This volume presents the up-to-date results of investigations into the Asian origins of the only two language families of North America that are widely acknowledged as having likely genetic links in northern Asia. It brings together all that has been proposed to date under the respective rubrics of the Uralo-Siberian (Eskimo-Yukaghir-Uralic) hypothesis and the Dene-Yeniseian hypothesis. The evolution of the two parallel research strategies for fleshing out these linguistic links between North America and Asia are compared and contrasted. Although focusing on stringently controlled linguistic reconstructions, the volume draws upon archaeological and human genetic data where relevant.

Verbs of mental states or activity constitute a subject of considerable interest to both Cognitive Linguistics and Linguistic Typology. They promise to open a window on the invisible workings of the mind, while at the same time displaying a wide variety of historical sources across languages. In this book Michael Fortescue presents an innovative approach to the semantics and diachronic source of cognitive verbs across a representative array of the world's languages. The relationship among the cognitive verbs of individual languages is essentially one of metonymy, and the book investigates in detail the specific metonymic relationships involved, as revealed largely by the polysemous spread of word meanings. The data is projected against a circular 'map' of interrelated cognitive categories.

This is an engaging study of the mental lexicon - the way in which the form and meaning of words is stored by speakers of specific languages. Fortescue attempts to narrow the gap between the results of experimental neurology and the concerns of theoretical linguistics in the area of lexical semantics. The prime goal as regards linguistic theory is to show how matters of lexical organization can be analysed and discussed within a neurologically informed framework that is both adaptable and constrained. It combines the perspectives of distributed network modelling and linguistic semantics, and draws upon the accruing evidence from neuroimaging studies as regards the cortical regions involved. It engages with a number of controversial current issues in both disciplines. This text is intended as a tool for linguists interested in psychological adequacy and the latest advances in Cognitive Science. It provides a principled means of distinguishing those semantic features required by a mental lexicon that have a direct bearing on grammar from those that do not. "A Neural Network Model of Lexical Organisation" is essential reading for researchers in neurolinguistics and lexical semantics. "Continuum Studies in Theoretical Linguistics" publishes work at the forefront of present-day developments in the field. The series is open to studies from all branches of theoretical linguistics and to the full range of theoretical frameworks. Titles in the series present original research that makes a new and significant contribution and are aimed primarily at scholars in the field, but are clear and accessible, making them useful also to students, to new researchers and to scholars in related disciplines.

This volume is the first comprehensive comparative dictionary to cover the whole of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan family. The genealogical status of this family (whether from a common source or due to convergence) has long been controversial, but its coherence as a family can now be taken as proven. Its geographical position between Siberia and northernmost America renders it crucial in any attempt to relate the languages and peoples of these large linguistic regions. The dictionary consists of cognate sets arranged alphabetically according to reconstructed proto-forms and covers all published lexical sources for the languages concerned (plus a good deal of unpublished material). The criterion for setting up Proto-Chukotian sets is the existence of clear cognates in at least two of the four languages: Chukchi, Koryak, Alutor, and (now extinct) Kerek, and for Proto-Chukotko-Kamchatkan sets cognates in at least one of these plus Itelmen. Internal loans between the two branches of the family are indicated - this is particularly important in the case of the many loans from Koryak to modern western Itelmen. Proto-Itelmen sets without clear cognates in Chukotian are listed separately, without reconstructions. The data is presented in a reader-friendly format, with each set divided into separate lines for the individual languages concerned and with a common orthography for all reliable modern forms (given as full word stems, not just 'roots'). The introduction contains information on the distribution of the individual languages and dialects and all sound correspondences relating them, plus a sketch of what is known of their (pre)historical background. Inflections and derivational affixes are treated in separate sections, and Chukchi and English proto-form indexes allows multiple routes of access to the data. A full reference list of sources is included.

In building up a scenario for the arrival on the shores of Alaska of speakers of languages related to Eskimo-Aleut with genetic roots deep within Sineria, this book touches upon a number of issues in contemporary historical linguistics and archaeology. The Arctic "gateway" to the New World, by acting as a bottleneck, has allowed only small groups of mobile hunter-gatherers through during specific propitious periods, and thus provides a unique testing ground for theories about population and language movements in pre-agricultural times. Owing to the historically attested prevalence of language shifts and other contact phenomena in the region, it is arguable that the spread of genes and the spread of language have been out of step since the earliest reconstructable times, contrary to certain views of their linkage. Proposals that have been put forward in the past concerning the affiliations of Eskimo-Aleut languages are followed up in the light of recent progress in reconstructing the proto-languages concerned. Those linking Eskimo-Aleut with the Uralic languages and Yukagir are particularly promising, and reconstructions for many common elements are presented. The entire region "Great Beringia" is scoured for typological evidence in the form of anomalies and constellations of uncommon traits diagnostic of affiliation or contact. The various threads lead back to mesolithic times in south central Siberia, when speakers of a "Uralo-Siberian" mesh of related languages appears to have moved along the major waterways of Siberia. Such a scenario would acount for the present distribution of these languages and the results of their meeting with remnants of earlier linguistic waves from the Old World to the New.

This handbook offers an extensive crosslinguistic and cross-theoretical survey of polysynthetic languages, in which single multi-morpheme verb forms can express what would be whole sentences in English. These languages and the problems they raise for linguistic analyses have long featured prominently in language descriptions, and yet the essence of polysynthesis remains under discussion, right down to whether it delineates a distinct, coherent type, rather than an assortment of frequently co-occurring traits. Chapters in the first part of the handbook relate polysynthesis to other issues central to linguistics, such as complexity, the definition of the word, the nature of the lexicon, idiomaticity, and to typological features such as argument structure and head marking. Part two contains areal studies of those geographical regions of the world where polysynthesis is particularly common, such as the Arctic and Sub-Arctic and northern Australia. The third part examines diachronic topics such as language contact and language obsolence, while part four looks at acquisition issues in different polysynthetic languages. Finally, part five contains detailed grammatical descriptions of over twenty languages which have been characterized as polysynthetic, with special attention given to the presence or absence of potentially criterial features.

This book is intended as counter-evidence to the perception that Linguistics is a domain of dusty schoolroom grammar. It follows that linguistics can be characterised differently than as proponents of theoretical orientations who spend their brief breaks from their bone-dry work bashing each other over the head with their different favourite abstractions. The discipline may appear to outsiders as fragmented and -- worse still -- lacking in relevance to the real world outside its gates. This book demonstrates that Linguistics, in all its varied branches, can be entertaining as well as thought-provoking, and that its domain is indeed a coherent one despite all the internecine squabbling. In an unconventional way Michael Fortescue introduces his subject as a kind of fable with a historical moral that professional linguists, as well as students, should enjoy as a useful commentary on the state of the discipline today.

These curious tales all have something to do with language: Does one really have to queue to be assigned a language at birth? How could one go about communicating with an alien but sentient 'thing'? Are words sufficient to navigate through the numerical labyrinth of Manhattan? Can the sum total of all human knowledge be transferred to electromagnetic circuits in rock? Can one improve one's memory by acquiring a conservatory in one's autumn years? Can language be acquired by a vegetal implant? The stories comprising this volume do not answer any of these questions, but considering them at least provides food for thought.

Words are escaping from the flagship project of the prestigious House of Words. Something must be done fast to get them back before a rival company is brought in to take over the project. But the lexicographers below deck are not being cooperative. Treated as slaves they use their time when not supervised to play word games, facing the threat of the overseer's whip if discovered. The management suspects that they may be aiding the leakage and their ringleader is clapped in irons. Emissaries are sent to negotiate with the words now living in riotous anarchy in the wild woods, but with little success. The words have certain demands if they are to return. An ultimatum is relayed to the irascible editor-in-chief, who cannot allow this undermining of editorial policy. His aging boss, the publisher, who is himself having difficulty remembering words, is only interested in cost-efficiency. A solution of a surprising kind is finally brokered by a humble female servitor sympathetic to the lexicographers? cause.

James, an IT consultant engaged in upgrading the computer system of the Brain Imaging Institute at Cambridge, discovers something strange in the institute's server - a number of encrypted titles of books. But before he can investigate further the institute's director is dismissed for appropriating institute funds to acquire a large quantity of beryllium fluoride from Russia for his own obscure ends. He disappears. Since James' company is engaged in nanotechnological research involving this substance he is more than a little curious to know what the director has been up to. A visit to the local library in order to track down one of the encrypted titles - "Christina's Book" - leads to an initial dead-end: no such book exists, although the title appears as an otherwise blank catalogue entry under the director's name. What does it refer to? James will finally discover - but only after a massive solar storm has undermined the intended results of an extraordinary clandestine experiment...

Each of the prose poems that constitute the first part of this volume juxtaposes at least two widely different images and ways of reading them. The result - an either/or choice between incompatibles - can be surprising. Those of the second part are based on more free-wheeling association and word play. All good fun.

This tightly constructed novel is set in the fictitious village of Slatefield, where dinosaur bones were first found in England. The arrival of a writer of popular books at the house of his brother, an Oxford archaeologist, stirs up an old rivalry. A strange stone has been unearthed from a local quarry bearing what looks like an ancient script and the two brothers have very different interpretations of its contents. For the archaeologist it is clearly a fake, but for his brother and his artist wife it opens a window to a prehistoric civilization, going back even to the age of the giant dragonflies. There is also a land dispute over the site of a Roman villa, and disagreement among the villagers over the possible reopening of the slate mines. A humorous element is introduced by the bumbling new vicar who tries to smooth over all these disputes with words of unorthodox Whiteheadian wisdom. Science and imagination are at loggerheads, and their resolution (of sorts) provides a surprising ending.

A grumpy old hypochondriac is led into a world of dream and memory by certain pieces he finds separated out from the puzzle he is putting together. They are the key to the walled town represented in the surface of the puzzle - and to a secret locked within it. The book itself constitutes a puzzle: the 'solution' is a fully interlocking picture of the tragi-comic narrator, as he tries to make head or tail of his aimless life. Amongst the ambiguous denizens of the puzzle world he glimpses a girl he once loved and lost...

The walled - and very private - village of Greendale is not all that it appears to be from the outside. Superficially it embodies all that is quaint and desirable in the English country way of life. Within it is concealed an exclusive language academy catering for wealthy foreigners. This curious institution purports to teach 'perfect' English - with a 100 % success rate - and successful graduation holds out the promise of integration into the English upper crust. Everything seems light and amusing at the onset, and the latest electronic technology is regarded just as fun by the new intake of students. But gradually the gadgetry grows more and more intrusive into their private lives and it emerges that both the teaching staff and the 'villagers' are more eccentric than either the students or the naive new teacher Adrian have bargained for. Trying to enter the village under false pretences can lead to unpleasant consequences, but when students try to escape things can grow nasty indeed...

This unconventional introduction to the linguistic discipline of semantics - and pragmatics - takes the form of a series of zany dialogues, each illustrating a particular topic. They do this by breaking the rules that govern language usage in such a way as to bring home their hidden existence with a jolt. The intention is to render the significance of these abstractions more tangible and to sharpen the reader's awareness of what lurks beneath the surface of more 'normal' human communication. The notion of context is crucial throughout: it is the key to understanding the richer meaning of both individual words and whole utterances. Following each dialogue there are some definitions and a brief discussion of the topics concerned, together with references for more serious reading. The collection arose from the author's experience as professor of linguistics at the University of Copenhagen, in particular with the functional and cognitive aspects of language.

Annie is about to start her last year at boarding school in Abingdon when Uncle George, whom she barely remembers, shows up out of the blue. He is drunk and starts off on an elaborate confabulation about an event he has been witness to on Abingdon Bridge. His appearance in Annie's life will turn her life upside down and provide her with a seemingly endless source of entertainment. He has returned to his old stomping ground after a mysterious spell 'abroad'. He evidently has an intimate knowledge of all aspects of the town's life, its history and local characters and, above all, a thorough knowledge of the town's pubs. Annie, embarrassed by his behaviour in front of others, keeps her meetings with him secret. Uncle George is chronically incapable of sticking to the truth, but one of the few definite things one learns about his past is that his connection to Annie's family is more complicated than she suspected. But who exactly is this disreputable, loveable, but ultimately pathetic character...?