Recently published: Why not review for LT

[Plank]

Recently Published and of Typological Interest / vi 2012

 

New publications of potential typological interest are periodically advertised on the lingtyp list.  Apart from directly commissioning reviews, LT solicits offers from lingtypists to review books – those listed here or whichever others you’d like to add on your own understanding of the attribute “typologically relevant”.  (And do construe its scope liberally!)  For purposes of book reviewing in LT, what matters is that REVIEWS are done from a distinctively typological angle, from whatever angles the books reviewed are done.  Prospective reviewers so intentioned please get in touch.

 

Drop me a line with bibliographical particulars if you want to make sure your own relevant publications will be included in the next listing.  The most effective indication of the existence of a new relevant book is the receipt of a review copy;  do remind your publisher to send one to:

 

LINGUISTIC TYPOLOGY,

Sprachwissenschaft,

Universität Konstanz,

78457 Konstanz, Germany.

 

Regrettably, many previously listed titles have remained unreviewed in LT.  However, typological publications can have long shelf-lives, and you’re welcome to make your pick and review now what has been listed before and is not past the sell-by date. 

 

Do feel free to also offer to review grammars for LT (again, from a distinctively typological angle).  Some are included in our listings here, but eventually THE GRAMMAR WATCH on the ALT website should pick up again where we left off a while ago.   

 

Frans Plank

frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de

 

 

Aboh, Enoch O., Norval Smith, & Anne Zribi-Hertz (eds.). 2012. The morphosyntax of reiteration in creole and non-creole languages. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

 

Abraham, Werner & Elisabeth Leiss (eds.). 2012. Modality and theory of mind elements across languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

 

Adams, Michael (ed.). 2011. From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring invented languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2012. The languages of the Amazon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. & R. M. W. Dixon. 2011. Language at large: Essays on syntax and semantics. Leiden: Brill.

[The volume brings together important essays on syntax and semantics by Aikhenvald and Dixon, highlighting their expertise in various fields of linguistics. The first part focusses on linguistic typology, covering case markers used on verbs, argument-determined constructions, unusual meanings of causatives, the semantic basis for a typology, word-class-changing derivations, speech reports and semi-direct speech. The second part concentrates on documentation and analysis of previously undescribed languages, from South America and Indigenous Australia. The third part addresses a variety of issues in grammar and lexicography of English. This includes pronouns with transferred reference, comparative constructions, features of the noun phrase, and the discussion of 'twice'. The treatment of Australian Aboriginal words in dictionaries is discussed in the final chapter. [Brill]]

 

Anderson, Stephen. 2012. Languages: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (144pp)

 

Austin, Peter K. & Julia Sallabank (eds.). 2011. The Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Baker, Anne E. & Kees Hengeveld (eds.). 2012. Linguistics. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

 

Binnick, Robert I. (ed.). 2012. The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Brown, Dunstan & Andrew Hippisley. 2011. Network morphology: A defaults-based theory of word structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Buchstaller, Isabelle & Ingrid Van Alphen (eds.). 2012. Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary perspectives. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

 

Chamoreau, Claudine & Isabelle Léglise (eds.). 2012. Dynamics of contact-induced language change. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

[The volume deals with previously undescribed morphosyntactic variations and changes appearing in settings involving language contact. Contact-induced changes are defined as dynamic and multiple, involving internal change as well as historical and sociolinguistic factors. A variety of explanations are identified and their relationships are analyzed. Only a multifaceted methodology enables this fine-grained approach to contact-induced change. A range of methodologies are proposed, but the chapters generally have their roots in a typological perspective. The contributors recognize the precautionary principle: for example, they emphasize the difficulty of studying languages that have not been described adequately and for which diachronic data are not extensive or reliable.
     Three main perspectives on contact-induced language change are presented. The first explores the role of multilingual speakers in contact-induced language change, especially their spontaneous innovations in discourse. The second explores the differences between ordinary contact-induced change and change in endangered languages. The third discusses various aspects of the relationship between contact-induced change and internal change. [DeGM]]

 

Crane, Thera M., Larry M. Hyman & Simon Nsielanga Tukumu. 2011. A grammar of Nzadi [B865]: A Bantu language of Democratic Republic of Congo (University of California Publications in Linguistics 147). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Freely downloadable at:  http://escholarship.org/uc/item/846308w2

[This publication presents the first documentation of Nzadi, a Bantu language spoken by fishermen along the Kasai River in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is the product of extensive study by the authors and participants in field methods and group study courses at the University of California, Berkeley, and consists of ten chapters covering the segmental phonology, tone system, morphology, and sentence structure, followed by appendices on the Nzadi people and history and on Proto-Bantu to Nzadi sound changes. Also included are three texts and a lexicon of over 1100 entries, including a number of fish species. Prior to this work, Nzadi had not even been mentioned in the literature, and at this time still has no entry as a language or dialect in the Ethnologue. Of particular interest in the study of Nzadi is its considerable grammatical simplification, resulting in structures quite different from those of canonical Bantu languages. Although Nzadi has lost most of the inherited agglutinative morphology, there are still recognizable class prefixes on nouns and a reflex of noun class agreement in genitive constructions. Other areas of particular interest are human/number agreement, tense-aspect-mood marking, non-subject relative clause constructions, and WH question formation. This succinct, but comprehensive grammar provides broad coverage of the phonological, grammatical and semantic properties that will be of potential interest not only to Bantuists, Africanists and those interested in this area of the DRC, but also to typologists, general linguists, and students of linguistics.  [UCP]]

 

Croft, William. 2012. Verbs: Aspect and causal structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Dahl, Eystein. 2010. Time, tense and aspect in early Vedic: Exploring inflectional semantics in the Rigveda. Leiden: Brill.

 

Dalrymple, Mary & Suriel Mofu. 2012. Dusner (Languages of the World/Materials 487). München: Lincom Europa.

 

Devi, Ibempishak. 2011. Manipuri: As a language type. New Delhi: Mittal Publications.

 

Faarlund, Jan Terje. 2012. A grammar of Chiapas Zoque. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 2012. Key features and parameters in Arabic grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

 

Frajzyngier, Zygmunt & Erin Shay (eds.). 2012. The Afroasiatic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Golla, Victor. 2011. California Indian languages. Berkeley: University of California Press.

 [Nowhere was the linguistic diversity of the New World more extreme than in California, where an extraordinary variety of village-dwelling peoples spoke seventy-eight mutually unintelligible languages. This comprehensive illustrated handbook, a major synthesis of more than 150 years of documentation and study, reviews what we now know about California’s indigenous languages. Victor Golla outlines the basic structural features of more than two dozen language types, and cites all the major sources, both published and unpublished, for the documentation of these languages—from the earliest vocabularies collected by explorers and missionaries, to the data amassed during the twentieth-century by Alfred Kroeber and his colleagues, and to the extraordinary work of John P. Harrington and C. Hart Merriam. Golla also devotes chapters to the role of language in reconstructing prehistory, and to the intertwining of the language and culture in pre-contact California societies, making this work, the first of its kind, an essential reference on California’s remarkable Indian languages.  [UCP]]

 

Hansson, Gunnar Ólafur. 2010. Consonant harmony: Long-distance interactions in phonology (University of California Publications in Linguistics 145). Berkeley: University of California Press.

[This extensive survey of consonant harmony in the world’s languages reveals surprising diversity in the featural dimensions involved, and uncovers new empirical generalizations and tendencies. Striking parallels with phonological speech errors suggest a connection to the psycholinguistic domain of speech planning. An Optimality Theory analysis of consonant harmony as long-distance featural agreement, rather than feature spreading, is developed in detail.  [UCP]]

 

Hintz, Daniel J. 2011. Crossing aspectual frontiers: Emergence, evolution, and interwoven semantic domains in South Conchucos Quechua discourse. (University of California Publications in Linguistics 146). Berkeley: University of California Press.

[This book presents a comprehensive account of the grammatical expression of aspect and related semantic domains in South Conchucos Quechua, a language of central Peru. Based on naturally-occurring speech, the functional-typological approach applied here integrates the description of the synchronic system in South Conchucos with an investigation of cognitive and communicative forces that have shaped aspect and related categories across the language family.  [UCP]]

 

Idström, Anna & Elisabeth Piirainen, with Tiber F.M. Falzett. 2012. Endangered metaphors. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

 

Jany, Carmen. 2009. Chimariko grammar: Areal and typological perspective (University of California Publications in Linguistics 143). Berkeley: University of California Press.

[The Chimariko language, now extinct, was spoken in Trinity County, California. This reference grammar, based on data collected by Harrington in the 1920's, represents the most comprehensive description of the language. Written from a functional-typological perspective this work also examines language contact in Northern California showing that grammatical traits are often shared among genetically unrelated languages in geographically contiguous areas.  [UCP]]

 

Keenan, Edward L. & Denis Paperno (eds.). 2012. Handbook of quantifiers in natural language. Dordrecht: Springer.

[Covering a strikingly diverse range of languages from 12 linguistic families, this handbook is based on responses to a questionnaire constructed by the editors. Focusing on the formation, distribution and semantic interpretation of quantificational expressions, the book explores 17 languages including German, Italian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Malagasy, Hebrew, Pima, Basque, and more. The language data sets enable detailed crosslinguistic comparison of numerous features. These include semantic classes of quantifiers (generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, partitive), syntactically complex quantifiers (intensive modification, Boolean compounding, exception phrases) and several others such as quantifier scope ambiguities, quantifier float, and binary quantifiers. Its theory-independent content extends earlier work by Matthewson (2008) and Bach et al. (1995), making this handbook suitable for linguists, semanticians, philosophers of language and logicians alike. [Springer]]

 

Kopecka, Anetta & Bhuvana Narasimhan (eds.). 2012. Events of putting and taking: A cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

 

Ledgeway, Adam. 2012. From Latin to Romance: Morphosyntactic typology and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Malchukov, Andrej L. & Lindsay J. Whaley (eds.). 2012. Recent advances in Tungusic linguistics (Turcologica 89). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

 

Merchant, Jason & Andrew Simpson (eds.). 2012. Sluicing: Cross-linguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Nichols, Johanna. 2011. Ingush grammar (University of California Publications in Linguistics 143). Berkeley: University of California Press.

[Comprehensive reference grammar of Ingush, a language of the Nakh branch of the Nakh-Daghestanian or East Caucasian language family of the central Caucasus (southern Russia). Ingush is notable for its complex phonology, prosody including minimal tone system, complex morphology of both nouns and verbs, clause chaining, long-distance reflexivization, and extreme degree of syntactic ergativity.  [UCP]]

 

 

Pereltsvaig, Asya. 2012. Languages of the world: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[What do all human languages have in common and in what ways are they different? How can language be used to trace different peoples and their past? Are certain languages similar because of common descent or language contact? Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, this textbook introduces readers to the rich diversity of human languages, familiarizing students with the variety and typology of languages around the world. Linguistic terms and concepts are explained, in the text and in the glossary, and illustrated with simple, accessible examples. Eighteen language maps and numerous language family charts enable students to place a language geographically or genealogically. A supporting website includes additional language maps and sound recordings that can be used to illustrate the peculiarities of the sound systems of various languages. 'Test yourself' questions throughout the book make it easier for students to analyze data from unfamiliar languages.

1. Introduction; 2. Indo-European languages; 3. Non-Indo-European languages of Europe and India; 4. Languages of the Caucasus; 5. Languages of North Africa, Middle East, and Central Asia; 6. Languages of sub-Saharan Africa; 7. Languages of eastern Asia; 8. Languages of the South Sea islands; 9. Aboriginal languages of Australia and Papua New Guinea; 10. Native languages of the Americas; 11. Macro families; 12. Pidgins, Creoles and other mixed languages. [CUP]

 

Sakel, Jeanette & Daniel L. Everett. 2012. Linguistic fieldwork: A student guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Song, Jae Jung. 2012. Word order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[Word order is one of the major properties on which languages are compared and its study is fundamental to linguistics. This comprehensive survey provides an up-to-date, critical overview of this widely debated topic, exploring and evaluating word order research carried out in four major theoretical frameworks – linguistic typology, generative grammar, optimality theory and processing-based theories. It is the first book to bring these theoretical approaches together in one place and is therefore a one-stop resource covering the current developments in word order research. It explains word order patterns in different languages and at different structural levels and critically evaluates (and where possible, compares) the theoretical assumptions and word order principles used in the different approaches. Also highlighted are issues and problems that require further investigation or remain unresolved. This book will be invaluable to those investigating word order, and researchers and students in syntax, linguistic theory and typology.  Contents:  1. Word order: setting the scene; 2. The linguistic-typological approach: empirical validity and explanation; 3. Entr'acte: historical and conceptual background of generative grammar; 4. The generative approach: stipulation or deduction; 5. The optimality-theoretic approach: violable constraints and constraint ranking; 6. The performance-based approach: efficiency in processing (and production);   7. Envoi: whither word order research? [CUP]]

 

Štekauer, Pavol, Salvador Valera, & Lívia Kőrtvélyessy. 2012. Word-formation in the world's languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Subbarao, K. V. 2011. South Asian languages: A syntactic typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Suihkonen, Pirkko, Bernard Comrie, & Valery Solovyev (eds.). 2012. Argument structure and grammatical relations: A crosslinguistic typology. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

 

Thieberger, Nicholas (ed.). 2011. The Oxford handbook of linguistic fieldwork. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Walker, Rachel. 2011. Vowel patterns in language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 



Frans Plank
Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Konstanz
78457 Konstanz
Germany

Tel  +49 (0)7531 88 2656
Fax +49 (0)7531 88 4190
eMail frans.plank at uni-konstanz.de
http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/plank/






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