A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia
A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia
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.
- Full reference grammar of a relatively undescribed and currently endangered language
- An account of the multilingualism resulting from strict traditions of exogamy and its effect on the structure of a language
- A description of varied unusual linguistic features in typological perspective (classifiers, evidentiality, serial verbs and many others)
Reviews & endorsements
"[...]a masterly piece of work[...]useful to the ordinary working linguist[...]It can be used as a model for writing a detailed technical grammar of an unusual language. It is an excellent model for anyone who must write a grammar of a severely endangered language, especially when the grammar is likely to be THE scholarly repository for all human time of that language's structure."
-Terry Malone, SIL
Product details
October 2013Adobe eBook Reader
9781107266629
0 pages
0kg
1 map 58 tables
This ISBN is for an eBook version which is distributed on our behalf by a third party.
Table of Contents
- List of tables, schemes and diagrams
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Organisation and cross-referencing
- List of abbreviations
- Map
- 1. The language and its speakers
- 2. Phonology
- 3. Word classes
- 4. Nominal morphology and noun structure
- 5. Noun classes and classifiers
- 6. Possession
- 7. Case marking and grammatical relations
- 8. Number
- 9. Further nominal categories
- 10. Derivation and compounding
- 11. Closed word classes
- 12. Verb classes and predicate structure
- 13. Valency changing and argument rearranging mechanisms
- 14. Tense and evidentiality
- 15. Aspect, Aktionsart and degree
- 16. Mood and modality
- 17. Negation
- 18. Serial verb constructions and verb compounding
- 19. Complex predicates
- 20. Participles and nominalisations
- 21. Clause types and other syntactic issues
- 22. Subordinate clauses and clause linking
- 23. Relative clauses
- 24. Complement clauses
- 25. Discourse organisation
- 26. Issues in etymology and semantics
- Appendix
- Texts
- Vocabulary
- References
- Index.
