The Rusyn Language

A Grammar of the Literary Standard of Slovakia
with Reference to Lemko and Subcarpathian Rusyn

Stefan M. Pugh
Wright State University

The Rusyn Language is the first grammar of Rusyn in English, and the first of the Rusyn of Slovakia (termed “Prešov” Rusyn) in any language. In many ways, the book is a traditional grammar: it treats the phonology and every morphological category of the language, as well as providing basic syntactic information and a selection of illustrative texts in Rusyn.

In addition to describing Prešov Rusyn, this grammar also supplies comparative data from Lemko and Subcarpathian Rusyn – variants spoken in Poland and Ukraine, respectively. This is done in order to identify the central linguistic core of the Rusyn linguistic continuum; this information will be of interest to Slavists as well as to language planners who are contemplating the formulation of a supra-regional Rusyn literary language. Prešov Rusyn – just like every other variant of the language – is a fascinating linguistic entity because it is characterized by a great deal of variation. It is of especially great interest to Slavists because it is a language that can be seen as a bridge between East and West Slavic: Rusyn is clearly East Slavic, but has been in contact with West Slavic for a very long time, with clear consequences for the present-day state of the language.

ISBN 9783895869402. Languages of the World/Materials 476. 238pp. 2009.

Crimean Tatar

Darya Kavitskaya
Yale University

Crimean Tatar is a Turkic language of the West Kipchak subgroup, spoken mainly in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and in Uzbekistan, as well as in small communities in Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey. Crimean Tatar consists of three major dialects: the Central dialect is currently used as the standard variety while the Northern and Southern dialects are endangered.

The vowel system of standard Crimean Tatar distinguishes eight vowel phonemes. Crimean Tatar has backness and rounding harmony, as is the case in many Turkic languages (most notably, Turkish). However, rounding harmony is quite different from other Turkic languages, being licensed only by the first two syllables of the word.

The inflectional morphology of Crimean Tatar is exclusively suffixing, and derivational morphology makes use of both suffixation and compounding. Syntactically, Crimean Tatar uses the usual Turkic patterns; however, the word order is not strictly SOV, possibly reflecting Russian influence. Complex sentences are formed through the coordination of clauses with or without conjunctions. Fully embedded clauses are formed with non-finite verb forms such as participles and converbs. This book contains the first full description of Crimean Tatar to appear in English or in any other language. It covers all major aspects of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the Central dialect of Crimean Tatar, and it also mentions the unique features of the Northern and Southern dialects where possible. Three texts in Central, Northern, and Southern Crimean Tatar with interlinear glosses and English translation are included.

ISBN 9783895866906. Languages of the World/Materials 477. 140pp. 2010.

Lengua de Maynas

ms. Egerton 2881 de la British Library

Transcripción y edición preparada por
Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
University of Amsterdam

Con un prólogo de Pieter C. Muysken

El objetivo del libro es ofrecer una edición diplomática del manuscrito Lengua de Maynas, ms. Egerton 2881 de la British Library (Londres, Reino Unido). El códice Lengua de Maynas contiene la descripción del Quechua hablado en Maynas en la provincia de Quito (Ecuador) en el siglo XIX, y consta de tres partes:

(i) "Arte de Lengua de Maynas": una gramática concisa de la lengua hablada por los habitantes indígenas de Maynas;
(ii) "Vocabulario del Castellano al Indico": un vocabulario español - quechua;
(iii) "Doctrina Christiana": una doctrina cristiana incompleta.

El autor del manuscrito es anónimo. En los folios 7 y 40 se encuentran las observaciones siguientes:

f. 7r : "Es del vso del V.P. Fr. Eusebio Arias"; f. 40r : "Pertenesco al P. Fr. Eusebio Arias".

El hecho de que la letra de las observaciones es igual a la del texto supone que Fray Eusebio Arias es el autor del manuscrito.

La edición además contiene, (i), una moderna descripción de la lengua descrita en el manuscrito (con referencias al quechua boliviano y ayacuchano, y a gramáticas quichuas previas), (ii), un análisis del léxico (+ referencias a predecesores), (iii), una comparación con doctrinas anteriores.

Índice

Prólogo
Abreviaturas, siglas y símbolos
1 Aspectos del manuscrito
2 Nuestra edición: criterios y modificaciones
3 "Arte de Lengua de Maynas"
3.1 Introducción
3.2 La lengua de Maynas y la familia lingüística quechua
3.3 El "Arte de Lengua de Maynas" y predecesores
3.4 Origen del texto del "Arte de Lengua de Maynas"
3.5 Reproducción de sonidos y valor de los símbolos
3.6 Acento tónico y estructura silábica
3.7 Descripción lingüística
3.7.1 Morfo-sintaxis nominal
3.7.1.1 Nombres
3.7.1.2 Adjetivos
3.7.1.3 Pronombres
3.7.1.4 Nombres interrogativos
3.7.1.5 Nombres derivados de verbos
3.7.1.6 Numerales
3.7.1.7 Nombres de consanguinidad
3.7.1.8 Construcciones nominales
3.7.1.8.1 Comparativo y superlativo
3.7.1.8.2 Construcciones posesivas
3.7.2 Morfo-sintaxis verbal
3.7.2.1 Modos, tiempos, y referencias personales
3.7.2.2 Transiciones
3.7.2.3 La voz pasiva
3.7.2.4 Marcadores de nominalización y subordinación
3.7.2.5 Verbos derivados de nombres
3.7.2.6 Sufijos derivativos
3.7.2.7 Sufijos ambivalentes
3.8 Negación
3.9 Adverbios
3.10 Interjecciones
3.11 Oraciones coordinadas y subordinadas
3.12 Transcripción del "Arte de Lengua de Maynas"
4. "Vocabulario del Castellano al Indico"
4.1 Introducción
4.2 Fuentes de inspiración
4.3 Transcripción del "Vocabulario del Castellano al Indico"
5. "Doctrina Christiana"
5.1 Introducción
5.2 Transcripción de la "Doctrina Christiana"
6 Referencias bibliográficas

ISBN 9783895864865. Languages of the World/Materials 478. 190pp. 2010.

Zazaki/Kirmanckî Kurdish

Gülşat Aygen
Northern Illinois University

This is a descriptive grammar of Zazaki ,also called Kirmancca or Kirmanckî. Zazaki is one of the four dialects of Kurdish. Its motherland is the upper Mesopotamian region, and it is spoken in Eastern Anatolia of Modern Turkey. Zaza diaspora lives mainly in Germany.

There are few reference grammars of any dialect of Kurdish published in English and none on Zazaki. Consequently, this book will be a unique resource as a reference grammar for the wider linguistics community. This book covers the basic phonetic, phonological, morphological and syntactic structure of Zazaki, and includes some sample texts. The first chapter focuses on the phonetic inventory of Zazaki Kurdish; the second chapter describes the morphological structure: parts of speech and the relevant inflectional morphology. The third chapter presents the Zazaki sentence structure, both simple and complex, including subordinate clauses. Chapter four contains some sample texts, and finally, chapter five lists most commonly used verbs in Zazaki. This grammar relies heavily on both the very few published material on Zazaki, particularly those of Vate Publications and data elicited from native speakers of Zazaki. It adheres to the conventions of the Roman-based alphabet, and to IPA forms where relevant.

ISBN 9783862880157. Languages of the World/Materials 479. 93pp. 2010.

A Grammar of Ajagbe

Eric A Morley
Center for Spoken Language Understanding, Oregon Health & Science University

Ajagbe is a Gbe language spoken by approximately 500,000 people in southwestern Benin and southeastern Togo. Little research has been done on Ajagbe.

This grammar begins with the phonemic inventory of the language and an overview of the phonology. It contains chapters on: different parts of speech, including nouns, pronouns, verbs and modifiers; morphological processes such as reduplication, derivational affixes, and compounding; and syntax, including tense, mood and aspect markers, clausal structures and a brief overview of serial verbs. Also included is a Swadesh word list.

The fieldwork for this grammar was conducted from 2007-9 when the author was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Klouekanme, Benin.

Contents:

1 Phonology (Segmental inventories, Phonotactics, Tones, Phonological Processes)

2 Nominal Structure (The Definite Determiner, The Plural Marker, The Indefinite Determiner, Bare NPs, Possession, Demonstrative determiners, Quantifiers)

3 Pronouns

4 Tense, Mood and Aspect

5 Functional Categories in Clause Structure

6 Clause Structures (Copular Structures, Wh-movement, Conditional Clauses, Concessive Clauses, Temporal Clauses, Causal Clauses)

7 Derivational Affixes

8 Reduplication

9 Compound Words

10 Verbs (The Verbal Lexicon, Argument Structures, Intransitive Verbs, Transitive Verbs, Argument Alterations, Middle Constructions, Unexpressed Objects, Internal Argument Alternations, The Causative / Inchoative Alternation, The Passive / Active Alternation, Modal Verbs)

11 Prepositions and Postpositions

12 Modifiers

13 Serial Verbs

Swadesh Word List

ISBN 9783862880225. Languages of the World/Materials 480. 128pp. 2010.

Balkan Romani: The dialect of Ajios Athanasios/Greece

Irene Sechidou
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

The Romani dialect of Ajios Athanasios is spoken by approximately 1.800 speakers in a suburb of the city of Serres in Northern Greece. The dialect belongs to the Balkan Romani dialect group and it is described for the first time. Two reasons make AA an interesting case study for Balkan Romani: Firstly, as AA lost contact with other Balkan dialects early on, it developed innovative features in isolation and retained a large number of archaisms. Secondly, AA is an appropriate dialect for studying language contact between Balkan Romani and Greek. Contact with Greek has been crucial to the linguistic history of Romani.

The aim of this study is to provide a detailed grammatical description of AA and to compare AA to other Balkan Romani dialects. The first chapter deals with descriptive phonology and certain issues of historical phonology. The second chapter deals with inflectional and derivational morphology of nominal and verbal categories. The third chapter, on syntax, investigates coordination, subordination and constituent order. The fourth chapter discusses morphological borrowing of AA - and Balkan Romani - from Greek. The fifth chapter concerns the replication of Balkan constructions in AA. The concluding chapter on dialect classification discusses the internal relations of Balkan Romani dialects. Archaisms, innovations, phonological phenomena such as palatalisations, and morphosyntactic phenomena such as cliticisation, are presented in tables and on maps.

ISBN 9783862880317. Languages of the World/Materials 481. 111pp. 2011.

A short grammar of Latgalian

Nicole Nau
Adam Mickiewicz University

Latgalian is a regional language of Latvia in Central Europe, regularly used by an estimated number of 150,000 speakers. Genetically it belongs to the Eastern Baltic branch of Indo-European. While its close relationship to Latvian is apparent in basic vocabulary and inflectional morphemes, there are also significant differences in the phonology, morphology and syntax of the two languages, due to divergent development during the 17th - 19th c., when Latgalia was politically and culturally separated from other Latvian territories. Furthermore, contact with Slavic languages (Polish, Belarusian, Russian) has played an important role in the history of Latgalian.

Typologically salient features of Latgalian include morphophonological harmony with an opposition of back vs. front vowels and soft (palatalized or alveolar) vs. hard consonants, a large inventory of non-finite verb forms, genitive vs. accusative marking of direct objects, dative marking of primary core arguments in a variety of constructions, the use of non-finite predicates in represented speech, and the existence of a distinct logophoric pronoun referring to the speaker of a reported discourse.

Nicole Nau is professor of Baltic languages and linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. She is also the author of LWM 217: Latvian.

ISBN 9783862880553. Languages of the World/Materials 482. 120pp. 2011.

Parsi Gujarati

Vanishing Dialect : Vanishing Culture

Bharati Modi

The book is an effort in searching the cause for the apocalyptic state of Parsi Gujarati, which is (soon it will be 'was') one of the most valuable dialects of Gujarati. The Parsi Gujarati voices will vanish in 21st century and Gujarati will be impaired and permanently deprived of this attractive dialect. Before even the Gujarati Society registers this loss, the dialect will be gone. The loss of such dialect means an 'irretrievable loss of diverse and interesting intellectual wealth, the priceless product of mental industry' (Hale : 1992).

While supporting the commonly accepted reasons for language attrition (such as the shift towards the more prestigious language and shrinking of the community) it is attempted to pinpoint at the specific mode of the dialect formation as one of the important reasons for the coming death. Parsi Gujarati resulted out of the language contact situation but very differently from creoles. Leaving Pahalavi and acquiring Gujarati must have happened gradually. We can roughly periodize the changes in the dialect history : the emergence of the dialect, her gradual development, her arrested interlanguage stage', and the approaching structural collapse.With the death of Parsi Gujarati, Gujarati will lose one of her most beautiful dialects. Every conscious Gujarati will grieve the disappearance of this dialect which is like a valuable 'pedigree' of Gujarati.

Bharati Modi taught linguistics at the department of linguistics of the M.S. University of Baroda for 30 years. Mainly worked and published in the areas of phonetics, phonology and field linguistics. Influenced by her great teacher Ken Hale from whom she learnt her first lessons in field linguistics, she continued her interest in that areas all along. This book is the result of that interest.

ISBN 9783862880652. Languages of the World/Materials 483. 170pp. 2011.

Pazar Laz

Balkız Öztürk & Markus A. Pöchtrager (eds.)
Boğaziçi University

Contributors: Aslı Göksel, Balkız Öztürk, Betül Emgin, Eser Taylan, İsmail Avcı Bucak’lişi, Markus A. Pöchtrager, Neşe Kaya, Ömer Demirok, Özge Sarıgül, Ümit Atlamaz

This grammar presents the essential features of the Pazar dialect of Laz, also known as Atinan. Laz is a Caucasian language mainly spoken in Turkey. It belongs to the subgroup called the South-Caucasian branch, along with Megrelian, Georgian and Svan. Laz is an endangered language. The number of speakers is estimated to range between 50.000 and 500.000.

Most of the data for this grammatical sketch were collected from a native speaker of Pazar Laz, during a course on linguistic field methods at Boğaziçi University in Spring 2010, taught by Balkız Öztürk and Markus A. Pöchtrager. The grammar was jointly written by the students and the faculty members who attended this course. Additional material comes from three different research projects conducted by the faculty members (Aslı Göksel, Balkız Öztürk and Markus A. Pöchtrager) funded by the Boğaziçi University Scientific Research Fund. The present text discusses the phonology, morphology and syntax of Pazar Laz in great detail, supported by roughly 600 examples, and closes with a fully glossed text which illustrates many of the topics covered in the main text. It will be of interest to a wide variety of scholars, from experts on Caucasian languages to theoretical linguists.

CONTENTS:

ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

0. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

1. PHONOLOGY (1.1. VOWELS, 1.2. CONSONANTS, 1.2.1 Basic system, 1.2.2 Phonotactics, 1.3 MINIMAL WORD, 1.4 SUPRASEGMENTALS: STRESS, 1.5. LOANS, 1.6 ORTHOGRAPHY).

2. MORPHOLOGY (2.1 WORD CLASSES, 2.2 THE MORPHOLOGY OF SUBSTANTIVES, 2.2.1 Nouns, 2.2.1.1 Number, 2.2.1.2 Gender/Class, 2.2.1.3 Definiteness/Referentiality, 2.2.1.4 Case, 2.2.1.5 Possession, 2.2.2 Pronouns, 2.2.2.1 Personal Pronouns, 2.2.2.2 Possessive Pronouns, 2.2.2.3 Demonstratives, 2.2.2.4 Reflexives, 2.2.2.5 Interrogative Pronouns, 2.2.2.6 Indefinite Pronouns, 2.2.2.7 Quantifiers, 2.2.3 Numerals, 2.2.4 Adjectives, 2.2.4.1 Comparatives and Superlatives, 2.2.5 Adverbs, 2.2.6 Derived Substantives, 2.2.6.2 Compounds, 2.3 THE VERB, 2.3.1 Person Marking, 2.3.2 Valency Operations and Pre-Root Vowels (Version Vowels), 2.3.3 Tense-Aspect-Modality Paradigms in Pazar Laz, 2.3.4 Mood and Modality in Laz, 2.3.5 Negation, 2.3.6 Thematic Suffixes, 2.3.6 Affirmative Preverbs, 2.3.7 Spatial Prefixes, 2.3.8 Verb classes, 2.3.9 Suppletive Verbs, 2.4 PREPOSITIONS AND POSTPOSITIONS).

3. SYNTAX (3.1 NON-VERBAL SENTENCES, 3.2 QUESTIONS, 3.2.1 Polar Questions, 3.2.2 Question Tag, 3.2.3 Wh-Questions, 3.3 COMPLEX SENTENCES, 3.3.1 Coordination, 3.3.2 Complement Clauses, 3.3.3 Relative Clauses, 3.3.4 Adverbial Clauses, 3.4 WORD ORDER, SENTENTIAL STRESS AND INTONATION, 3.4.1 Canonial word order (presentational focus), 3.4.2 The elision of subjects and objects, 3.4.3 Word order variation and contrastive focus, 3.4.4 Topics, 3.4.5 Negative sentences, 3.4.6 Polar Questions, 3.4.7 Wh-questions, 3.4.8 Rhetorical questions, 3.4.9 Echo questions, 3.4.10 Imperative constructions, 3.4.11 Marking an item for prominence).

4. SAMPLE TEXT: K’oncolozi do Xorzha.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ISBN 9783862881499. Languages of the World /Materials 484. 182pp. 2011.

A Grammar of Hadoti

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi
Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University

‘A Grammar of Hadoti’ follows an approach to describe the core grammatical features i.e., phonology, morphology, and syntax of Hadoti. It embraces a linguistic way of looking at grammar – seeing it not as a prescribed grammar, but as the tool with which we apply theoretical applications of linguistics. ‘A Grammar of Hadoti’ is written to be accessible to the global reader. It shows the unique grammatical features of Hadoti as it is. It is useful both in its combination of the formal grammar reference section and the guide to usage structured along systemic lines.

Hadoti is a macro language of Indo-Aryan family. It is spoken in the state of Rajasthan in India by fifty two million people approximately according to the latest census. It is a descendent of Gurjari Apabransha, one of the languages of Prakrit derived from Sanskrit. Hadoti is not specified in the constitution of India. It comes neither in the scheduled languages nor in the non-scheduled languages of India. But its structure (both morphological and syntactic) shows partial vicinity to Hindi, Gujarati and other seven macro languages of Rajasthan.

The first linguistic attempt to write anything on Hadoti was done by G. A. Grierson. Since then no linguistic grammar has been written on Hadoti. This work documents the language in the descriptive linguistic tradition.

Hadoti is a SOV language. Structurally, sentences are either simple or complex. A simple sentence contains a main clause and a complex sentence contains one or more subordinate clauses. This structural division of sentences can also be classified functionally, as statements, questions, volitional utterances and exclamations.

ISBN 9783862881703. Languages of the World/Materials 485. 175pp. 2012.