The first Okinawan language textbook written for English-speakers, Basic Okinawan: From Conversation to Grammar is a groundbreaking work that will help students develop conversational skills and build a solid foundational understanding of the language’s grammar and vocabulary. The lessons are geared for students learning in the classroom or on their own and do not assume knowledge of Japanese. The ten learner-centered units in Part I systematically and incrementally introduce grammar and vocabulary through the story of Niko, an American exchange student in Okinawa. Each unit offers authentic dialogues focused around cultural themes, followed by concise grammar and vocabulary explanations, ample exercises, and situation-based applications. Lessons conclude with cultural notes that advance the unit’s themes, linking language learning with a wide range of disciplines such as history, geography, literature, religion, and popular culture. The last unit ties Niko’s final experiences in Okinawa to a well-known saying: Ichariba choodee (Once we meet, we are friends forever). Woven throughout the story are humorous and thoughtful anecdotes that will inspire students to explore Okinawan language and culture further. Part II’s eight sections explain the grammar introduced in Part I—for example, parts of speech and sentence types—arranged by topic. This topical organization allows students to review grammar points from a fresh perspective that both augments and reinforces what was learned in Part I. In addition to the Appendix, which contains comprehensive vocabulary and construction lists with cross-references to sections in Part I, students should consult the companion dictionary and grammar, Mitsugu Sakihara’s Okinawan-English Word Book. A references section lists resources for further reading and study. Basic Okinawan presents a natural yet structured approach to the language that will engage students and connect them with Okinawan culture. An answer key to the exercises and audio files for lesson dialogues are available online.

A Reference Grammar of Thai provides a clear, detailed and comprehensive guide to Thai grammar, designed for intermediate to advanced learners. Written by two leading experts on Thai, it places a special emphasis on functional accounts of its grammatical phenomena: the use of demonstratives, personal reference terms, the modality system, the aspectual system, pragmatic particles, verb serialisation, relative clauses, question formation, passive and causative constructions, topic marking and many more. Unlike any other book on Thai grammar, it draws on data from everyday spoken discourses such as informal conversation, group discussions, interviews and narratives, as well as non-technical written texts such as folk tales, short stories and newspaper articles, to discuss grammatical phenomena at both sentence and discourse level. An extensive index is provided and examples are given in both Thai orthography and IPA symbols, making this an invaluable resource for linguists as well as students and teachers of Thai.

Japanese and Korean are typologically similar, with linguistic phenomena in one often having counterparts in the other. The Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference provides a forum for research, particularly through comparative study, of both languages. This volume includes essays on the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, discourse analysis, prosody, and psycholinguistics of both languages. This volume will be a useful tool for any researcher or student in either field.

The papers in this volume are from the seventeenth Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference, which was held at the University of California, Los Angeles in November of 2007. The articles cover a broad range of topics in Japanese and Korean linguistics, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical linguistics, discourse analysis, prosody, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, acquisition, and grammaticalization.

Japanese and Korean are typologically quite similar, so a linguistic phenomenon in one language often has a counterpart in the other. The papers in this volume are intended to further collective and collaborative research in both languages. The contributors discuss aspects of language acquisition, discourse, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, phonology, morphology, typology, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. The papers were presented at the Southern California Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference in September 1991. Contributors to this volume are Patricia M. Clancy, Seiko Yamaguchi Fujii, Shoichi Iwasaki, Kyu-hyun Kim, Yoshiko Matsumoto, Shigeko Okamoto, Sung-Ock S. Sohn, Kyung-Hee Suh, Eunjoo Han, Jongho Jun, Ongmi Kang, David James Silva, Noriko Akatsuka, Shoji Azuma, Soonja Choi, Bruce L. Derwing, Yeo Bom Yoon, Sook Whan Cho, Tsuyoshi Ono, Hiroko Yamashita, Laurie Stowe, Mineharu Nakayama, Ruriko Kawashima, Masanori Nakamaura, Shin Watanabe, Dong-In Cho, Stanley Dubinsky, Hiroto Hoshi, Yasua Ishii, Hisatsugu Kitahara, Masatoshi Koizumi, Jae Hong Lee, Sookhee Lee, Young-Suk Lee, and Shigeo Tonoike.