The Amazon Basin is the least known and the most complex linguistic region in the world today. It is the home of some 300 languages many of which (often incompletely documented and mostly endangered) show properties that constitute exceptions to received ideas about linguistic universals. This book is the first in English to provide an accessible overview of this rich and exciting linguistic area. It will provide a basis for further research on Amazonian languages as well as a point of entry to important data for theoretical linguists.
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Editorial Reviews
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..."a useful, comprehensive linguistic anthology for the Amazonian region" Notes on Linguistics
Book Description
The Amazon Basin is the least known and most complex linguistic region in the world today. It is the home of some 300 languages many of which (often incompletely documented and mostly endangered) show properties that constitute exceptions to received ideas about linguistic universals. This book is the first in English to provide an accessible overview of this rich and exciting linguistic area. It will provide a basis for further research on Amazonian languages as well as a point of entry to important data for theoretical linguists.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great for the initiated,
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This review is from: The Amazonian Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Hardcover)
The book is great if you already have a sound notion of linguistics. Even then, the languages described are so bizarre that some of the grammatical terms and phenomena will be hard to grasp from such a technical, dry work. But it's a great book anyway. Just to see a cohesive explanation on such little known languages and ever their reconstructed proto-language is quite a trip.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Useful reference, but less than I had hoped for,
This review is from: The Amazonian Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Hardcover)
The World Atlas of Language Structures shows Amazonia as an area of great linguistic interest with many very unusual features and arguably the most unusual individual languages anywhere amongst its remote (and dying) tribes. It was only natural that I should look closely for a guide to the many languages of Amazonia in an effort to understand them and explain the origin of some of their unsual characteristics.
Whilst "The Amazonian Languages" does not fail in any of its most basic tasks such as overviewing the languages of Amazonia and explaining the typical characteristics of most languages in the area, I expected more from this book. Although one does learn all the essential basics of the languages of this region, as well as what leads linguists to see Amazonia (including the Orinoco basin and eastern South America as well) as a linguistic area, there is rather too little detail about grammar beyond the basics. The unusual characteristics whose analysis I expected to find in the book were barely discussed and this is what makes the book disappointing. On the positive side, there is quite a good discussion of the cultural role of languages and their relationship to the peoples of Amazonia. This adds to one's sense of loss that almost all of these languages are critically endangered. I expected so much from this book that even though it offers a solid level of basics about the languages of the Amazon Basin and surrounding regions that those who can afford it should buy it, I am still a little disappointed.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Inside This Book
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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one prefix position, palatal velar glottal voiceless, clausal constituent order, small language families, possession suffix, stative intransitive verbs, areal diffusion, das línguas indígenas, verb compounding, areal pressure, mid past, kinship nouns, verbal classifiers, verb serialization, possessive classifiers, possessed nouns, suffix positions, voiceless affricate, areal influence, oral vowels, ergative marking, pronominal prefix, locative postpositions, ergative languages, consonantal system Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
North Arawak, Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, East Tucano, South American, University of Texas, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Série Lingüística, Upper Rio Negro, Mato Grosso, Mouton de Gruyter, Journal de la Société des Américanistes, Lingua Geral, Handbook of Amazonian, South Arawak, Serie Lingüística Peruana, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Anthropological Linguistics, Baniwa of Içana, University of California, New York, Minas Gerais, The Hague, University of Oklahoma, David Payne New!
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
one prefix position, palatal velar glottal voiceless, clausal constituent order, small language families, possession suffix, stative intransitive verbs, areal diffusion, das línguas indígenas, verb compounding, areal pressure, mid past, kinship nouns, verbal classifiers, verb serialization, possessive classifiers, possessed nouns, suffix positions, voiceless affricate, areal influence, oral vowels, ergative marking, pronominal prefix, locative postpositions, ergative languages, consonantal system Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
North Arawak, Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, East Tucano, South American, University of Texas, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Série Lingüística, Upper Rio Negro, Mato Grosso, Mouton de Gruyter, Journal de la Société des Américanistes, Lingua Geral, Handbook of Amazonian, South Arawak, Serie Lingüística Peruana, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Anthropological Linguistics, Baniwa of Içana, University of California, New York, Minas Gerais, The Hague, University of Oklahoma, David Payne New!
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 6
books:
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31
books
cite this book:
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- The Languages of Australia (Cambridge Language Surveys) by R. M. W. Dixon in Front Matter, and Back Cover
- The Languages of the Soviet Union (Cambridge Language Surveys) by Bernard Comrie in Back Cover
- The Papuan Languages of New Guinea (Cambridge Language Surveys) by William A. Foley in Back Cover
- Handbook of Amazonian Languages by Desmond C. Derbyshire on page 3
- The Mesoamerican Indian Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys) by Jorge A. Suarez in Back Cover
See all 6 books this book cites
- Comparative Arawakan Histories: Rethinking Language Family and Culture Area in Amazonia by Jonathan D. Hill on 6 pages
- Auxiliary Verb Constructions (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory) by Gregory D. S. Anderson on 6 pages
- A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (Cambridge Grammatical Descriptions) by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald on 4 pages
- Pronouns (Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory) by D. N. S. Bhat on 4 pages
- Handbook of Amazonian Languages by Desmond C. Derbyshire on 4 pages
See all 31 books citing this book
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