Chamorro Reference Grammar is a detailed description of the grammatical structure of the indigenous language of the Mariana Islands. It is designed primarily as a reference work which will serve to give native speakers some insight into the complexities of their language and to encourage its use at a time when other languages are more prestigious. The book contains an introduction to Chamorro, and its developmental history and dialectal variations, and, with a minimum of technical linguistic terms, it treats phonology, morphology, and syntax. Notes to linguists and a glossary of linguistic terms are included.
Chamorro Reference Grammar is a detailed description of the grammatical structure of the indigenous language of the Mariana Islands. It is designed primarily as a reference work which will serve to give native speakers some insight into the complexities of their language and to encourage its use at a time when other languages are more prestigious. The book contains an introduction to Chamorro, and its developmental history and dialectal variations, and, with a minimum of technical linguistic terms, it treats phonology, morphology, and syntax. Notes to linguists and a glossary of linguistic terms are included.
Spoken Chamorro is designed to enable the student to learn to speak and understand the Chamorro language the way native speakers do in their everyday activities. This second edition has been revised to incorporate the spelling conventions adopted by the Marianas Orthography Committee in January 1971, and suggestions made by teachers who have used the text in the classroom. The basic material in the text remains unchanged, the work of the author and Pedro M. Ogo, principal of Rota Elementary and High School, who is a native speaker of the language. As much as possible, the lessons exclude regionalisms, presenting the language as it is heard generally on Guam, Saipan, Rota, and elsewhere throughout the Mariana Islands.
The Chamorro-English Dictionary provides an alphabetical listing of as many Chamorro words as could be collected, spelled according to the principles adopted by the Marianas Orthography Committee in February 1971. Each word is given a fairly comprehensive definition in English, and, in many cases, sample sentences have been included to illustrate usages in context. Cross-references are provided among Chamorro words that are semantically related. An English-Chamorro finder list, based on selected words in the English definitions, is also provided.
Ute is a Uto-Aztecan language of the northernmost (Numic) branch, currently spoken on three reservations in western Colorado and eastern Utah. Like many other native languages of Northern America, Ute is severely endangered. This book is part of the effort toward its preservation. Typologically, Ute offers a cluster of intriguing features, best viewed from the perspective of diachronic change and grammaticalization. The book presents a comprehensive synchronic description of grammatical structures and their communicative functions, as well as a diachronic account of a grammar in the midst of change. The book is the first of a 3-volume series which also includes a collection of oral texts and a dictionary. Ute speakers and tribal members may find in the present volume a step-by-step description of how words are combined into meaningful communication. Linguists may find a detailed account of one language, an account that is unabashedly informed by universals of grammar, communication and change.
The functional notion of “topic” or “topicality” has suffered, traditionally, from two distinct drawbacks. First, it has remained largely ill defined or intuitively defined. And second, quite often its definition boiled down to structure-dependent circularity. This volume represents a major departure from past practices, without rejecting both their intuitive appeal and the many good results yielded by them. First, “topic” and “topicality” are re-analyzed as a scalar property, rather than as an either/or discrete prime. Second, the graded property of “topicality” is firmly connected with sensible cognitive notions culled from gestalt psychology, such as “predictability” or “continuity”. Third, we develop and utilize precise measures and quantified methods by which the property of “topicality” of clausal arguments can be studied in connected discourse, and thus be properly hinged in its rightful context, that of topic identification, maintenance and recoverability in discourse. Fourth, we show that many grammatical phenomena which used to be studied by linguists in isolation, all partake in one functional domain of grammar, that of topic identification. Finally, we demonstrate the validity of this new approach to the study of “topic” and “topicality” by applying the same text-based quantifying method to a number of typologically-diverse languages, in studying actual texts. Languages studied here are: Written and spoken English, spoken Spanish, Biblical Hebrew, Amharic, Hausa, Japanese, Chamorro and Ute.
