The Languages of Native North America (Cambridge Language Surveys) - Hardcover

Mithun, Marianne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521232287 ISBN 13: 9780521232289

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1999

Synopsis

This book provides an authoritative survey of the several hundred languages indigenous to North America. These languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. Part I of the book provides an overview of structural features of particular interest, concentrating on those that are cross-linguistically unusual or unusually well developed. These include syllable structure, vowel and consonant harmony, tone, and sound symbolism; polysynthesis, the nature of roots and affixes, incorporation, and morpheme order; case; grammatical distinctions of number, gender, shape, control, location, means, manner, time, empathy, and evidence; and distinctions between nouns and verbs, predicates and arguments, and simple and complex sentences; and special speech styles. Part II catalogues the languages by family, listing the location of each language, its genetic affiliation, number of speakers, major published literature, and structural highlights. Finally, there is a catalogue of languages that have evolved in contact situations.

About this title

Review

'This volume is a most welcome continuation of a most useful series. it is a great pleasure to review Marianne Mithun's The Languages of Native North America in the Cambridge Language Surveys, since one can only express admiration for the tremendous amount of labour behind this book. There are very few people in modern native North American linguistics, if any, who could do an equally beautiful job as Mithun.' Linguistic Typology

Book Description

This book is a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the North American Indian languages. It includes an overview of their special characteristics, descriptions of special styles, and a catalogue of the languages detailing their locations, genetic affiliations, number of speakers, and major structural features, and listing published material on them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521232287
• ISBN 13: 9780521232289
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 795