Books: Anthropological linguistics (Native American languages)

[Scott McGinnis]

Date:  Mon, 12 Feb 2001 12:26:40 -0500
From:  Kimberly Kahn <KRK at OUP-USA.ORG>
Subject:  Anthropological Ling: American Indian Languages by L. Campbell


Winner of the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award
by the Linguistic Society of America

Named a 1998 Outstanding Academic Book by Choice

AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES: The Historical Linguistics of Native America
Lyle Campbell, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

(Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics 4)

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.


   "...[a] masterful volume....American Indian Languages is...of great
value
    to anyone hoping to gain a clear understanding of the current state
of
    Native American historical linguistics....[a] treasure trove of
    encyclopedic data."--Word

   "Campbell's book can serve both as our manifesto and as our
textbook."
    --Language in Society

   "This is an excellent book, an extraordinarily useful volume for
anyone
    whose work and interests involve languages of the Americas or,
    more generally, the methods and results of historical
linguistics....This
    is a true and thoroughly authoritative handbook."--Mother Tongue

   "It's the kind of book I wish had been available when I was a student
and
    would have saved me many long hours and fruitless searches in
    libraries....It will be used for a long time to come and well after
the
    furor about Greenberg has died down."--Margaret Langdon, University
of
    California, San Diego

   "A wealth of useful information is provided....The author has
compiled and
    sifted information from a vast area of scholarship, making this as
    complete and up-to-date a guide to this subject as one could
wish."--Choice

   "A tremendous amount of information has been assembled here....Anyone
    needing any sort of information or guidance on this subject will
want to
    consult this book....Campbell's discussion of the history of
    classification is the most detailed and extensive anywhere.  He has
read
    extremely widely in many languages and tracked down many obscure
    items in the secondary literature."--Diachronica

1997 (paper September 2000)   528 pp.; 27 maps
0-19-514050-8 paper $35.00
0-19-509427-1 cloth $75.00
Oxford University Press
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kimberly Kahn
Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New
York, NY 10016
Phone: (212) 726-6086   Fax: (212) 726-6442  E-mail: krk at oup-usa.org

------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 12 Feb 2001 12:27:15 -0500
From:  Kimberly Kahn <KRK at OUP-USA.ORG>
Subject:  Anthropological Ling: Relatively Speaking by E. Danziger



RELATIVELY SPEAKING: Language, Thought, and Kinship Among the Mopan Maya
Eve Danziger, University of Virginia

(Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics)

Using fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork among the Mopan Maya
in Belize, Eve Danziger examines the semantic complexity of particular
kinship terms used among Mopan women and children and shows that a
culture-specific analysis of their terms is superior to other
non-ethnographically-based methods.  In doing so she contributes not
only to theoretical semantics and the ethnography of that area, but to
the cross-cultural study of child development and language
acquisition.

January 2001   272 pp.; 4 line illus
0-19-509911-7 paper $19.95
0-19-509910-9 cloth $65.00
Oxford University Press
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kimberly Kahn
Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New
York, NY 10016
Phone: (212) 726-6086   Fax: (212) 726-6442  E-mail: krk at oup-usa.org