The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia
The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia

Author: Edward Vajda

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-03-04

Total Pages: 752

ISBN-13: 3110556219

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The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia: A Comprehensive Guide surveys the indigenous languages of Asia’s North Pacific Rim, Siberia, and adjacent portions of Inner Eurasia. It provides in-depth descriptions of every first-order family of this vast area, with special emphasis on family-internal subdivision and dialectal differentiation. Individual chapters trace the origins and expansion of the region’s widespread pastoral-based language groups as well as the microfamilies and isolates spoken by northern Asia’s surviving hunter-gatherers. Separate chapters cover sparsely recorded languages of early Inner Eurasia that defy precise classification and the various pidgins and creoles spread over the region. Other chapters investigate the typology of salient linguistic features of the area, including vowel harmony, noun inflection, verb indexing (also known as agreement), complex morphologies, and the syntax of complex predicates. Issues relating to genealogical ancestry, areal contact and language endangerment receive equal attention. With historical connections both to Eurasia’s pastoral-based empires as well as to ancient population movements into the Americas, the steppes, taiga forests, tundra and coastal fringes of northern Asia offer a complex and fascinating object of linguistic investigation.

The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia
The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia

Author: Edward Vajda

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-03-04

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 3111378381

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The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia: A Comprehensive Guide surveys the indigenous languages of Asia’s North Pacific Rim, Siberia, and adjacent portions of Inner Eurasia. It provides in-depth descriptions of every first-order family of this vast area, with special emphasis on family-internal subdivision and dialectal differentiation. Individual chapters trace the origins and expansion of the region’s widespread pastoral-based language groups as well as the microfamilies and isolates spoken by northern Asia’s surviving hunter-gatherers. Separate chapters cover sparsely recorded languages of early Inner Eurasia that defy precise classification and the various pidgins and creoles spread over the region. Other chapters investigate the typology of salient linguistic features of the area, including vowel harmony, noun inflection, verb indexing (also known as agreement), complex morphologies, and the syntax of complex predicates. Issues relating to genealogical ancestry, areal contact and language endangerment receive equal attention. With historical connections both to Eurasia’s pastoral-based empires as well as to ancient population movements into the Americas, the steppes, taiga forests, tundra and coastal fringes of northern Asia offer a complex and fascinating object of linguistic investigation.

The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia
The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia

Author: Paul Sidwell

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-08-23

Total Pages: 983

ISBN-13: 3110558149

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The handbook will offer a survey of the field of linguistics in the early 21st century for the Southeast Asian Linguistic Area. The last half century has seen a great increase in work on language contact, work in genetic, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics, and since the 1990s especially documentation of endangered languages. The book will provide an account of work in these areas, focusing on the achievements of SEAsian linguistics, as well as the challenges and unresolved issues, and provide a survey of the relevant major publications and other available resources. We will address: Survey of the languages of the area, organized along genetic lines, with discussion of relevant political and cultural background issues Theoretical/descriptive and typological issues Genetic classification and historical linguistics Areal and contact linguistics Other areas of interest such as sociolinguistics, semantics, writing systems, etc. Resources (major monographs and monograph series, dictionaries, journals, electronic data bases, etc.) Grammar sketches of languages representative of the genetic and structural diversity of the region.

Mid-Holocene Language Connections Between Asia and North America
Mid-Holocene Language Connections Between Asia and North America

Author: Edward Vajda

Publisher: Brill's Studies in the Indigen

Published: 2022-01-27

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 9789004436817

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This volume presents the up-to-date results of investigations into the Asian origins of the only two languages families of North America, Eskaleut and Na-Dene, that are widely acknowledged as having likely genetic links in northern Asia.

The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia
The Languages and Linguistics of Western Asia

Author: Geoffrey Haig

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2018-12-03

Total Pages: 1183

ISBN-13: 3110421747

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The languages of Western Asia belong to a variety of language families, including Indo-European, Kartvelian, Semitic, and Turkic, but share numerous features on account of being in areal contact over many centuries. This volume presents descriptions of the modern languages, contributed by leading specialists, and evaluates similarities across the languages that may have arisen by areal contact. It begins with an introductory chapter presenting an overview of the various genetic groupings in the region and summarizing some of the significant features and issues relating to language contact. In the core of the volume the presentation of the languages is divided into five contact areas, which include (i) eastern Anatolia and northwestern Iran, (ii) northern Iraq, (iii) western Iran, (iv) the Caspian region and south Azerbaijan, and (v) the Caucasian rim and southern Black Sea coast. Each section contains chapters devoted to the languages of the area preceded by an introductory section that highlights significant contact phenomena. The volume is rounded off by an appendix with basic lexical items across a selection of the languages. The handbook features contributions by Erik Anonby, Denise Bailey, Christiane Bulut, David Erschler, Geoffrey Haig, Geoffrey Khan, Rene Lacroix, Parvin Mahmoudveysi, Hrach Martirosyan, Ludwig Paul, Stephan Procházka, Laurentia Schreiber, Don Stilo, Mortaza Taheri-Ardali, Christina van der Wal Anonby.

A typology of questions in Northeast Asia and beyond
A typology of questions in Northeast Asia and beyond

Author: Andreas Hölzl

Publisher: Language Science Press

Published: 2018-08-29

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 3961101027

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This study investigates the distribution of linguistic and specifically structural diversity in Northeast Asia (NEA), defined as the region north of the Yellow River and east of the Yenisei. In particular, it analyzes what is called the grammar of questions (GQ), i.e., those aspects of any given language that are specialized for asking questions or regularly combine with these. The bulk of the study is a bottom-up description and comparison of GQs in the languages of NEA. The addition of the phrase and beyond to the title of this study serves two purposes. First, languages such as Turkish and Chuvash are included, despite the fact that they are spoken outside of NEA, since they have ties to (or even originated in) the region. Second, despite its focus on one area, the typology is intended to be applicable to other languages as well. Therefore, it makes extensive use of data from languages outside of NEA. The restriction to one category is necessary for reasons of space and clarity, and the process of zooming in on one region allows a higher resolution and historical accuracy than is usually the case in linguistic typology. The discussion mentions over 450 languages and dialects from NEA and beyond and gives about 900 glossed examples. The aim is to achieve both a cross-linguistically plausible typology and a maximal resolution of the linguistic diversity of Northeast Asia.

Possession in Languages of Europe and North and Central Asia
Possession in Languages of Europe and North and Central Asia

Author: Lars Johanson

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2019-03-15

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 9027263000

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This volume is a collection of articles dealing with the linguistic category of possession and its expression in languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia (Uralic, Turkic, Indo-European and Caucasian), with a few excursions into other parts of the world. Some papers engage in typological comparisons, both within and beyond the borders of individual language families focusing on issues of motivation; meaning and forms used in expressing possession; typology of belong constructions; marking possession in possessor chains; non-canonical possessives and their relation to the category of familiarity; metaphoric shifts of possessive semantics. Others focus on possession in individual languages, offering new precious pieces of information on the linguistic expression of possession in lesser known languages, some of which are endangered and even unwritten. The volume will be of interest to both general linguists and typologists as well as to experts/students of the individual languages or language families analyzed in the papers.

The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia
The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia

Author: N. J. Enfield

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-04-01

Total Pages: 571

ISBN-13: 1108758401

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Mainland Southeast Asia is one of the most fascinating and complex cultural and linguistic areas in the world. This book provides a rich and comprehensive survey of the history and core systems and subsystems of the languages of this fascinating region. Drawing on his depth of expertise in mainland Southeast Asia, Enfield includes more than a thousand data examples from over a hundred languages from Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, bringing together a wealth of data and analysis that has not previously been available in one place. Chapters cover the many ways in which these languages both resemble each other, and differ from each other, and the diversity of the area's languages is highlighted, with a special emphasis on minority languages, which outnumber the national languages by nearly a hundred to one. The result is an authoritative treatment of a fascinating and important linguistic area.

Historical Linguistics and Endangered Languages
Historical Linguistics and Endangered Languages

Author: Patience Epps

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-28

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0429641613

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This collection showcases the contributions of the study of endangered and understudied languages to historical linguistic analysis, and the broader relevance of diachronic approaches toward developing better informed approaches to language documentation and description. The volume brings together perspectives from both established and up-and-coming scholars and represents a globally and linguistically diverse range of languages.The collected papers demonstrate the ways in which endangered languages can challenge existing models of language change based on more commonly studied languages, and can generate innovative insights into linguistic phenomena such as pathways of grammaticalization, forms and dynamics of contact-driven change, and the diachronic relationship between lexical and grammatical categories. In so doing, the book highlights the idea that processes and outcomes of language change long held to be universally relevant may be more sensitive to cultural and typological variability than previously assumed. Taken as a whole, this collection brings together perspectives from language documentation and historical linguistics to point the way forward for richer understandings of both language change and documentary-descriptive approaches, making this key reading for scholars in these fields.