Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa)

Revised Edition

The Sitimaxa Language Committee
Compiled & edited by Julian Granberry

As a result of inroads from French and English speakers, Sitimaxa, the language of the Chitimacha people of southern Louisiana over the past 7,000 years, lost its last fluent speaker in 1940. Since that time the tribal Cultural Department has gathered all the extant language material, both audio-recordings and documentary, and has begun to revive language use through its school system and language training programs.

A new generation of Sitimaxa speakers is now emerging, and the present grammar reflects the usage both of these speakers and of the last generation of fluent users of the language. The present text covers the following topics: Sounds and Spelling; Words, Sound Changes & Parts of Speech; Sitimaxa Verbs; Sitimaxa Nouns; Sitimaxa Particles; Making New Words in Sitimaxa; Sentences in Sitimaxa; and a general summary of the grammar patterns of the language. Sample sentences are included.

ISBN 9783895863523. Languages of the World/Materials 438. 115pp. 2006.

Standard Lithuanian

Ian Press
University of St. Andrews

Lithuanian is an Indo-European language and belongs with Latvian to the Baltic branch of those languages. It is a very young standardized language, dating from the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries and made the official language of Lithuania in 1918. Its youth largely accounts for the tendency to support its norms as established. The focus here is on a concise exposition of a number of aspects of the standard language. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but points up important research areas, aims to provide practical help in mastering above all questions of morphology and accent, and complements Mathiassen 1996 and Ambrazas 1997. After a presentation of linguistic and sociolinguistic background information, spelling and phonology are examined, after which the focus is on morphology and syntax, with the role of accent fully borne in mind. A concise but detailed exploration of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, and verbs is made, in the case of the last in particular characterizing the various moods, aspect and aktionsart, and verbal classification. Adverbs, prepositions, con-junctions, interjections and onomatopoeic words are considered, and word order and particles are examined. A short, up-to-date bibliography is appended.

ISBN 9783895868320. Languages of the World/Materials 439. 65pp. 2005.

Standard Breton

Ian Press
University of St. Andrews

Breton is an indigenous regional language of France which has over the course of the last two centuries come under immense pressure. At the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries it was the majority language of Lower Brittany, though it lacked prestige and a public presence. It was at risk, and had been acknowledged to be at risk since at least the early eighteenth century. Nonetheless, in the early nineteenth century it was codified and a standard, although a shaky one, emerged. Some commentators consider that it is too late, but in recent years, with the plight of lesser-used languages coming under the spotlight and the acquisition by Breton culture of great popularity, the situation of the language has stabilized or even improved. Breton has a presence in education, the Ofis ar Brezhoneg is having considerable impact, and the language is benefiting from the ‘post-standard’ period, users of Breton feeling more at ease in the hitherto negatively perceived variation in the language. A flexible, community standard is emerging. The whole of the grammar is reviewed and explored; everything has been checked by eminent native speakers. Variation remains, and not every native speaker will agree with everything, but linguistic debate is a sign of the health of the language.

ISBN 9783895868344. Languages of the World/Materials 440. 85pp. 2005.

Marathi

Kashi Wali
Syracuse University

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken in the Maharashtra state of India by nearly ninty six million people. It is one of the eighteen official languages of India. It shares its northern boundary with Gujarati and Madhya Pradesh Hindi. In the south it borders on two major Dravidian languages -- Kannada and Telugu. The Dravidian vicinity has considerably affected Marathi in several ways specially its causative and anaphoric system.

This grammar describes basic information on the phonology, alphasyllabic writing system, morphology, and syntax of the standard Marathi. The introduction notes the historic information on the origin, and the past and present grammatical works. The phonology includes the information on the vocalic, consonantal and suprasegmental system as well as various morpho-phonological processes. Morphology highlights the significant nominal and verbal features. The chapter on syntax describes in detail the special characteristics such as word order, special features of ergativity, multiple headed correlatives, and distribution of two reflexives, swataah and aapaN which are special to Marathi in IA family. The chapter on text has used free and interlinear translation. The book contains an extensive bibliography including past and present grammars, recent dissertations and scholarly articles in generative linguistic theory.

ISBN 9783895863141. Languages of the World/Materials 441. 82pp. 2005.

Tajik

Shinji Ido
University of Sydney

Tajik is a South-West Iranian language that is genetically closely related to such major languages as Persian and Dari. Most Tajik speakers are in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; within Uzbekistan, Samarqand and Bukhara are particularly densely populated by Tajik speakers. In the beginning of the twentieth century, Tajik was considered by a number of writers and researchers to be a variety of Persian. The language that this book describes is the modern Tajik language which is referred to in the Soviet linguistic literature typically as zaboni khozirai tojik. The morphological segmentability of Tajik words is markedly high compared to words in the Indo-Iranian predecessors of Tajik, which makes Tajik morphologically more agglutinative than inflectional. Outstanding features of Tajik include the modal opposition between the indicative mood and the mood of indirect evidence, i.e. the inferential mood, that pervades the verbal system, and the utilization of both post-nominal and pre-nominal relative clauses.

ISBN 9783895863165. Languages of the World/Materials 442. 110pp. 2005.