SubjectsLinguistics / Languages of South America

Pre-Historical Language Contact in Peruvian Amazonia: A dynamic approach to Shawi (Kawapanan)

Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia

South America was populated relatively recently, probably around 15,000 years ago. Yet, instead of finding a relatively small number of language families, we find some 118 genealogical units. So far, the historical processes that underlie the current picture are not yet fully understood. This book… read more

[Contact Language Library, 58] 2021. xvii, 211 pp.

Nominalization in Languages of the Americas

Edited by Roberto Zariquiey, Masayoshi Shibatani and David W. Fleck

Recent scholarship has confirmed earlier observations that nominalization plays a crucial role in the formation of complex constructions in the world’s languages. Grammatical nominalizations are one of the most salient and widespread features of languages of the Americas, yet they have not been… read more

[Typological Studies in Language, 124] 2019. vii, 662 pp.

Nonverbal Predication in Amazonian Languages

Edited by Simon E. Overall, Rosa Vallejos and Spike Gildea

This volume explores typological variation within nonverbal predication in Amazonian languages. Using abundant data, generally from original and extensive fieldwork on under-described languages, it presents a far more detailed picture of nonverbal predication constructions than previously published… read more

[Typological Studies in Language, 122] 2018. vi, 407 pp.

Conversational structures of Alto Perené (Arawak) of Peru

Elena Mihas

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the research community, the book is a focused exploration of discourse patterns of Alto Perené Arawak, with emphasis on conversational structures. The book’s methodological scaffold is based on proposals and insights from multiple research fields, such as… read more

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 181] 2017. xxi, 343 pp.

Language Contact and Change in the Americas: Studies in honor of Marianne Mithun

Edited by Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker, Diane M. Hintz and Carmen Dagostino

This unique collection of articles in honor of Marianne Mithun represents the very latest in research on language contact and language change in the Indigenous languages of the Americas. The book aims to provide new theoretical and empirical insights into how and why languages change, especially… read more

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 173] 2016. viii, 416 pp.

Translation and the Spanish Empire in the Americas

Roberto A. Valdeón

Two are the starting points of this book. On the one hand, the use of Doña Marina/La Malinche as a symbol of the violation of the Americas by the Spanish conquerors as well as a metaphor of her treason to the Mexican people. On the other, the role of the translations of Bartolomé de las Casas’s… read more

[Benjamins Translation Library, 113] 2014. xii, 272 pp.

Word Formation in South American Languages

Edited by Swintha Danielsen, Katja Hannss and Fernando Zúñiga

This volume focuses on word formation processes in smaller and so far underrepresented indigenous languages of South America. The data for the analyses have been mainly collected in the field by the authors. The several language families described here, among them Arawakan, Takanan, and Guaycuruan,… read more

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 163] 2014. v, 228 pp.

In Search of Universal Grammar: From Old Norse to Zoque

Edited by Terje Lohndal

This volume in honor of Jan Terje Faarlund covers the areas in which he has contributed to linguistic theorizing, ranging from in-depth studies of Norwegian and Scandinavian grammar both synchronically and diachronically, to work on the Indian language Chiapas Zoque. The book is organized… read more

[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 202] 2013. vi, 361 pp.

The Persistence of Language: Constructing and confronting the past and present in the voices of Jane H. Hill

Edited by Shannon T. Bischoff, Deborah Cole, Amy V. Fountain and Mizuki Miyashita

This edited collection presents two sets of interdisciplinary conversations connecting theoretical, methodological, and ideological issues in the study of language. In the first section, Approaches to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas, the authors connect historical,… read more

[Culture and Language Use, 8] 2013. xxx, 440 pp.

Relative Clauses in Languages of the Americas: A typological overview

Edited by Bernard Comrie and Zarina Estrada-Fernández

Patterns of relative clause formation tend to vary according to the typological properties of a language. Highly polysynthetic languages tend to have fully nominalized relative clauses and no relative pronouns, while other typologically diverse languages tend to have relative clauses which are… read more

[Typological Studies in Language, 102] 2012. xiii, 307 pp.

Subordination in Native South American Languages

Edited by Rik van Gijn, Katharina Haude and Pieter Muysken

In terms of its linguistic and cultural make-up, the continent of South America provides linguists and anthropologists with a complex puzzle of language diversity. The continent teems with small language families and isolates, and even languages spoken in adjacent areas can be typologically vastly… read more

[Typological Studies in Language, 97] 2011. viii, 315 pp.

Ergativity in Amazonia

Edited by Spike Gildea and Francesc Queixalós

This volume presents a typological/theoretical introduction plus eight papers about ergative alignment in 16 Amazonian languages. All are written by linguists with years of fieldwork and comparative experience in the region, all describe details of the synchronic systems, and several also provide… read more

[Typological Studies in Language, 89] 2010. v, 319 pp.

The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus: Minimalist inquiries in the Quechua periphery

Liliana Sánchez

This book presents an innovative analysis that relates informational structure, syntax and morphology in Quechua. It provides a minimalist account of the relationship between focus, topic, evidentiality and other left-peripheral features and sentence-internal constituents marked with suffixes that… read more

[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 169] 2010. xiii, 242 pp.

Deixis and Alignment: Inverse systems in indigenous languages of the Americas

Fernando Zúñiga

This book proposes a notion of inverse that differs from two widespread positions found in descriptive and typological studies (one of them restrictive and structure-oriented, the other broad and function-centered). This third stance put forward here takes both grammar and pragmatic functions into… read more

[Typological Studies in Language, 70] 2006. xii, 309 pp.

Quechua-Spanish Bilingualism: Interference and convergence in functional categories

Liliana Sánchez

This book addresses how cross-linguistic interference is represented in the bilingual mind. Examining novel oral production data from older bilingual children representing two Quechua varieties, this research concludes that interference in the feature specification of functional categories leads to… read more

[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 35] 2003. x, 189 pp.

Language and Dialect in the Maya Hieroglyphic Script

Gabrielle Vail and Martha J. Macri

The geographic and temporal range of the Maya Hieroglyphic script, found in over 2,000 texts spanning 1,300 years, suggests that the texts may record more that one language or dialect. This collection results from a symposium at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology,… read more

Special issue of Written Language & Literacy 3:1 (2000) 198 pp.

The Grammar of Possession: Inalienability, incorporation and possessor ascension in Guaraní

Maura Velázquez-Castillo

The Grammar of Possession: Inalienability, incorporation and possessor ascension in Guaraní, is an exhaustive study of linguistic structures in Paraguayan Guaraní which are directly or indirectly associated with the semantic domain of inalienability. Constructions analyzed in the book include… read more

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 33] 1996. xvi, 274 pp.

Arte de la Lengua General del Reyno de Chile: 1607. Reprinted. 1975 (Ed. Cabildo, Vaduz/Georgetown)

Andrés Febrés

The Jesuit Andrés Febrés compiled this manual for learning the Araucanian language during his first years as a missionary among the Indians of northern Chile. In addition to the grammatical instruction, the work includes a dialogue between two caciques, the Christian doctrine, a brief dictionary,… read more

[Not in series, 129] 1975. 682 pp

Gramatica y Arte nueva de la Lengua general de todo el Perö, llamada Lengua Qquichua, o Lengua del Inca: Ciudad de los Reyes del Perö, 1607. Reprinted. 1975 (Ed. Cabildo, Vaduz/Georgetown), + intro. Bernard Pottier

P. Diego-Conçalez Holguin

[Not in series, 6] 1975. Small 4to. iv, 144 pp.