17.3722, Books: Language Description/Sociolinguistics: Ameka, Dench, Evans (Eds)

Sat Dec 16 15:16:10 UTC 2006

LINGUIST List: Vol-17-3722. Sat Dec 16 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.3722, Books: Language Description/Sociolinguistics: Ameka, Dench, Evans (Eds)

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1)
Date: 15-Dec-2006
From: Julia Ulrich < julia.ulrich at degruyter.com >
Subject: Catching Language: Ameka, Dench, Evans (Eds) 

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 10:14:49
From: Julia Ulrich < julia.ulrich at degruyter.com >
Subject: Catching Language: Ameka, Dench, Evans (Eds) 

Title: Catching Language 
Subtitle: The Standing Challenge of Grammar Writing 
Series Title: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 167  

Publication Year: 2006 
Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
	   http://www.mouton-publishers.com

Book URL: http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-9783110186031-1&l=E 

Editor: Felix K. Ameka
Editor: Alan Dench
Editor: Nicholas Evans

Hardback: ISBN: 3110186039 Pages: 664 Price: Europe EURO 98.00
Hardback: ISBN: 3110186039 Pages: 664 Price: U.S. $ 132.30

Abstract:

Descriptive grammars are our main vehicle for documenting and analysing the
linguistic structure of the world's 6,000 languages. They bring together,
in one place, a coherent treatment of how the whole language works, and
therefore form the primary source of information on a given language,
consulted by a wide range of users: areal specialists, typologists,
theoreticians of any part of language (syntax, morphology, phonology,
historical linguistics etc.), and members of the speech communities
concerned. The writing of a descriptive grammar is a major intellectual
challenge, that calls on the grammarian to balance a respect for the
language's distinctive genius with an awareness of how other languages
work, to combine rigour with readability, to depict structural regularities
while respecting a corpus of real material, and to represent something of
the native speaker's competence while recognising the variation inherent in
any speech community.

Despite a recent surge of awareness of the need to document little-known
languages, there is no book that focusses on the manifold issues that face
the author of a descriptive grammar. This volume brings together
contributors who approach the problem from a range of angles. Most have
written descriptive grammars themselves, but others represent different
types of readers. Among the topics they address are: overall issues of
grammar design, the complementary roles of outsider and native speaker
grammarians, the balance between grammar and lexicon, cross-linguistic
comparability, the role of explanation in grammatical description, the
interplay of theory and a range of fieldwork methods in language
description, the challenges of describing languages in their cultural and
historical context, and the tensions between linguistic particularity,
established practice of particular schools of linguistic description and
the need for a universally commensurable analytic framework. 

This book will renew the field of grammaticography, addressing a multiple
readership of descriptive linguists, typologists, and formal linguists, by
bringing together a range of distinguished practitioners from around the
world to address these questions. 

ISBN 3-11-018603-9
ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018603-1 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Description
                     Sociolinguistics

Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=23004

MAJOR SUPPORTERS

	Blackwell Publishing          
		http://www.blackwellpublishing.com	

	Cambridge University Press          
		http://us.cambridge.org	

	Cascadilla Press          
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	Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd          
		http://www.continuumbooks.com	

	Edinburgh University Press          
		http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/	

	Equinox Publishing Ltd.          
		http://www.equinoxpub.com/	

	European Language Resources Association - ELRA          
		http://www.elra.info.	

	Georgetown University Press          
		http://www.press.georgetown.edu	

	Hodder Arnold          
		http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk	

	John Benjamins          
		http://www.benjamins.com/	

	Lawrence Erlbaum Associates          
		http://www.erlbaum.com/	

	Lincom GmbH          
		http://www.lincom.eu	

	MIT Press          
		http://mitpress.mit.edu/	

	Mouton de Gruyter          
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	Multilingual Matters          
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	Oxford University Press          
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	Rodopi          
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	Routledge (Taylor and Francis)          
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	Springer          
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OTHER SUPPORTING PUBLISHERS	

	Anthropological Linguistics
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	Graduate Linguistic Students' Assoc.   Umass
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	International Pragmatics Assoc.
		http://www.ipra.be 

	Kingston Press Ltd
		http://www.kingstonpress.com/ 

	Linguistic Assoc. of Finland
		http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/ 

	MIT Working Papers in Linguistics
		http://web.mit.edu/mitwpl/ 

	Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke - LOT
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	Pacific Linguistics
		http://pacling.anu.edu.au/ 

	Peter Lang AG
		http://www.peterlang.com 

	SIL International
		http://www.ethnologue.com/bookstore.asp 

	St. Jerome Publishing Ltd.
		http://www.stjerome.co.uk 

	Utrecht institute of Linguistics
		http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/ 

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