The Languages of Native North AmericaThis book provides an authoritative survey of the several hundred languages indigenous to North America. These languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. Part I of the book provides an overview of structural features of particular interest, concentrating on those that are cross-linguistically unusual or unusually well developed. These include syllable structure, vowel and consonant harmony, tone, and sound symbolism; polysynthesis, the nature of roots and affixes, incorporation, and morpheme order; case; grammatical distinctions of number, gender, shape, control, location, means, manner, time, empathy, and evidence; and distinctions between nouns and verbs, predicates and arguments, and simple and complex sentences; and special speech styles. Part II catalogues the languages by family, listing the location of each language, its genetic affiliation, number of speakers, major published literature, and structural highlights. Finally, there is a catalogue of languages that have evolved in contact situations. |
Contents
viii | |
xx | |
Words | xli |
Grammatical categories | lxix |
Special language 5 1 Baby talk abnormal speechandanimal talk | ccliii |
Relations among the languages 6 1 Dialect language andfamily | v |
Catalogue | viii |
1997 | |
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Common terms and phrases
affixes Alaska Aleut Algonquian languages andthe ANLC appear Athabaskan Athabaskan languages Barbareņo Boas British Columbia California canbe Cherokee Chinook Chinook Jargon Chinookan clauses Coast consonant contains core arguments Cree dialects dictionary discussed diss distinctions distinguished enclitics ergative Eskimo forms glottalized Goddard grammar grammatical sketch Haida Halkomelem Hokan Hymes ICSNL IJAL Indian indicate inflectional inthe intransitive Inuktitut Iroquoian Iroquoian languages isin Jacobsen Jargon Kinkade Kroeber lexical Linguistics Lushootseed markers Mithun Miwok Mohawk morphemes morphology Muskogean Muskogean languages narrative Navajo nominals Nootka North American languages Northern Northwest objects ofthe onthe patterns Penutian Ph.D phonology pidgin plural Pomo possessive predicates pronominal prefixes pronouns reduplication Reprinted River roots Sahaptin Salish Salishan Salishan languages Sapir semantic singular Siouan Southern speakers speech spoken structure subordination suffixes syllable syntactic Takelma tense texts third person Thompson Tlingit tothe transitive Tsimshian U.of UtoAztecan verb stems verbal verbs vocabulary vowels Wakashan Wintu words Yup’ik