainous range in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua belonging to the Sierra Madre Occidental. A documentary corpus developed between 2003 and 2018 with Choguita Rarámuri language experts informs the analysis and is the source of the examples presented in this grammar. The documentary corpus, which consists of over 200 hours of recordings of elicited data, narratives, conversations, interviews, and other speech genres, is available in two archival collections housed at the Endangered Languages Archive and at UC Berkeley’s Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. Choguita Rarámuri is a highly synthetic, agglutinating language with a complex morphological system. It displays many of the recurrent structural features documented across Uto-Aztecan, including a predominance of suffixation, head-marking, and patterns of noun-incorporation and compounding (Sapir 1921; Whorf 1935; Haugen 2008b). Other features of typological and theoretical interest include a complex word prosodic system, a wide range of morphologically conditioned phonological processes, and patterns of variable affix order and multiple exponence. Choguita Rarámuri is also of great comparative/historical importance: while several analytical works of Uto-Aztecan languages of Northern Mexico have been produced in the last years (Guerrero Valenzuela 2006, García Salido 2014, Reyes Taboada 2014, Morales Moreno 2016, Villalpando Quiñonez 2019, inter alia), many varieties still lack comprehensive linguistic description and documentation.

The Life Cycle of Language
The Life Cycle of Language

Author: Darya Kavitskaya

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-11-30

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0192660764

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This volume brings together an international group of linguists from a diverse range of research backgrounds to explore the cycles of change in the world's languages. Historical linguistics does not solely focus on reconstructing a language's linguistic past and exploring the mechanisms underlying previous language changes; it also addresses broader questions concerning the development and ongoing evolution of language. The chapters in this book draw on data both from languages from the distant past, such as Hittite, Proto-Turkic, and Proto-Bantu, and from present-day languages including Akan, Cantonese, Kuuk Thaayorre, Seliš-Ql'ispé, Nivaclé, and Spanish. The contributions showcase current research in historical linguistics and exemplify the dynamism and inherently interdisciplinary nature of the field.

A grammar of Paunaka
A grammar of Paunaka

Author: Lena Terhart

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2024-02-14

Total Pages: 813

ISBN-13: 3961104352

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This book offers the first detailed grammatical description of Paunaka, an Arawakan language spoken (in 2023) by eight people in the Chiquitania region in the lowlands of Eastern Bolivia. The grammar builds on material collected during several fieldwork trips between 2009 and 2020 by the team of the Paunaka Documentation Project, which was funded by the ELDP from 2011–2013. This material includes roughly 120 hours of audio and video recordings, which have been archived at ELAR. In 2022, the dissertation on which this book is based received the annual Research Award at the Europa-Universität Flensburg. The grammar provides a description of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Paunaka, including numerous comparative remarks to closely related languages. It includes over 1500 examples, most of them accompanied by a brief description of their original linguistic or extralinguistic context.

A grammar of Kagayanen
A grammar of Kagayanen

Author: Carol J. Pebley

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2024-07-05

Total Pages: 747

ISBN-13: 396110476X

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Kagayanen is a resilient Austronesian>Greater Central Philippine>Manobo language spoken by about 30,000 individuals, mostly in Palawan province in the Philippines. This grammar is the result of nearly 40 years of research by Carol Pebley and a team of Kagayanen speakers and non-Kagayanen co-workers. The primary data source is a corpus of texts collected over a 20 year period. These texts, three of which appear in an appendix to this book, provide vivid insights into Kagayanen ways of being. The grammar is written with a general linguistics audience in mind, from a "communication first" perspective. It should prove useful to specialists in Austronesian languages, linguistic typologists, and others interested in doing research in the central Philippines. It is also hoped that this grammar will be an encouragement to Kagayanen speakers, proving that their language is wonderfully complex and deserves an equal place alongside other regional and international languages.

A grammar of Ulwa (Papua New Guinea)
A grammar of Ulwa (Papua New Guinea)

Author: Russell Barlow

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2023-08-14

Total Pages: 795

ISBN-13: 3961104158

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This book is a grammatical description of Ulwa, a Papuan language spoken by about 600 people living in four villages in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. Ulwa belongs to the Keram language family. This grammatical description is based on a corpus of recorded texts and elicited sentences that were collected during a total of about twelve months of research carried out between 2015 and 2018. The book aims to detail as many aspects of Ulwa grammar as possible, including matters of phonology, morphology, and syntax. It also contains a lexicon with over 1,400 entries and three fully glossed and translated texts. The book was written with a typologically oriented audience in mind, and should be of interest to Papuan specialists as well as to general linguists. It may be useful to those working on the history or classification of Papuan languages as well as those conducting typological research on any number of grammatical features.

Author:

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published:

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 3985541086

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A grammar of Tuatschin
A grammar of Tuatschin

Author: Philippe Maurer-Cecchini

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published:

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 3961103186

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This book is the first descriptive grammar of Tuatschin, a Sursilvan Romansh dialect spoken by approximately 800 people in the westernmost part of the Romansh territory, in the canton of Grisons in southeastern Switzerland. The description is mainly based on narratives and elicitation, collected during fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2020. Besides the grammatical description, it also offers a variety of narratives produced by female and male native speakers between thirty and eighty years of age.

A grammar of Japhug
A grammar of Japhug

Author: Guillaume Jacques

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 1596

ISBN-13: 3961103054

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Japhug is a vulnerable Gyalrongic language, which belongs to the Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) family. It is spoken by several thousand speakers in Mbarkham county, Rngaba district, Sichuan province, China. This grammar is the result of nearly 20 years of fieldwork on one variety of Japhug, based on a corpus of narratives and conversations, a large part of which is available from the Pangloss Collection. It covers the whole grammar of the language, and the text examples provide a unique insight into Gyalrong culture. It was written with a general linguistics audience in mind, and should prove useful not only to specialists of Trans-Himalayan historical linguistics and typologists, but also to anthropologists doing research in Gyalrong areas. It is also hoped that some readers will use it to learn Japhug and pursue research on this fascinating language in the future.

A grammar of Gyeli
A grammar of Gyeli

Author: Nadine Grimm

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 725

ISBN-13: 3961103119

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This grammar offers a grammatical description of the Ngòló variety of Gyeli, an endangered Bantu (A80) language spoken by 4,000-5,000 "Pygmy" hunter-gatherers in southern Cameroon. It represents one of the most comprehensive descriptions of a northwestern Bantu language. The grammatical description, which is couched in a form-to-function approach, covers all levels of language, ranging from Gyeli phonology to its information structure and complex clauses. It draws on nineteen months of fieldwork carried out as part of the "Bagyeli/Bakola" DoBeS (Documentation of Endangered Languages) project between 2010 and 2014. The resulting multimodal corpus from that project, which includes texts of diverse genres such as traditional stories, narratives, multi-party conversations and dialogues, procedural texts, and songs, provides the empirical basis for the grammatical description. The documentary text collection, supplemented by data from elicitation work, questionnaires, and experiments, are accessible in the Bagyeli/Bakola collection of The Language Archive. With additional ethnographic, sociolinguistic, diachronic, and comparative remarks, the grammar may appeal to a wider audience in general linguistics, typology, Bantu studies, and anthropology. In 2019, the grammar received the Pāṇini Award by the Association for Linguistic Typology.

Analyzing meaning
Analyzing meaning

Author: Paul R. Kroeger

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13: 3961101361

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This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect. Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered. As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics. It is also intended as a reference for fieldworkers doing primary research on under-documented languages, to help them write grammatical descriptions that deal carefully and clearly with semantic issues. The approach adopted here is largely descriptive and non-formal (or, in some places, semi-formal), although some basic logical notation is introduced. The book is written at level which should be appropriate for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students. It presupposes some previous coursework in linguistics, but does not presuppose any background in formal logic or set theory.