This book offers a comprehensive view of the morphology, syntax, and semantics of applicative constructions in Salish, a language family of northwestern North America. The historical development and discourse function of applicatives are elucidated and placed in typological perspective.

This book offers a state of the art overview of current linguistic and archaeological research from the Caribbean and Meso America, through Amazonia and the Andes to Argentina, ranging from historical comparative through descriptive and socio-linguistics to new discoveries in archaeological research.

This book presents unique insights into laryngeal features, one of the most intriguing topics of contemporary phonetics and phonology. It investigates in detail properties such as tone, non-modal phonation, non-pulmonic production mechanisms (as in ejectives or implosives), stress, and prosody. What makes American indigenous languages special is that many of these properties co-exist in the phonologies of languages spoken on the continent. Taking diverse theoretical perspectives, the contributions span a range of American languages, illustrating how the phonetics and phonology of laryngeal...

One of the most complex topics in the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas, and indeed in the study of any language set, is the complex behaviour of multi-verb constructions. In many languages, several verbs can co-occur in a sentence, forming a single predicate. This book contains a first survey of such constructions in languages of North, Middle, and South America. Though it is not a systematic typological survey, the combined insights from the various chapters give a very rich perspective on this phenomenon, involving a host of typologically diverse constructions, including...

In Benasni - I Remember: Dene Sųline Oral Histories with Morphological Analysis, Josh Holden presents twelve autobiographical narratives about cultural change from Dene Sųline elders in an Aboriginal community in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. In ten interviews and two monologues, the speakers recount their 20th century: the rhythms of traditional life, the catastrophe of epidemics and language loss, the dizzying technological changes, their ambivalence over the past and their anxieties for the future. Accompanying the original Dene texts and free translation is an...

Panare, also known as E'napa Woromaipu, is a seriously endangered Cariban language spoken by about 3,500 people in Central Venezuela. A Typological Grammar of Panare by Thomas E. Payne and Doris L. Payne, is a full length linguistic grammar written from a modern functional and typological perspective. The many remarkable characteristics highlighted in the grammar include a 'split-inverse' person marking system, transitivity-sensitive aspect and person-marking verb morphology, object incorporation, relatively nonconfigurational NP structure, both verb-initial and object-initial...

Negation in Arawak Languages presents detailed descriptions of negation constructions in nine Arawak languages (Apurina, Garifuna, Kurripako, Lokono, Mojeno Trinitario, Nanti, Paresi, Tariana, and Wauja), as well as an overview of negation in this major language family. Functional-typological in orientation, each descriptive chapter in the volume is based on fieldwork by authors in the communities in which the languages are spoken. Chapters describe standard negation, prohibitives, existential negation, negative indefinites, and free negation, as well as language-specific negation...

The morphological process of reduplication occurs in languages throughout the world. Reduplication in indigenous languages of South America is the first volume to focus on reduplication in South America. The indigenous languages of South America remain under-documented and little accessible to theoretical linguistics. Most regions and language families of the continent are represented in articles based on recent fieldwork by the authors. Included are data concerning a diverse set of reduplication phenomena from the Andes, Amazonia, and other regions of the continent. A wide range of...

In A Grammar of Muylaq' Aymara, Matt Coler provides a detailed description of a highly-endangered variety of Aymara spoken in the remote Andean village of Muylaque (Muylaq'i), in Southern Peru. This heretofore undescribed variety has many unique characteristics that shed light on the impressive extent of variation in Aymara. Using natural language data gathered during several field trips to Muylaque, Coler offers a detailed analysis of the phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax of Aymara. Additionally, A Grammar of Muylaq' Aymara includes complete interlinear glosses for...

In this volume, Eladio Mateo Toledo provides a description and analysis of resultatives, end-states, monitoring constructions, ditransitives, causatives, and directional constructions. Although causatives and directionals are explored in Mayan languages, this is the first coherent account of a series complex predicates in a Mayan language.