The World Atlas of Language Structures [Hardcover]

Martin Haspelmath (Editor), Matthew S. Dryer (Editor), David Gil (Editor), Bernard Comrie (Editor), Hans-Jï¿1/2rg Bibiko (Contributor), Hagen Jung (Contributor), Claudia Schmidt (Contributor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0199255911 | ISBN-13: 978-0199255917 | Publication Date: October 6, 2005

The World Atlas of Language Structures is a book and CD combination displaying the structural properties of the world's languages. 142 world maps and numerous regional maps - all in colour - display the geographical distribution of features of pronunciation and grammar, such as number of vowels, tone systems, gender, plurals, tense, word order, and body part terminology. Each world map shows an average of 400 languages and is accompanied by a fully referenced description of the structural feature in question.

The CD provides an interactive electronic version of the database which allows the reader to zoom in on or customize the maps, to display bibliographical sources, and to establish correlations between features. The book and the CD together provide an indispensable source of information for linguists and others seeking to understand human languages.

The Atlas will be especially valuable for linguistic typologists, grammatical theorists, historical and comparative linguists, and for those studying a region such as Africa, Southeast Asia, North America, Australia, and Europe. It will also interest anthropologists and geographers. More than fifty authors from many different countries have collaborated to produce a work that sets new standards in comparative linguistics. No institution involved in language research can afford to be without it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This remarkably detailed book is written by linguists for linguists.... Sure to become the definitive atlas on the subject. Recommended."--Library Journal

"This impressive reference contains 142 full-color maps reproduced onto two-page plates as the centerpieceof as many chaters devoted to an in-depth discussion of each map's content by a specialist in the field.... Impressive in size as well as scope."--Reference & Research Book News

About the Author

Martin Haspelmath is Senior Scientist at the Department of Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and an Honorary Professor at the University of Leipzig. After studies in Vienna, Cologne, Buffalo, and Moscow, he received his Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin in 1993. Before moving to Leipzig in 1998, he held teaching positions in Berlin, Bamberg, and Pavia, and he has taught at summer schools in Albuquerque, Mainz, D�sseldorf, Cagliari and at MIT. His research interests are in comparative, diachronic, and theoretical morphology and syntax. He is the author of A Grammar of Lezgian (1993), Indefinite Pronouns (1997), and Understanding Morphology (2002) and co-editor of Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook (2 vols, 2001).
Matthew S. Dryer received his Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Michigan. After ten years at the University of Alberta, he came to the University at Buffalo in 1989 where he is Professor of Linguistics. He has held visiting positions at UCLA, the University of Oregon, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. His primary research interest is in typology and syntax. Since 1983 he has been working on a project establishing a large cross-linguistic database on word order and related typological characteristics. His other research interests include discourse, pragmatics, American Indian languages (particularly Kutenai), and Papuan languages. Since 2001 he has been engaged in joint field research with Lea Brown on two languages of Papua New Guinea, Walman (in the Torricelli family) and Poko-Rawo (in the Sko family).
David Gil has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology since 1998. He graduated from UCLA in 1984 and held positions at the University of Washington, the University of Tel Aviv, the University of Haifa, the National University of Singapore, and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur). His interests are in syntactic, semantic, and phonological typology, as well as Malay/Indonesian and other Southeast Asian languages. He is the head of the Jakarta Field Station of the Max Planck Institute, and has more recently also worked on language acquisition and the relation between language structure and thought.
Bernard Comrie is Director of the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, and Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara. His main interests are language universals and typology, historical linguistics (including in particular the use of linguistic evidence to reconstruct aspects of prehistory), linguistic fieldwork, and languages of the Caucasus. Publications include Aspect (1976), Language Universals and Linguistic Typology (1981, 2nd edn 1989), The Languages of the Soviet Union (1981), Tense (1985), The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century (with Gerald Stone and Maria Polinsky, 1996). He is also editor of The World's Major Languages (1987), co-editor (with Greville Corbett) of The Slavonic Languages (1993), and managing editor of the journal Studies in Language.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 712 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199255911
• ISBN-13: 978-0199255917
• Product Dimensions: 14.6 x 10.6 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #340,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-done, easy-to-read, well-indexed: this is a vital guide for the linguist, October 5, 2007

By 

mianfei - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World Atlas of Language Structures (Hardcover)

Having had a fascination with languages (to the extent of trying to invent my own) since childhood, textbook on understanding how languages work and how languages no longer spoken worked have always been a great fascination for me.

Although I had learned quite a bit about a number of the topics covered in this book, reading it on Google Books and more recently from a library has made me realise that this atlas really is almost all the reader needs ot really understand the basic of the structure of languages present and past throughout the world. Each map (of which there are around one hundred and fifty) shows clearly the differences between the various languages of the world on questions from phonology to word order to marking loci to negation to some aspects of complex sentences. Vitally, every chapter has examples from languages that are spoken by very few people to illustrate the patterns described, so that even the most casual student is able to understand exactly what is going on in every language's construction of sentences both basic and complex.

The book has the unusual ability to illustrate that what are often seen as strange structures in many foreign languages (like the description of Japanese grammar in an old Berlitz phrasebook of mine) are actually both very logical and cross-linguistically very normal. One also learns that features of many widely-spoken languages (eg. certain aspects of Chinese word order or the rounded front vowels of many European languages) are extremely unusual. (I imagine my German and Chinese teachers at school would be surprised to have this revealed to them!)

There is also a large table at the back of the book to identify every language that a reader might be curious about (eg. for unusual properties or what are termed "areal features" by linguists). there are also many article cited that should be a valauable resource, plus a CD that I have not been given by the library from which I borrowed the book but would truly love ot get my hands on even if only for a day or two.

Although "The World Atlas of Language Structures" is too expensive for the casual reader, it is really worth trying to read it even if you must use a library. The amount you will learn about the world's languages is just too great to ignore.