Other Guides
Indigneous Languages Journal
- International journal of American linguistics (Online) The International Journal of American Linguistics (IJAL) is dedicated to the documentation and analysis of the indigenous languages of the Americas. Founded by Franz Boas and Pliny Earle Goddard in 1917, the journal focuses on the linguistics of American Indigenous languages. IJAL is an important repository for research based on field work and archival materials on the languages of North and South America.
North America & the Arctic
Native Languages of the Americas, Volume 1
Thirteen of the chapters that comprise the contents of this first volume of Native Languages of the A mericas were originally commissioned by the undersigned in his capacity as Editor of the fourteen volume series (1963-1976), Current Trends in Linguistics. All appeared, in 1973, under Part Three of the quadripartite Vol. 10, subtitled Linguistics in North America. Two additional chaplers are being held over for the volume to follow shortly, devoted to Central and South American lan guages and linguistics, where they more appropriately belong. A fourteenth chapter, on the" Historiography of native North A merican linguistics," was written similarly by invitation, for Vol. 13, subtitled Historiography of Linguistics, published in 1975. Both Volumes 10 and 13 were jointly financed by the United States National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities, with an enhancing contribution to the former by the Canada Council. The generosity of these funding agencies was, of course, previously acknowledged in my respective Editor's Introductions to the two books mentioned, but cannot be repeated too often: without their welcome and timely assistance, the global project could scarcely have been realized on so comprehensive a scale. The Current Trends in Linguistics series was a long-term venture of Mouton Publishers, of The Hague, under the imaginative in-house direction of Peter de Rid der. Various spin-offs were foreseen, and some of them happily realized.
ISBN: 9781475715590
The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages
The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages is a one-stop reference for linguists on those topics that come up the most frequently in the study of the languages of North America (including Mexico). This handbook compiles a list of contributors from across many different theories and at different stages of their careers, all of whom are well-known experts in North American languages. The volume comprises two distinct parts: the first surveys some of the phenomena most frequently discussed in the study of North American languages, and the second surveys some of the most frequently discussed language families of North America. The consistent goal of each contribution is to couch the content of the chapter in contemporary theory so that the information is maximally relevant and accessible for a wide range of audiences, including graduate students and young new scholars, and even senior scholars who are looking for a crash course in the topics. Empirically driven chapters provide fundamental knowledge needed to participate in contemporary theoretical discussions of these languages, making this handbook an indispensable resource for linguistics scholars.
ISBN: 9781138628748
The Languages of Native North America
This 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.
Call Number: PM 108 L35 1999ISBN: 0521232287
Relative Clauses in Languages of the Americas
Patterns of relative clause formation tend to vary according to the typological properties of a language. Highly polysynthetic languages tend to have fully nominalized relative clauses and no relative pronouns, while other typologically diverse languages tend to have relative clauses which are similar to main or independent clauses. Languages of the Americas, with their rich genetic diversity, have all been under the influence of European languages, whether Spanish, English or Portuguese, a situation that may be expected to have influenced their grammatical patterns. The present volume focuses on two tasks: The first deals with the discussion of functional principles related to relative clause formation: diachrony and paths of grammaticalization, simplicity vs. complexity, and formalization of rules to capture semantic-syntactic correlations. The second provides a typological overview of relative clauses in nine different languages going from north to south in the Americas.
ISBN: 9789027206831
Revitalising Indigenous Languages: how to recreate a lost generation
The book tells the story of the Indigenous Aanaar Saami language (around 350 speakers) and cultural revitalisation in Finland. It offers a new language revitalisation method that can be used with Indigenous and minority languages, especially in cases where the native language has been lost among people of a working age. The book gives practical examples as well as a theoretical frame of reference for how to plan, organise and implement an intensive language programme for adults who already have professional training. It is the first time that a process of revitalisation of a very small language has been systematically described from the beginning; it is a small-scale success story. The book finishes with self-reflection and cautious recommendations for Indigenous peoples and minorities who want to revive or revitalise their languages.
ISBN: 9781847698896Publication Date: 2013
The Palgrave Handbook of minority languages and communities
This Handbook is an in-depth appraisal of the field of minority languages and communities today. It presents a wide-ranging, coherent picture of the main topics, with key contributions from international specialists in sociolinguistics, policy studies, sociology, anthropology and law. Individual chapters are grouped together in themes, covering regional, non-territorial and migratory language settings across the world. It is the essential reference work for specialist researchers, scholars in ancillary disciplines, research and coursework students, public agencies and anyone interested in language diversity, multilingualism and migration.
ISBN: 9781137540669
- itwêwina Plains Cree Dictionary itwêwina was made by the University of Alberta ALTLab, in collaboration with the First Nations University and Maskwacîs Education Schools Commission (MESC). The dictionary entries are courtesy of Dr. Arok Wolvengrey and MESC.
- Indigenous Languages of the AmericasMarianne Mithun's Annotated bibliography for Oxford Bibliographies Online
Mexico, Central America, South America
Native Languages of the Americas, Volume 2
The publishing history of the eleven chapters that comprise the contents of this second volume of Native Languages of the Americas is rather different from that of the thirteen that appeared in Volume I of this twin set late last year. Original ver sions of five articles, respectively, by Barthel, Grimes, Longacre, Mayers, and Suarez, were first published in Part II of Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. 4, subtitled lbero-A merican and Caribbean Linguistics (1968), having been com missioned by the undersigned in his capacity as editor of the fourteen volume series which was distributed in twenty-one tomes between 1963 and 1976. McClaran's article is reprinted from Part III of Vol. 10. Linguistics in North America (1973) and the two by Kaufman and Rensch were in Part I I of Vol. 11, Diachronic, A real. and Typological Linguistics (1973 ). There are three contributions by Landar: earlier versions of two appeared in Vol. 10 ("North American Indian Languages. " accompanied by William Sorsby's maps of tribal groups of North and Central America), and in Vol. 13, Historiography of Linguistics (1975); however, his checklist of South and Central American Indian languages was freshly compiled for this book. Generous financial support for preparing the materials included in this project came from several agencies of the United States government, to wit: the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation, for Vols. 10 and 13, and the Office of Education, for Vols. 4 and 11; in addition.
ISBN: 9781475715620
The Native Languages of South America
In South America indigenous languages are extremely diverse. There are over one hundred language families in this region alone. Contributors from around the world explore the history and structure of these languages, combining insights from archaeology and genetics with innovative linguistic analysis. The book aims to uncover regional patterns and potential deeper genealogical relations between the languages. Based on a large-scale database of features from sixty languages, the book analyses major language families such as Tupian and Arawakan, as well as the Quechua/Aymara complex in the Andes, the Isthmo-Colombian region and the Andean foothills. It explores the effects of historical change in different grammatical systems and fills gaps in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) database, where South American languages are underrepresented. An important resource for students and researchers interested in linguistics, anthropology and language evolution.
ISBN: 9781107044289
The Indigenous Languages of South America
The Indigenous Languages of South America: A Comprehensive Guide is a thorough guide to the indigenous languages of this part of the world. With more than a third of the linguistic diversity of the world (in terms of language families and isolates), South American languages contribute new findings in most areas of linguistics. Though formerly one of the linguistically least known areas of the world, extensive descriptive and historical linguistic research in recent years has expanded knowledge greatly. These advances are represented in this volume in indepth treatments by the foremost scholars in the field, with chapters on the history of investigation, language classification, language endangerment, language contact, typology, phonology and phonetics, and on major language families and regions of South America.
ISBN: 9783110258035
Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond
Language-contact phenomena in Mesoamerica and adjacent regions present an exciting field for research that has the potential to significantly contribute to our understanding of language contact and the role that it plays in language change. This volume presents and analyzes fresh empirical data from living and/or extinct Mesoamerican languages (from the Mayan, Uto-Aztecan, Totonac-Tepehuan and Otomanguean groups), neighboring non-Mesoamerican languages (Apachean, Arawakan, Andean languages), as well as Spanish. Language-contact effects in these diverse languages and language groups are typically analyzed by different subfields of linguistics that do not necessarily interact with one another. It is hoped that this volume, which contains works from different scholarly traditions that represent a variety of approaches to the study of language contact, will contribute to the lessening of this compartmentalization. The volume is relevant to researchers of language contact and contact-induced change and to anyone interested both in the historical development and present features of indigenous languages of the Americas and Latin American Spanish.
ISBN: 9789027259509
Word Formation in South American Languages
This volume focuses on word formation processes in smaller and so far underrepresented indigenous languages of South America. The data for the analyses have been mainly collected in the field by the authors. The several language families described here, among them Arawakan, Takanan, and Guaycuruan, as well as language isolates, such as Yurakaré, Kalapalo and Cholón, reflect the linguistic diversity of South America. Equally diverse are the topics addressed, relating to word formation processes like reduplication, nominal and verbal compounding, clitic compounding, and incorporation. The traditional notions of the processes are discussed critically with respect to their implementation in minor indigenous languages. The book is therefore not only of interest to readers with an Amerindian background but also to typologists and historical linguists, and it is a supplement to more theory-driven approaches to language and linguistics.
ISBN: 9789027259288
Upper Necaxa Totonac Dictionary by
The Upper Necaxa Totonac Dictionary documents a previously undescribed Totonac-Tepehua language of Mexico. Comprising 9,000 entries, it includes part-of-speech information, phonetic transcriptions, grammatical notes, literal morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, illustrative sentences, and cross-references to derived forms, as well as a short grammatical sketch and supplementaryaudio material supplied online.
ISBN: 9783110238228
Databases
- UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger The online edition of the Atlas is complementary to the print edition It does not reproduce the regional and thematic chapters of the print version, but it offers additional information on the listed endangered languages. Via this interface, you can browse through them, using combinations of search criteria and/or zooming in the map below (see Browsing functionnalities ). For more detailed information, please consult the Languages mapping
Linguistic Data Repositories
- ComparaLex ComparaLex is an online lexical database developed by the Canada Institute of Linguistics. The database stores language word list data including audio samples and makes them available for linguistic analysis and historical and comparative linguistic reconstruction.
- re3data.orgRegistry of Research Data Repositories by discipline
- The Rosetta Project The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to build a publicly accessible digital library of material on the nearly 7,000 known human languages. The collection currently contains nearly 100,000 pages of material documenting over 2,500 languages, as well as a growing multimedia collection of modern and historical language recordings.
- SIL International Language & Culture Archives Contains works collected, compiled, or created by SIL, its strategic partners, or members of ethnolinguistic minority communities. Search and browse over 40,000 resources dating from 1935 to the present that describe, document, and/or communicate in the languages and cultures SIL serves.
- Syllabics.net Syllabics.net is a tool to aid in the preservation of aboriginal languages. Using this tool you can easily develop materials in syllabics as well as Standard Roman Orthography (SRO) even if you do not have access to a syllabic keyboard layout. It should also work from any computer, tablet, or mobile device without needing to install any fonts or additional software.
- AILLA: Archive of the indigenous languages of Latin America AILLA is a digital archive of recordings and texts in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America. Access to archive resources is free of charge. Most of the resources in the AILLA database are available to the public, but some have special access restrictions.