This volume represents a reconstruction of Proto-Wintun, the parent language of a group of California Indian languages. It includes a grammatical sketch of Proto-Wintun, cognate sets with reconstructions and an index to the reconstructions. The book fulfills a need for in-depth reconstructions of proto-languages for California Indian language families, both for theoretical purposes and deeper comparison with other proto- or pre-languages.
This book is the result of over 50 years of research, and it represents an intellectual journey. It is maximally accessible by tabulating the data and inserting frequent cross-references. Dictionary entries are in the alphabetical order of the deepest reconstruction in the set, and there is an English-Utian section at the end of the volume. Yokuts (or Proto Yokuts) is also inserted where there is a resemblance. This strategy is especially helpful for those who wish to use the volume for remote comparison. In this manner, it can serve as a reference book for seminars on non-traditional languages. The volume is also of interest to theoreticians because Utian languages exhibit features that are rare worldwide.
Linguistic and Genetic (mtDNA) Connections between Native Peoples of Alaska and California: Ancient Mariners of the Middle Holocene traces the linguistic and biological connections between contemporary Aleut people of southwest Alaska and historic Utian people of central California. During the Middle Holocene Period, Aleut and Utian languages diverged from their common parent language, Proto-Aleut-Utian (PAU), spoken by people who resided on or near Kodiak Island in coastal southwest Alaska. Around the time of divergence, Utians departed the PAU homeland, migrating by watercraft along the eastern Pacific coast to the San Francisco Bay Area. The affiliation between Aleut and Utian languages is strongly supported by comparative linguistics and by the genetic link (mtDNA) of groups speaking these languages. On their migration, Utians encountered coastal groups speaking languages different from their own. Through these prolonged and intimate interactions, words were borrowed from Utian into the languages of these native coastal communities. Other significant findings explored in this book are the lack of compelling evidence for the kinship of Eskimo and Aleut peoples, despite scholarship’s long-term acceptance of this proposal, and the discovery of language-structure features shared by Yeniseian and Na Dene, indicating an historical connection for these circumarctic languages.
This unique collection of articles in honor of Marianne Mithun represents the very latest in research on language contact and language change in the Indigenous languages of the Americas. The book aims to provide new theoretical and empirical insights into how and why languages change, especially with regard to contact phenomena in languages of North America, Meso-America and South America. The individual chapters cover a broad range of topics, including sound change, morphosyntactic change, lexical semantics, grammaticalization, language endangerment, and discourse-pragmatic change. With chapters from distinguished scholars and talented newcomers alike, this book will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in internally- and externally-motivated language change.
This volume provides a comprehensive treatment of the Transeurasian languages. It offers detailed structural overviews of individual languages, as well as comparative perspectives and insights from typology, genetics, and anthropology. The book will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in Transeurasian and comparative linguistics.
The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages is a one-stop reference for linguists on those topics that come up the most frequently in the study of the languages of North America (including Mexico). This handbook compiles a list of contributors from across many different theories and at different stages of their careers, all of whom are well-known experts in North American languages. The volume comprises two distinct parts: the first surveys some of the phenomena most frequently discussed in the study of North American languages, and the second surveys some of the most frequently discussed language families of North America. The consistent goal of each contribution is to couch the content of the chapter in contemporary theory so that the information is maximally relevant and accessible for a wide range of audiences, including graduate students and young new scholars, and even senior scholars who are looking for a crash course in the topics. Empirically driven chapters provide fundamental knowledge needed to participate in contemporary theoretical discussions of these languages, making this handbook an indispensable resource for linguistics scholars.
This collection of articles takes up the issue of Contact Morphology raised by David Wilkins in 1996. In the majority of contact-related studies, morphology is at best a marginal topic. According to the extant borrowing hierarchies, bound morphology is copied only rarely, if at all, because morphological copies presuppose long-term intensive contact with prior massive borrowing of content words and function words. On the other hand, especially in studies of morphological change, contact is often identified as the decisive factor which triggers the disintegration of morphological systems. However, it remains to be seen whether these two standard treatments of morphology in contact situations exhaust the phenomenology of Contact Morphology. The 14 papers of the present volume shed new light on the behavior of morphology under the conditions of language contact. Fresh empirical data from 40 languages world-wide are presented and new theory-based concepts are discussed. Morphologies in Contact is a first in the history of both morphology and language contact studies. It is meant to mark the beginning of an international research program which explores the entire range of aspects connected to morphologies in contact and thus, paves the way for a full-blown Contact Morphology qua linguistic discipline.
When we think of kinship, we usually think of ties between people based upon blood or marriage. But we also have other ways—nowadays called ‘performative’—of establishing kinship, or hinting at kinship: many Christians have, in addition to parents, godparents; members of a trade union may refer to each other as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’. Similar performative ties are even more common among the so-called ‘tribal’ peoples that anthropologists have studied and, especially in recent years, they have received considerable attention from scholars in this field. However, these scholars tend to argue that performative kinship in the Tribal World is semantically on a par with kinship established through procreation and marriage. Harold Scheffler, long-time Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, has argued, by contrast, that procreative ties are everywhere semantically central, i.e. focal, that they provide bases from which other kinship ties are extended. Most of the essays in this volume illustrate the validity of Scheffler’s position, though two contest it, and one exemplifies the soundness of a similarly universalistic stance in gender behaviour. This book will be of interest to everyone concerned with current controversy in kinship and gender studies, as well as those who would know what anthropologists have to say about human nature. “The study of kinship once ruled the discipline of anthropology, and Hal Scheffler was one of its magisterial figures. This volumes reminds us why. Scheffler’s powerful analyses of kinship systems often conflicted with the views of his more relativist contemporaries. He cut through the fog of theory to emphasise the human essentials, namely the importance of the social bonds rooted in motherhood and fatherhood. Anthropology in its decades-long retreat from the serious study of kinship has lost a great deal. This volume points the way to a restoration.” — Peter Wood, National Association of Scholars
