Customer Reviews

The World Atlas of Language Structures

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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.