Investigating Language Isolates

Typological and diachronic perspectives

Editors

Iker Salaberri | University of the Basque Country UPV | EHU

Dorota Krajewska | University of the Basque Country UPV | EHU

Ekaitz Santazilia | Public University of Navarre (UPNA)

Eneko Zuloaga | University of the Basque Country UPV | EHU

Hardbound – Forthcoming

ISBN 9789027218995 | EUR 140.00 | USD 182.00

e-Book – Ordering information

ISBN 9789027246295 | EUR 140.00 | USD 182.00

Language isolates provide unique insights into human history and linguistic diversity. Nevertheless, isolates have been studied less exhaustively than non-isolates. The eleven papers gathered in this volume provide new methodological tools in order to better understand isolates, including a detailed, in-depth, up-to-date discussion of what it means to be a language isolate and the criteria by which languages should be classified as isolate. The book also provides a series of techniques, some refined on the basis of former literature, and others new, in order to recover the histories of language isolates. In addition, the papers in this volume advance our knowledge about each of the individual languages studied here, which are, for the most part, endangered and under-documented. This book will appeal to a broad audience spanning typologists, historical linguists, descriptive linguists, and teachers of linguistics.

[Typological Studies in Language, 135] Expected February 2025. vii, 333 pp. + index

Publishing status: In production

© John Benjamins

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements | pp. vii–viii

Part I. Setting the stage

Introduction: State of the art of research on language isolates

Iker Salaberri, Dorota Krajewska, Ekaitz Santazilia and Eneko Zuloaga | pp. 2–19

Part II. Typological features of isolates vs. non-isolates

Is there a typological profile of isolates?

Marine Vuillermet, David Inman, Natalia Chousou-Polydouri, Kellen Parker van Dam, Shelece Easterday and Françoise Rose | pp. 22–47

The Amuric language family: Why so exotic?

Ekaterina Gruzdeva and Juha Janhunen | pp. 48–70

An Austronesian-type voice system in an Amazonian isolate? Comparing Movima and Tagalog

Katharina Haude | pp. 71–102

Part III. Recovering the histories of isolates

Etymologies in a language isolate: Methodological aspects and a proposal to evaluate their quality

Julen Manterola | pp. 104–141

The Small Bang: A pilot study investigating the origins of a language and population isolate through loan words

Abbie Hantgan | pp. 142–175

Combining disparate lines of evidence in the study of the history of language isolates, exemplified with Mochica from Northern Peru

Matthias Urban | pp. 176–207

The Múra doculects and Múra-Pirahã historical linguistics

Fernando Orphão de Carvalho | pp. 208–246

Part IV. Isolates and language contact

Baroque accretions and isolation: A case study of grammatical complexity in complex social situations in Solomon Islands

Angela Terrill | pp. 248–269

California isolates: Language contact and genetic classification

Carmen Dagostino | pp. 270–303

Part V. Isolates and language documentation and classification

One language or two? The arbitrariness of isolate classifications in New Guinea

Antoinette Schapper | pp. 306–333

Subjects

Linguistics

Theoretical linguistics

Historical linguistics

Linguistics of isolated languages

Main BIC Subject

CFF: Historical & comparative linguistics

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009010: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative

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