The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.
This is the first broad, detailed grammar of the Giziga language, which belongs to the Chadic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family and is spoken in parts of the Far North Region of the Republic of Cameroon.
A Grammar of Mina is a reference grammar of a hitherto undescribed and endangered Central Chadic language. The book contains a description of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and all the functional domains encoded by this language. For each hypothesis regarding a form of linguistic expression and its function, ample evidence is given. The description of formal means and of the functions coded by these means is couched in terms accessible to all linguists regardless of their theoretical orientations. The outstanding characteristics of Mina include: vowel harmony; use of phonological means, including vowel deletion and vowel retention, to code phrasal boundaries; two tense and aspectual systems, each system carrying a different pragmatic function; a lexical category ‘locative predicator’ hitherto not observed in other languages; some tense, aspect, and mood markers that occur before the verb, and others that occur after the verb; the markers of interrogative and negative modality that occur in clause-final position; the conjunction used for a conjoined noun phrase in the subject function that differs from the conjunction used for a conjoined noun phrase in all other functions.In addition to the coding of argument structure, adjuncts, tense, aspect, and mood categories, Mina also codes the category point-of-view. The language has a clausal category ‘comment clause’ used in both simple and complex sentences, which overtly marks the speaker’s comment on the proposition. The discourse structure has the principle of unity of place. If one of the participants in a described event changes scene, that is coded by a special syntactic construction in addition to any verb of movement that may be used. Because of these unusual linguistic characteristics, the Grammar of Mina will be of interest to a wide range of linguists.
Wandala is a hitherto undescribed Central Chadic language spoken in Northern Cameroon and Northeastern Nigeria. The Grammar of Wandala describes, in a non-aprioristic approach, phonology, morphology, syntax, and all functional domains grammaticalized in the language. The grammatical structure of Wandala is quite different from the structure of other Chadic languages described thus far in both the formal means and the functions that have been grammaticalized. The grammar provides proofs for the postulated hypotheses concerning forms and functions. The grammar is written in a style accessible to linguists working within different theoretical frameworks. The phonology is characterized by a rich consonantal system, a three vowel system, and a two tone system. The language has abundant vowel insertion rules and a vowel harmony system. Vowel deletion marks phrase-internal position, and vowel-insertion marks phrase-final position. The two rules allow the parsing of the clause into constituents. The language has three types of reduplication of verbs, two of which code aspectual and modal distinctions. The negative paradigms of verbs differ from affirmative paradigms in the coding of subject. The pronominal affixes and extensive system of verbal extensions code the grammatical and semantic relations within the clause. Wandala has unusual clausal structure, in that in a pragmatically neutral verbal clause, there is only one nominal argument, either the subject or the object. These arguments can follow a variety of constituents. The grammatical role of that argument is coded by inflectional markers on the verb and most interestingly, on whatever lexical or grammatical morpheme precedes the constituent. The markers of grammatical relations added to verbs are different for different classes of verbs.
A Grammar of Pévé describes and examines a wide range of linguistic forms and functions found in Pévé, a Chadic language spoken in parts of the Republic of Chad and the Republic of Cameroon.
In A Grammar of Makary Kotoko, Sean Allison provides a thorough description of Makary Kotoko - a Chadic language of Cameroon, framing the discussion within R.M.W. Dixon’s functional/typological approach known as Basic Linguistic Theory.
This book introduces the principles and practice of writing a comprehensive reference grammar. Several thousand distinct languages are currently spoken across the globe, each with its own grammatical system and its own selection of diverse grammatical structures. Comprehensive reference grammars offer a basis for understanding linguistic diversity and can provide a unique perspective into the structure and social and cognitive underpinnings of different languages. Alexandra Aikhenvald describes the means of collecting, analysing, and organizing data for use in this type of grammar, and discusses the typological parameters that can be used to explore relationships with other languages. She considers how a grammar can made to reflect and bring to life the society of its speakers through background explanation and the judicious choice of examples, as well as by showing how its language, history, and culture are intertwined. She ends with a full glossary of terms and guidance for those wanting to explore a particular linguistic phenomenon or language family. The Art of Grammar is the ideal resource for students and teachers of linguistics, language studies, and inductively-oriented linguistic, cultural, and social anthropology.
The main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complements – embedded infinitival perfectivity implies root modal reading, whereas embedded infinitival imperfectivity triggers epistemic readings. However, in marked contexts such as negated ones, the aspectual affinities of modal verbs are neutralized or even subject to markedness inversion. All of this suggests that languages that do not, or only partially, bestow upon full modal verb paradigms seek to express modal variations in terms of their aspect oppositions. This typological tenet is investigated in a variety of languages from Indo-European (German, Slavic, Armenian), African, Asian, Amerindian, and Creoles. Seeming deviations and idiosyncrasies in the interaction between aspect and modality turn out to be highly rule-based.
This volume was prepared, in part, from an Missionary effort to preach the Gospel to the Dakotas in their own language. It contains more than sixteen thousand words.
