Customer Reviews

Koasati Grammar (Studies in the Anthropology of North Ame)

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This is the finest grammar of Koasati on the market. Of course, it is also the only grammar available. The product of 20 years of fieldwork among Koasati speakers, this is a complete, in depth description of the language, which demonstrates many interesting features that distinguish it from other Muskogean languages, including archaic verb classes.
Note also that there is a companion dictionary available.

Often, native American languages are difficult to understand even for a person like me with considerable experience in the field of linguistics because of the polysynthetic character of their words, whereby information rendered in European languages by pronouns, conjunctions and sometimes even nouns, verbs or adverbs is rendered by affixes. The result is that too many textbooks on these languages make it very hard to see how sentences work in these languages, and even if structures we take for granted in European languages are not possible, typical sentences should be studied more than they are.

In this context, "Koasati Grammar" is a particularly important study that goes into exceptional detail of how the Muskogean languages work and how Koasati differs from other members of the family such as Choctaw, Alabama and Creek. The detail of the verbal morphology (which according to the The World Atlas of Language Structures is the most complicated in the world or nearly so) is very good. The differences between the various classes of Koasati verbs is particularly well-done, though there is not a watertight level of detail to allow the reader to understand the way in which verbal arguments are constructed. Nonetheless, the number of chapters on the Koasati verb is impressive in itself and shows the level of detail as being very good.

Other aspects of Koasati grammar are also covered in detail, with examples of every affix that occurs, from the subject and topic suffixes to the use of postpositions, modifiers, numerals, syntax and switch reference.

The fact that the World Atlas of Language Structures used Kimball's work extensively and attracted my interest very extensively shows beyond doubt that "Koasati Grammar" is a very worthwhile read for anyone interested in linguistics.

I find little to disagree with in Forrest Elliott's review of this notable contribution to Koasati scholarship.

But I must report that my toast was majorly burned by Kimball's reference (p. 631) to an article on ergativity by one "Rupert M.W. Dixon"... I mean, really!

Forrest, what do you make of this?