Hittite

Silvia Luraghi
Terza Università di Roma

Hittite belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family, which has become extinct in the first half of the first millenium b.C. Among the Anatolian languages Hittite is the best attested; for our knowledge of it we can relay on several thousands of clay tables, dating back to about 1750 b.C. - 1150 b.C. One of the biggest matters of interest concerning Hittite lies in its differences from the ancient Indo-European languages. The author does not aim at an evaluation of the relative antiquity of the Hittite features in comparison to those of the other Indo-European languages, rather, the author is going to highlight the pecularities which can be connected with major typological issues. Topics related in this sketch include:

(1) the socio-linguistic situation of Anatolia in the second millenium b.C.; (2) phoneme inventory; graphic problems connected with the use of cuneiform and the evolution of scribal habits; (3) relative chronology of Hittite texts and periodization of the Hittite language; (4) morphology: word formation, parts of speech and their inflectional categories; gender system; (5) syntax: noun and verb phrase; types of adnominal modifiers; auxiliaries; use of cases; verbal voice; TAM system; (6) word order within the simple sentence; sentence initial and sentence final position; clitics; position of the finite verb; (7) parataxis and hypotaxis; connectives and asyndesis; types of subordinate clauses; infinitives; (8) anaphoric relations within the text.

The text for analysis is from Old Hittite, particularly interesting for what concerns word order and the use of connectives.

ISBN 9783895860768. Languages of the World/Materials 114. 64pp. 1997.

Songhay

Robert Nicolai and Petr Zima
C.N.R.S. , Université de Nice; CET Université Charles, Praha

Le groupe des langues Songhay est parlé principalment dans le Boucle du Niger, au Mali (Tombouctou, Gao, ..) et au Niger (région est, située entre la frontière avec le Mali et celle avec le Bénin). Il est aussi parlé dans ce dernier pays et dans quelques enclaves de Nigéria, et enfin, de façon tout à fait minoritaire dans plusieurs enclaves de pays voisins.

La description commence par une présentation de la classification dialectale du groupe dans lequel on distingue entre deux grane ensembles: le songhay méridional et le songhay sepentrional (variétés berbérisées parlées par des populations minoritaires en zone nomade). Elle se poursouit avec une description phonétique et phonologique de l'ensemble et quelques éléments de la morphologie nominale et verbale de la langue. La troisième partie traite de la syntaxe.

La partie suivante propose un lexique comparatif des dialectes qui contient une centaine d´entrées et quelques spécimens de texte concernant les dialectes principaux (songhay sepentrional, zarma, dendi, songhay occidental et kaado), fournis avec une traduction juxtalinéaire et une traduction littéraure.

Cette esquisse comprend aussi plusieurs tableaux comparatifs et de nombreux exemples et se veut une présentation simple, précise et claire des connaissances linguistiques sur le songhay.

ISBN 9783895861338. Languages of the World/Materials 116. 62pp. 1997.

Macedonian

Victor A. Friedman
University of Chicago

Macedonian is a member of the South Slavic group of the Slavic Branch of the Indo-European family. It is the first or secnd language of the approximately 2 million people in the Republic of Macedonia and is also spoken in neighboring Albania, Bulgaria, greece, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as well as by significant émigré communities in Eastern and Western Europe, North America and Australia. This monogrpah describes modern standard Macedonian as codified in the Republic of Macedonia, although a brief treatment of the dialectal situation is also provided. Due to the endangered and disputed status of Macedonian in neighboring countries, the sociolinguistic/ geolingusitic section begins with a linguistic history of Macedonian. This is followed by sections on phonology, morphology, syntax, and a text. Standard Macedonian is characterized by antepenultimate stress that can cross word boundaries, a relatively simple nominal system, a complex verbal system, and fairly free word order. Situated at the heart of the Balkan linguistic league, Macedonian shows the effect of centuries of multilingual contact at all levels.

ISBN 9783895860751. Languages of the World/Materials 117. 60pp. 2002.

Inor

Berhanu Chamora & Robert Hetzron

Inor is a Gurage dialect (South-Ethiopian Semitic) spoken in South Central Ethiopia by about 156, 000 speakers. It is one of the most complex and least understood Ethiopian Semitic languages.

This monograph provides a sketch of the phonology, morphology, morphosemantics and syntax of Inor. It presents a synchronic description of its consonantal alternations, as observed in verbs, and establish its phonemic system. We show that Inor verbs select one of two basic patterns: short and long. This division applies to both sound (or transparent) verbs, such as scpcr 'break' and girctcß 'cut into two', and weak (or opaque) verbs, such as a§cr 'make a fence' and birc¥c 'run off suddenly'. A brief description of the morphosemantics of verb derivations is also put forth. An overview of the complex suffixal system is also provided. Finally, most basic syntactic structures are discussed, as are issues such as tenses and negation.

The monograph contains data and analyses which will be of interest to specialists in general linguistics, as well as to students of Ethiopian, Semitic and African languages.

ISBN 9783895869778. Languages of the World/Materials 118. 70 pp. 2000.

Abkhaz

Viacheslav A. Chirikba
University of Leiden

Abkhaz is one of the three languages comprising the Abkhazo-Adyghean, or West Caucasian branch of North Caucasian linguistic family (the other branch being Nakh-Daghestanian, or East Caucasian). Abkhaz is spoken by approximately 100,000 people in the former Soviet union (mainly in the Republic of Abkhazia, Caucasus), and by at least the same number of speakers in Turkey and some Middle east countries (small Abkhaz colonies can be found also in Western Europe and the USA). Abkhaz is notorious for its huge consonantal inventory (up to 67 consonants in its Bzyp dialect) and by its minimal vocalic system: only two vowels. Though Abkhaz was studied by a number of scholars (among whom P. Uslar in XIX century, or more easily K. Lomtatidze in Georgia and G. Hewitt in Great Britain), many aspects of Abkhaz grammar (especially its syntax) still have to be adequately described. Abkhaz is the only West Caucasian language to possess the category of grammatical classes, manifested in personal pronouns, verb conjugation, numerals and in category of number.

Abkhaz is an ergative language, the ergative construction being represented not by case endings, as in related Circassian and Ubykh (Abkhaz does not have the case system), but by order of actant markers. The verbal root consists usually of one consonant, preceded by a string of prefixes (class-personal, directional, temporal, negational, causative, etc.) and followed by few suffixes. Verbs can be stative or dynamic, finite or non-finite.

The grammatical sketch of Abkhaz includes information about its phonological system, morphology, and syntax. A short text is provided with grammatical comments.

ISBN 9783895861369. Languages of the World/Materials 119. 88pp. 2003.

Czech

L. Janda & Ch.E. Townsend
University of North Carolina, Princeton University

This grammatical sketch of Czech is intended to serve as a descriptive handbook unencumbered by the viewpoint of any one theoretical framework. The Introduction will give a survey of the location and number of speakers, as well as the relation of Czech to other languages, and the relations of literary Czech to its variants (dialectology and diglossia).

The chapter on phonology will focus on vowel quantity, assimilations, and the prosodic behavior of clitics. The chapter on morphology will detail the grammatical categories expressed in the language and the means of their expression, with special emphasis on morphophonemic alternations.

This is to be followed by a chapter on syntax, which will address the meanings and uses of cases and prepositions, numeral constructions, clause structure, multiple negation, use of passive and causative constructions, coordination and subordination of clauses, and discourse phenomena. A separate chapter will be devoted to the issue of diglossia in Czech, outlining the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical differences that exist between the two "standard" codes of the language, literary Czech and spoken Czech. The book will close with two brief texts to serve as examples of the two codes, each with an interlinear transcription and translation into English.

ISBN 9783895861420. Languages of the World/Materials 125. 100pp. 2000.

Modern Hebrew

Ora (Rodrigue) Schwarzwald
Bar Ilan University

Modern Hebrew revival in Israel during the last century is a unique phenomenon: a written language used by Jews over 1700 years for either liturgy or writing has become a spoken language used for all purposes.

Although the revivers of Hebrew tried to base the spoken language on the grammar of Hebrew classical periods, the phonetic and grammatical structure of Modern Hebrew shows divergence from it due to various factors.

New words in Modern Hebrew are derived primarily in three ways: 1. combination of a consonantal root with pattern, e.g. g-d-l+-i-e- > gidel 'raised,' g-d-l+mi--a- > migdal 'tower'; 2. stem + affix, e.g. bank+ay > bankay 'banker,' migdal+i > migdali 'tower-like'; 3. blends, e.g. migdal + ’or 'light' > migdalor 'lighthouse.' Loan words are added from various sources with some phonetic adaptation, e.g. bank, telefon, and can follow Hebrew derivational rules, e.g. telefoni 'of the phone (adj),' t-l-f-n+-i-e- > tilfen 'telephoned (v).'

All verbs are derived by root and (seven) patterns' combination, unlike nouns. There are three tenses and one mood in the verb. Nouns are either masculine or feminine. Person inflection in the verbs is obligatory, and so is preposition inflection. Nouns and adjectives are inflected for number and gender, but possessive inflection is limited in nouns, e.g. yadi ~ hayad šeli 'my hand.'

Modern Hebrew is an SVO language with an alternating VSO word order that was dominant in classical Hebrew. Topicalization and other word order shifts are possible. Adjectives follow head nouns, but numeral quantifiers precede them. Nominal sentences with no copula are very common in Hebrew, e.g. hi yafa 'she (is) beautiful.' Copulative verbs are obligatory in the past or the future tense.

The lexicon of Modern Hebrew is composed of original Hebrew words from all its language periods together with loan words. Semantic shifts occur in many original words, however, a lot of the changes are due to loan translations or loan shifts.

ISBN 9783895861444. Languages of the World/Materials 127. 110pp. 2001.

Siciliano

Rainer Bigalke
Universität Osnabrück

Il siciliano appartiene nella classificazione tradizionale ai 'dialetti' meridionali d'Italia. Nonostante ciò bisogna mettere in rilievo il proprio carattere del siciliano nell'ambito dei 'dialetti' italiani meridionali (v. il sistema delle vocali toniche oppure le desinenze degli infiniti).

Lo schizzo prenderà in esame i brani tradizionali della grammatica descrittiva con degli esempi abbondanti, sul campo della fonetica il vocalismo con le particolarità seguenti: le sette vocali toniche del siciliano discendenti dalle sette vocali latine si sono poi ridotte a cinque, il dittongo latino AU si conserva e le vocali finali sono pronunciate sempre chiare, a differenza di quelle nelle parlate meridionali sul continente. Sul campo del consonantismo menzioniamo tra l'altro la geminata -dd- cacuminale, l'assimilazione progressiva dei nessi intervocalici latini ND e MB e il passaggio della D iniziale e della D intervocalica in r, sul campo della morfologia sono degni di menzione in particolare il condizionale che risale alla forma latina del piuccheperfetto e in generale la formazione dei tempi, l'assorbimento dell'articolo nel nome, la mancanza del partitivo, delle particolarità nel sistema dei possessivi e nel sistema dei numerali (p.e. la numerazione vigesimale).

Per la sintassi sono ricordati tra l'altro l'accusativo retto da preposizione, i diversi modi di costruire il periodo ipotetico, l'impopolarità del congiuntivo presente, la realizzazione di diverse conguinzioni (a differenza dell'italiano: p.e. che, se, siccome) e la realizzazione siciliana delle diverse preposizioni (a differeza dell'italiano: p.e. verso ed altre). Alcuni dei fenomini menzionati si incontrano, del resto, anche sul continente meridionale. Finalmente sarà descritto il lessico, dove le parlate sicilane conservano parecchi relitti fossili del latino e del greco antico. Importante nell'ambito del lessico è anche l'elemento arabo trasmesso specificamente attraverso la Sicilia.

ISBN 9783895862199. Languages of the World/Materials 129. 100pp. 1997.

Ratahan

Nikolaus P. Himmelmann (University of Bochum) & John U. Wolff (Cornell University)

Ratahan is an endangered Austronesian language spoken in the district of Ratahan, province of North Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is estimated that now only 500 good speakers of Ratahan are left, mostly over 60 years of age, and a few thousand semi-speakers. Ratahan is located in the midst of the Minahasa region but belongs to the Sangiric subgroup, spoken at some distance to the north of Ratahan, of which to date only one language (Sangirese) has been documented in some detail.

Typologically, Ratahan resembles the languages of the Philippines, and the verbal morphology shows many of the same categories as, for example, the Tagalog verbs. Much of the Ratahan affixational morphology is clearly cognate with affixes in Philippine languages. With regard to noun phrase marking, pronominal clitics, and word order, however, there are strong differences from the Philippine languages. Furthermore, a system of markers for spatial deixis exists which is far more elaborate than that commonly found in Austronesian languages.

The volume contains an outline of the phonology and the basic morphosyntax, a somewhat more elaborate discussion of the verbal morphology and of the system of spatial orientation marking, a sample text, and a map of the language area. The analysis is based on a few hours of recorded spontaneous speech.

The introductory chapter discusses the present state of the language and some basic procedures in documenting a language. There is also an Indonesian summary, and the examples and the text are glossed in both Indonesian and English. The Indonesian has been added to make the materials accessible to the members of the Ratahan community, all of whom are literate in Indonesian.

ISBN 9783895861475. Languages of the World/Materials 130. 100pp. 1999.

Tsakhur

Wolfgang Schulze
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Tsakhur is spoken by some 13.000 people who dwell in about 30 villages or settlements at the headwaters of the river Samur (valley of Gorgin Magal) in Southern Daghestan. An important group of Tsakhur speakers can also be found in Northern Azerbajdzhan (along the two tributaries of the Agri-Chay river (Katekh-Chay and Kurmukh-Chay)). "Tsakhur" is the somewhat disputed) name for a dialect continuum, that is named for the village of Tsakhur (in the Samur valley). Together with Rutul, the language forms the western branch of the Samur languages, itself being a subgroup of South East Caucasian (Lezgian). Though Tsakhur is only sporadically written (a new "written language" has recently been reintroduced), it is quite vivid in ordinary life (competing especially with Azeri).

Tsakhur is a "typical" Lezgian language, operating on a system of semantic ergativity and noun classification, based on extensive case marking and a complex verbal paradigms. Though Tsakhur is heavily agglutinating, inflectional features can often be observed. As opposed to some other Lezgian languages, Tsakhur shows a tendency towards personal agreement (restricted, however, to the first person), ergative case marking of personal pronouns, and the development of focus particles.

The booklet informs on the basic structure of Tsakhur (phonology, morphology, and syntax), which is (at least partly) explained on the basis of internal and external reconstruction. The material stems either from written sources or from own field notes. A sample text together with an interlinear interpretation helps to illustrate the linguistic structure of the language.

ISBN 9783895861505. Languages of the World/Materials 133. 72pp. 1997.