TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages brings together the results of the extensive and influential Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) project. Based on the findings from the most extensive endangered languages research project, this is the most comprehensive source of accurate information on endangered languages. The book presents the academic and scientific findings that underpin the online Catalogue, located at www.endangeredlanguages.com, making it an essential companion to the website for academics and researchers working in this area. While the online Catalogue displays much data from the ELCat project, this volume develops and emphasizes aspects of the research behind the data and includes topics of great interest in the field, not previously covered in a single volume. Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages is an important volume of particular interest to academics and researchers working with endangered languages.

Language Isolates explores this fascinating group of languages that surprisingly comprise a third of the world's languages. Individual chapters written by experts on these languages examine the world's major language isolates by geographic regions, with up-to-date descriptions of many, including previously unrecorded language isolates. Each language isolate represents a unique lineage and a unique window on what is possible in human language, making this an essential volume for anyone interested in understanding the diversity of languages and the very nature of human language. Language Isolates is key reading for professionals and students in linguistics and anthropology.

How are relationships established between the world's languages? This is one of the most topical and most controversial questions in contemporary linguistics. The central aims of the book are to answer this question, to cut through the controversies, and to contribute to research in distant genetic relationships. In doing this the authors aim to: (1) show how the methods have been employed; (2) reveal which methods, techniques, and strategies have proven successful and which ones have proven ineffective; (3) determine how particular language families were established; (4) evaluate several of the most prominent and more controversial proposals of distant genetic relationship (such as Amerind, Nostratic, Eurasiatic, Proto-World, and others); and (5) make recommendations for practice in future research. This book will contribute significantly to understanding language classification in general.

Language Isolates explores this fascinating group of languages that surprisingly comprise a third of the world's languages. Individual chapters written by experts on these languages examine the world's major language isolates by geographic regions, with up-to-date descriptions of many, including previously unrecorded language isolates. Each language isolate represents a unique lineage and a unique window on what is possible in human language, making this an essential volume for anyone interested in understanding the diversity of languages and the very nature of human language. Language Isolates is key reading for professionals and students in linguistics and anthropology.

Lyle Campbell's linguistic fieldwork has taken him to numerous countries, sometimes in challenging circumstances. It has led to exciting discoveries including a new language in southeastern Guatemala, a unique speech sound, unknown in any other language, in the Nivacle language of Paraguay and Argentina, and unusual and unique features in several other languages. Along the way, he has experienced dangers and challenges, the joys and excitement of fieldwork, and encountered first-hand the importance of collaborating with indigenous groups to help document and revitalize their languages. Written with humour, heart, and a clear dedication to endangered languages and their speakers, Lyle's vivid memoir is a lesson not only on life in the field but on the importance of language documentation. With so many of the world's languages being lost at an alarming rate, this remains the most compelling and urgent task for linguists now and into the future.

This book offers an extensive description of Nivacle , an indigenous language spoken in the Gran Chaco region of Argentina and Paraguay. Nivacle 's phonology, morphology, and syntax are complex; the language has no tenses marked on verbs, essentially no prepositions, and a sizable number of lexical suffixes whose content is so concrete they would be expected to be independent words in most other languages. Nivacle has a unique speech sound, /k l/, known nowhere else. In some locations where it is spoken, multilingual conversations are the norm. These and other rare traits make Nivacle an especially fascinating language for linguists, with many implications for language typology and linguistic theory. The book is based on dozens of audio and video recordings of narratives and on hundreds of hours of elicitation and analysis with native speakers. Four lengthy texts are included here to demonstrate the language in action. Scholars - whether in anthropology, folklore, geography, history, or language - will find value in the narratives included here and in the insights into Nivacle life and culture found throughout the book.

Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages brings together the results of the extensive and influential Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat) project. Based on the findings from the most extensive endangered languages research project, this is the most comprehensive source of accurate information on endangered languages. The book presents the academic and scientific findings that underpin the online Catalogue, located at www.endangeredlanguages.com, making it an essential companion to the website for academics and researchers working in this area. While the online Catalogue displays much data from the ELCat project, this volume develops and emphasizes aspects of the research behind the data and includes topics of great interest in the field, not previously covered in a single volume. Cataloguing the World's Endangered Languages is an important volume of particular interest to academics and researchers working with endangered languages.

Lyle Campbell presents an accessible, hands-on introduction to historical linguistics - one that does not just talk about the topics, but through practical exercises and examples shows you how to apply the procedures, how to think about the issues and, in general, how to do what historical linguists do. This 4th edition covers a wide range of topics including areal linguistics, linguistic prehistory, distant genetic relationships, language contact, lexical and semantic change, sociolinguistics and language change, quantitative and corpus research methods. Examples are drawn from a wide range of languages including English, French, German, and Spanish as well many non-Indo-European languages. With its lucid and engaging style, expert guidance and comprehensive coverage, this book is ideal for students coming to historical linguistics for the first time.

Lyle Campbell's linguistic fieldwork has taken him to numerous countries, sometimes in challenging circumstances. It has led to exciting discoveries including a new language in southeastern Guatemala, a unique speech sound, unknown in any other language, in the Nivacle language of Paraguay and Argentina, and unusual and unique features in several other languages. Along the way, he has experienced dangers and challenges, the joys and excitement of fieldwork, and encountered first-hand the importance of collaborating with indigenous groups to help document and revitalize their languages. Written with humour, heart, and a clear dedication to endangered languages and their speakers, Lyle's vivid memoir is a lesson not only on life in the field but on the importance of language documentation. With so many of the world's languages being lost at an alarming rate, this remains the most compelling and urgent task for linguists now and into the future.

The endangered languages crisis is widely acknowledged among scholars who deal with languages and indigenous peoples as one of the most pressing problems facing humanity, posing moral, practical, and scientific issues of enormous proportions. Simply put, no area of the world is immune from language endangerment. The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages, in 39 chapters, provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts that are being undertaken to deal with this crisis. A comprehensive reference reflecting the breadth of the field, the Handbook presents in detail both the range of thinking about language endangerment and the variety of responses to it, and broadens understanding of language endangerment, language documentation, and language revitalization, encouraging further research. The Handbook is organized into five parts. Part 1, Endangered Languages, addresses the fundamental issues that are essential to understanding the nature of the endangered languages crisis. Part 2, Language Documentation, provides an overview of the issues and activities of concern to linguists and others in their efforts to record and document endangered languages. Part 3, Language Revitalization, includes approaches, practices, and strategies for revitalizing endangered and sleeping ("dormant") languages. Part 4, Endangered Languages and Biocultural Diversity, extends the discussion of language endangerment beyond its conventional boundaries to consider the interrelationship of language, culture, and environment, and the common forces that now threaten the sustainability of their diversity. Part 5, Looking to the Future, addresses a variety of topics that are certain to be of consequence in future efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages.

New Zealand English - at just 150 years old - is one of the newest varieties of English, and is unique in that its full history and development are documented in extensive audio-recordings. The rich corpus of spoken language provided by New Zealand's 'mobile disk unit' has provided insight into how the earliest New Zealand-born settlers spoke, and consequently, how this new variety of English developed. On the basis of these recordings, this book examines and analyses the extensive linguistic changes New Zealand English has undergone since it was first spoken in the 1850s. The authors, all experts in phonetics and sociolinguistics, use the data to test previous explanations for new dialect formation, and to challenge current claims about the nature of language change. The first ever corpus-based study of the evolution of New Zealand English, this book will be welcomed by all those interested in phonetics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and dialectology.

New Zealand English - at just 150 years old - is one of the newest varieties of English, and is unique in that its full history and development are documented in extensive audio-recordings. The rich corpus of spoken language provided by New Zealand's 'mobile disk unit' has provided insight into how the earliest New Zealand-born settlers spoke, and consequently, how this new variety of English developed. On the basis of these recordings, this book examines and analyses the extensive linguistic changes New Zealand English has undergone since it was first spoken in the 1850s. The authors, all experts in phonetics and sociolinguistics, use the data to test previous explanations for new dialect formation, and to challenge current claims about the nature of language change. The first ever corpus-based study of the evolution of New Zealand English, this book will be welcomed by all those interested in phonetics, sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and dialectology.

Native American languages are spoken from Siberia to Greenland, and from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego; they include the southernmost language of the world (Yaghan) and some of the northernmost (Eskimoan). Campbell's project is to take stock of what is currently known about the history of Native American languages and in the process examine the state of American-Indian historical linguistics, and the success and failure of its various methodologies.

The Indigenous Languages of the Americas takes stock of what is known about the history and classification of these languages and language families. It identifies the gaps in knowledge and puts them into perspective, and it assesses differences of opinion. It also resolves some issues and makes new contributions of its own. The nine chapters of the book deal incisively with the major themes involving these languages: the classification and history of the Indigenous languages of North American, Middle American (Mexico and Central America), and South American; difficulties involving names of the languages; origins of the languages of the New World; unclassified, phantom, fake, and spurious languages in the Americas; recent hypotheses of remote linguistic relationships; the linguistic areas of the Americas; contact languages, including pidgins, lingua francas, and mixed languages; and loanwords and other new words in the native languages of the Americas.

In this major new work Alice Harris and Lyle Campbell set out to establish a general framework for the investigation of linguistic change. Systematic cross-linguistic comparison of syntactic change across a wide variety of languages is used to construct hypotheses about the universals and limits of language change more generally. In particular, the authors seek to move closer towards describing the range of causes of syntactic change to develop an understanding of the mechanisms of syntactic change, and to provide an understanding of why some languages undergo certain changes and not others. The authors draw on languages as diverse as Pipil and French, Georgian and Estonian, and the data presented is one of the book's great strengths. Rigor and precision are combined here with a great breadth of scholarship to produce a unique resource for the study of linguistic change, which will be of use to scholars and students alike.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

These essays were drawn from the papers presented at the Linguistic Society of America's Summer Institute at the State University of New York at Oswego in 1976. The contents are as follows:Lyle Campbell and Marianne Mithun, "Introduction: North American Indian Historical Linguistics in Current Perspective"Ives Goddard, "Comparative Algonquian"Marianne Mithun, "Iroquoian"Wallace L. Chafe, "Caddoan"David S. Rood, "Siouan"Mary R. Haas, "Southeastern Languages"James M. Crawford, "Timucua and Yuchi: Two Language Isolates of the Southeast"Ives Goddard, "The Languages of South Texas and the Lower Rio Grande"Irvine Davis, "The Kiowa-Tanoan, Keresan, and Zuni Languages"Susan Steele, "Uto-Aztecan: An Assessment for Historical andComparative Linguistics"William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Hokan lnter-Branch Comparisons"Margaret Langdon, "Some Thoughts on Hokan with Particular Reference to Pomoan and Yuman"Michael Silverstein, ''Penutian: An Assessment"Laurence C. Thompson, "Salishan and the Northwest"William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Wakashan Comparative Studies"William H. Jacobsen, Jr., "Chimakuan Comparative Studies"Michael E. Krauss, "Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut"Lyle CampbelI, "Middle American Languages"Eric S. Hamp, "A Glance from Now On."

Lyle Campbell presents an accessible, hands-on introduction to historical linguistics - one that does not just talk about the topics, but through practical exercises and examples shows you how to apply the procedures, how to think about the issues and, in general, how to do what historical linguists do. This 4th edition covers a wide range of topics including areal linguistics, linguistic prehistory, distant genetic relationships, language contact, lexical and semantic change, sociolinguistics and language change, quantitative and corpus research methods. Examples are drawn from a wide range of languages including English, French, German, and Spanish as well many non-Indo-European languages. With its lucid and engaging style, expert guidance and comprehensive coverage, this book is ideal for students coming to historical linguistics for the first time.