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Books > Language & Literature > Literary & linguistic reference works > Usage guides
The Vend nyelvtan is a grammar completed in 1942 by the linguist
Avgust Pavel that was designed to serve as a modern standard for
the Prekmurje Slovenes who were to be subjects of Hungary. Though
the grammar was meant to divide the Prekmurje Slovenes from the
Slovenes of Yugoslavia, it was never put into use. Today it serves
as a reflection of the lexical and grammatical peculiarities of the
Prekmurje dialect as it was spoken during Pavel's lifetime
(1886-1946). The English translation of the grammar, originally
written in Hungarian, offers linguists insight into a key part of
the remarkable variation in Slovene. A peripheral area of Slovene,
the Prekmurje dialect is in contact with German, Hungarian, and
Croatian Kajkavian.
In A Grammar of Lopit, Jonathan Moodie and Rosey Billington provide
the first detailed description of Lopit, an Eastern Nilotic
language traditionally spoken in the Lopit Mountains in South
Sudan. Drawing on extensive primary data, the authors describe the
phonology, morphology, and syntax of the Lopit language. Their
analyses offer new insights into phenomena characteristic of
Nilo-Saharan languages, such as 'Advanced Tongue Root' vowel
distinctions, tripartitite number marking, and marked-nominative
case systems, and they uncover patterns which are previously
unattested within the Eastern Nilotic family, such as a three-way
contrast in aspect, number marking with the 'greater singular', and
two kinds of inclusory constructions. This book offers a
significant contribution to the descriptive and typological
literature on African languages.
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