The Languages of Native North America (Cambridge Language Surveys) [Paperback]

Marianne Mithun (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 16, 2001 | ISBN-10: 052129875X | ISBN-13: 978-0521298759

This book is a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the native North American languages. These several hundred languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. The book includes an overview of their special characteristics, descriptions of special styles, a catalog of the languages that details their locations, genetic affiliations, number of speakers, and major structural features, and lists published material on them.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'This volume is a most welcome continuation of a most useful series. it is a great pleasure to review Marianne Mithun's The Languages of Native North America in the Cambridge Language Surveys, since one can only express admiration for the tremendous amount of labour behind this book. There are very few people in modern native North American linguistics, if any, who could do an equally beautiful job as Mithun.' Linguistic Typology

Book Description

This book is a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the North American Indian languages. These several hundred languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. The book includes an overview of their special characteristics, descriptions of special styles, and a catalogue of the languages detailing their locations, genetic affiliations, number of speakers, and major structural features, and listing published material on them.

Product Details

• Paperback: 796 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052129875X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521298759
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #893,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Native American

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Far and away the best book on Amerindian languages, November 27, 2004

By 

Matthew Menzenski (Ithaca, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Languages of Native North America (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Paperback)

As someone who creates languages for fun, I've read a lot of linguistics books, searching for ideas and inspiration. Recently, I became interested in polysynthesis, but could find no detailed information on it. Then I found this book. The first three hundred pages are full of unique linguistic features. Polysynthesis is covered in great detail, as is almost every rare grammatical structure. The sheer scope of this book is tremendous. Mithun claims to include every attested North American language, and I believe her. Also, the extensive references (almost 150 pages) make it easy to locate information on specific languages (like full grammars, phonologies, et cetera). Highly recommended to anyone interested in linguistics, and a must-read for any conlanger.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The astonishing diversity of human speech, May 2, 2003

By 

S. Gustafson "Holy Roman Emperor" (New Albany, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Languages of Native North America (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Paperback)

People who are interested in unusual languages, like myself, probably have some familiarity with Marc Okrand's Klingon, created to be the speech of an alien race. This artificial language throws in some less than common sounds, and creates a somewhat unusual syntax, and attempts to sell the result as the speech of an alien race.

A few minutes with this book will suggest to the reader who takes an interest in these things that Klingon is a profound failure. Here we have a record of people here on Earth who have created alternative linguistic structures that are even more unfamiliar to English speakers. This book will open your mind to the astonishing variety of ways human verbal communication can be categorised and organised. We have languages with no clear distinction between nouns and verbs, and languages that can give tense and conditionality to adjectives. We have languages that use different pronouns for a 'we' that includes the person being addressed, and a 'we' that excludes that person.

For a reader with interests in these matters, this will be a fascinating, if somewhat dry, read. Your joy at being introduced to this fascinating variety will be tempered, though, by the ever-present elegiac note in these pages. Literally hundreds of these tongues are still spoken only by a handful of aging people; hundreds more have gone silent.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reference, February 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Languages of Native North America (Cambridge Language Surveys) (Paperback)

Marianne Mithun is *the* expert on Native American languages. This book is an excellent resource for grad students, undergrads, professors, and anyone else interested in the languages of the Americas. Mithun describes in detail language phenomena and language families, and includes an extensive bibliography in case you can't find what you're looking for in this book.