A Grammar of Karbi

A Grammar of Karbi
Author: Linda Konnerth
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 693
Release: 2020-06-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110765039

This is a comprehensive grammar of the Hills Karbi variety spoken predominantly in the Karbi Anglong districts. Karbi belongs to the Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) family but its exact phylogenetic status has remained unclear. By providing a diachronically-oriented functional analysis of all structural levels of Karbi, this grammar offers a reference work that provides a thorough account of this language. The data in this grammar come from fieldwork that was primarily carried out in the district capital of Diphu although the corpus includes recordings of speakers from all over the two Karbi Anglong districts. This corpus is freely available both as fully glossed text in Himalayan Linguistics (Konnerth and Tisso 2018) and as original media files in ELAR (SOAS University of London). Now also including a glossary, this grammar is a thoroughly revised version of the 2014 dissertation of the author, which won the 2015 Pāṇini Award of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT). In this revised version, a few new sections have been added and numerous other sections have been thoroughly updated.

A Grammar of Atong

A Grammar of Atong
Author: Seino van Breugel
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 700
Release: 2014-01-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004258930

Atong is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Northeast India and Bangladesh. Seino van Breugel provides a deep and thorough coverage and analysis of all major areas of the grammar, which makes this book of great interest and value to general linguists and typologists as well as area specialists. Alongside an Atong-English dictionary and five fully-glossed Atong texts recorded during extensive fieldwork, this work also provides a sizable ethnolinguistic introduction to the speakers and their culture. Of particular interest is the pragmatic approach taken for the grammatical analysis. Whereas the form of an utterance provides some clue as to its possible meaning, inference is always needed to arrive at the most relevant interpretation within the context in which the utterance occurs. "This is a very important book for South Asian and Sino-Tibetan linguistic scholarship. Of the 200 languages of Northeast India, only a handful have been documented; the present work brings the number of full-scale modern grammars for these languages to six. Thus it represents a unique and extremely valuable contribution." Professor Scott DeLancey University of Oregon "This is a solid academic work which makes a huge contribution to the field. There is no other detailed account of this particular language, and it is highly doubtful that anyone will write something more comprehensive in the future." Dr Willem de Reuse University of North Texas

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
Total Pages: 983
Release: 2021-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110558149

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.

Functional-Historical Approaches to Explanation

Functional-Historical Approaches to Explanation
Author: Tim Thornes
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-07-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027271976

Contributions from both well-known practitioners and new voices in the areas of language typology, historical linguistics, and function-based approaches to language description define this volume, as does its foci in two major geographical areas — southeast Asia and northwestern North America. All of the papers appeal, in one way or another, to functional-historical approaches to explanation. Behind this appeal lies an assumption that languages are selective in their development in ways that are dependent upon the communicative tasks to which they are put. As such, language function accounts for both variation and historical development over time.

Trans-Himalayan Linguistics

Trans-Himalayan Linguistics
Author: Thomas Owen-Smith
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2013-12-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 311031083X

The Himalaya and surrounding regions are amongst the world's most linguistically diverse places. Of an estimated 600 languages spoken here at Asia's heart, few are researched in depth and many virtually undocumented. Historical developments and relationships between the region's languages also remain poorly understood. This book brings together new work on under-researched Himalayan languages with investigations into the complexities of the area's linguistic history, offering original data and perspectives on the synchrony and diachrony of the Greater Himalayan Region. The volume arises from papers given and topics discussed at the 16th Himalayan Languages Symposium in London in 2010. Most papers focus on Tibeto-Burman languages. These include topics relating to individual - mostly small and endangered - languages, such as Tilung, Shumcho, Rengmitca, Yongning Na and Tshangla; comparative research on the Tibetic, East Bodish and Tamangic language groups; and several papers whose scope covers the whole language family. The remaining paper deals with the origins of Burushaski, whose genetic affiliation remains uncertain. This book will be of special interest to scholars of Tibeto-Burman, and historical as well as general linguists.

The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony

The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony
Author: Nancy A. Ritter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1153
Release: 2024-10-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0192561480

This handbook provides a detailed account of the phenomenon of vowel harmony, a pattern according to which all vowels within a word must agree for some phonological property or properties. Vowel harmony has been central in the development of phonological theories thanks to its cluster of remarkable properties, notably its typically 'unbounded' character and its non-locality, and because it forms part of the phonology of most world languages. The five parts of this volume cover all aspects of vowel harmony from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Part I outlines the types of vowel harmony and some unusual cases, before Part II explores structural issues such as vowel inventories, the interaction of vowel harmony and morphological structure, and locality. The chapters in Part III provide an overview of the various theoretical accounts of the phenomenon, as well as bringing in insights from language acquisition and psycholinguistics, while Part IV focuses on the historical life cycle of vowel harmony, looking at topics such as phonetic factors and the effect of language contact. The final part contains 31 chapters that present data and analysis of vowel harmony across all major language families as well as several isolates, constituting the broadest coverage of the phenomenon to date.

Grammar of Duhumbi (Chugpa)

Grammar of Duhumbi (Chugpa)
Author: Timotheus Adrianus Bodt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 789
Release: 2020-01-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004409483

With Grammar of Duhumbi (Chugpa), Timotheus Adrianus (Tim) Bodt provides the first comprehensive description of any of the Western Kho-Bwa languages, a sub-group of eight linguistic varieties of the Kho-Bwa cluster (Tibeto-Burman). Duhumbi is spoken by 600 people in the Chug valley in West Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh, India. The Duhumbi people, known to the outside world as Chugpa or Chug Monpa, belong to the Monpa Scheduled Tribe. Despite that affiliation, Duhumbi is not intelligible to speakers of any of the other Monpa languages except Khispi (Lishpa). The volume Grammar of Duhumbi (Chugpa) describes all aspects of the language, including phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax and discourse. Moreover, it also contains links to additional resources freely accessible on-line.

Annual Review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics

Annual Review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics
Author: Rajendra Singh
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2011-11-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 311027065X

South Asia is home to a large number of languages and dialects. Although linguists working on this region have made significant contributions to our understanding of language, society, and language in society on a global scale, there is as yet no recognized international forum for the exchange of ideas amongst linguists working on South Asia. The Annual Review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics is designed to be just that forum. It brings together empirical and theoretical research and serves as a testing ground for the articulation of new ideas and approaches which may be grounded in a study of South Asian languages but which have universal applicability. Each volume will have three major sections: I. Invited contributions consisting of state-of-the-art essays on research in South Asian languages. II. Refereed open submissions focusing on relevant issues and providing various viewpoints. III. Reports from around the world, book reviews and abstracts of doctoral theses.