Language Contact in Amazonia - Softcover

Aikhenvald, Alexandra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199588244 ISBN 13: 9780199588244

Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A., 2010

Synopsis

This book considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another. The author explains the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and reveals the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another. Aikhenvald uses the example of Arawak and Tucanoan languages spoken in the large area of the Vaupes river basin in northwest Amazonia, which spans Colombia and Brazil. In this region language is seen as a badge of identity: language mixing, interaction, and influence are resisted for ideological reasons. The book considers which grammatical categories are most and least likely to be borrowed in a situation of prolonged language contact where lexical borrowing is reduced to a minimum. The author provides a genetic analysis of the languages of the region and considers their historical relationships with languages of the same family outside it. She also examines changes brought about by recent contact with European languages and culture, and the linguistic and cultural effects of being part of a group that is aware of the threat to its language and identity. The book is presented in relatively nontechnical language and will interest linguists and anthropologists.

About this title

About the Author

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor and Research Leader (People and Societies of the Tropics) in the Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Australia. She has worked on descriptive and historical aspects of Berber languages and has published, in Russian, a grammar of Modern Hebrew. She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare, based on work with the last speaker who has since died) and Warekena, plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia, in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages.Her other books include Classifiers: a Typology of Noun Categorization Devices, Language Contact in Amazonia and Evidentiality, all published by O.U.P. . She is co-editor with R. M. W. Dixon of the O.U.P. series Explorations in Linguistic Typology, the fifth volume of which, The Semantics of Clause Linking.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199588244
• ISBN 13: 9780199588244
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 390