Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: typology, studies, linguistic, theory, oxford, devices, noun, categorization, classifiers
Number of Pages: 566
Published: 2003-06-05
List price: $80.00
ISBN-10: 019926466X
ISBN-13: 9780199264667

Almost all languages have some grammatical means for categorizing nouns. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in the mechanisms of human cognition.

Author: Alexandra Aikhenvald
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: linguistics, oxford, amazonia, contact, language
Number of Pages: 320
Published: 2003-03-27
List price: $199.00
ISBN-10: 019925785X
ISBN-13: 9780199257850

This book investigates the contact between Arawak and Tucanoan languages spoken in the Vaupes river basin in northwest Amazonia, which spans Colombia and Brazil. In this region language is seen as a badge of identity: language mixing is resisted for ideological reasons. The book considers which parts of the language categories are likely to be borrowed. This study also examines changes brought about by recent contact with European languages and culture, and the linguistic effects of language obsolescence.

Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: guinea, oxford, linguistics, new, papua, language, east, sepik, manambu
Number of Pages: 800
Published: 2009-01-15
List price: $180.00
ISBN-10: 0199539812
ISBN-13: 9780199539819

This book presents the first comprehensive description of the Manambu language of Papua New Guinea. Manambu belongs to the Ndu language family, and is spoken by about 2,500 people in five villages: Avatip, Yawabak, Malu, Apa:n, and Yambon (Yuanab) in East Sepik Province, Ambunti district. About 200-400 speakers live in the cities of Port Moresby, Wewak, Lae, and Madang; and a few live in Kokopo and Mount Hagen. The book is based entirely on the author’s fieldwork.After an introductory account of the language and its speakers, Professor Aikhenvald devotes chapters to phonology, grammatica

Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: evidentiality
Number of Pages: 480
Published: 2006-07-27
List price: $60.00
ISBN-10: 0199204330
ISBN-13: 9780199204335

In a number of languages, scattered across the world, every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based--whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from somebody else. Of interest to any grammarian, the book discusses evidentiality, and the cognitive and sociolinguistic consequences of evidentiality in a language.

Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: typology, studies, linguistic, theory, oxford, devices, noun, categorization, classifiers
Number of Pages: 480
Published: 2000-06-08
List price: $325.00
ISBN-10: 019823886X
ISBN-13: 9780198238867

Almost all languages have some grammatical means for categorizing nouns. This book provides a comprehensive and original analysis of noun categorization devices all over the world. It will interest typologists, those working in the fields of morphosyntactic variation and lexical semantics, as well as anthropologists and all other scholars interested in the mechanisms of human cognition.

Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Keywords: evidentiality
Number of Pages: 480
Published: 2005-01-13
List price: $199.00
ISBN-10: 0199263884
ISBN-13: 9780199263882

In some languages every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based: for example, whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from someone else. This grammatical reference to information source is called ’evidentiality’, and is one of the least described grammatical categories. Evidentiality systems differ in how complex they are: some distinguish just two terms (eyewitness and noneyewitness, or reported and everything else), while others have six or even more terms. Evidentiality is a category

Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Keywords: grammatical, descriptions, cambridge, amazonia, tariana, northwest, grammar
Number of Pages: 730
Published: 2003-09-29
List price: $200.00
ISBN-10: 0521826640
ISBN-13: 9780521826648

The speakers of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from the northwest Amazonian jungle, traditionally marry someone speaking a different language; therefore, most are fluent in five or six languages. This comprehensive grammar reveals how Tariana combines its own features with those borrowed from neighboring languages because of the rampant multilingualism. The language has many unusual properties, making this grammar a valuable sourcebook for linguists and others interested in natural languages.