Central Breton

Iwan Wmffre
University of Galway, Ireland

Breton, spoken in France, is - alongside Cornish and Welsh - an uninterrupted continuation of the ancient Brittonic language of Roman Britain. As Celtic linguists are - by the nature of things - mostly English-speakers, the study of Breton has understandably been somewhat neglected. Breton shares many traits common to the other Neo-Celtic languages, but is of particular interest to the general linguist as it is the only Celtic language that has evolved wholly beyond the shadow of the inluence of the English language.

Over the centuries the domination of French, the language of the state since medieval times, steadily eroded the hold of the Breton upon the higher echelons of society. This process cumulated dramatically with a general cesseation of transmission of Breton to the younger generations in the period that immediately followed the 1939-45, with the result that Breton is at present-day suffering a terminal exponential decline as a language of a traditional homogeneous society. Its decline as a spoken language is almost the most dramatic seen in western Europe during the 20th century. The author, who is a native Breton-speaker, gives a description of spoken Breton of central western Brittany, which is - paradoxically - one of the most typical of Breton dialects, but also one of the dialects most neglected in literary works. The study contains chapters on phonology, morphology and syntax, and texts with interlinear translation.

ISBN 9783895861215. Languages of the World/Materials 152. 62pp. 1998.

A Grammar of Chagatay

András J. E. Bodrogligeti
University of California, Los Angeles

An acrolect of the Central Asian Turks from the fifteenth to the late nineteenth century, the Chagatay language was a multilayered literary idiom employed in Transoxiana, Khorasan Fergana and East Turkistan, especially in cultural centers such as Samarkand, Bukhara, Herat, Khiva, Kokand and Kashghar. Chagatay was also used in India in the court of the Great Moghuls, in Kazan, and even in the Ottoman Empire. Presently it is regarded as the Classical phase of Modern Uzbek although the scope of Chagatay, especially of the lexion was much broader than what the term Classical Uzbek would imply.

Orthography: Chagatay works were written in Arabic script with generous use of matres lectionis: a criterion that makes Chagatay different from Ottoman and allows the reader an easier identification of graphemes. Text publications mostly use transcription with alphabets using modified characters of the Latin, or Russian writing systems.

Morphology operates with suffixes, prefixes, postpositions, prepositions Izafet markers, composition and coordination. Suffixes have a definite hierarchy of sequence.

Chagatay nouns and pronouns have no grammatical gender. They have singular and plural forms. By their final phoneme we distinguish light and heavy nouns; by the behavior of their last consonant or their second vowel under certain conditions we distinguish weak and strong nouns. There are ten cases of nouns and pronouns. There are no definite or indefinite articles.

Adjectives have no special class marker. Some of the means of derivation may signal that the derivative is an adjective. There is no strict boundary between adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives often occur as nouns and can take case endings and plural signs. Adjectives have three degrees: positive, comparative, and superlative. The superlative also serves as the absolute degree. Intensive forms are created by morphological and analytic means. Stems: weak and strong, light and heavy, simple and derivative. Primary stems: positive, negative, possibilitive, impossibilitive. Secondary stems: Active, passive, reflexive, reciprocal, adjutative, cooperative, causative, desiderative, similative, transitive, ditransitive, intransitive. Coordinated [serialized] stems. Compound stems.

Finite forms: person (first, second, and third), number (singular and plural). Structure: stems, particles, themes, personal signs. Tenses: Present, future, past. Moods: imperative, voluntative, indicative, optative, conditional, temporal. Aspects: perfect, imperfect, progressive.

Negation: Negative stems, and negative particles are used. Affirmation by affirmative particles and adverbs. Traces of an honorific system: lexical, suffixal means.

Nonfinite forms: Verbal nouns (agent nouns, action nouns infinitives). Gerunds (imperfect, antecedental, inceptive, purposive, resolutive, terminative, compensative, copulative, negative. Participles (past, present, aorist: positive, negative, necessitative, agental, resultative and status-related).

Adverbs have no special category markers. There is no strict class boundary between adverbs and adjectives. There are simple, derivative, and phrasal adverbs.

Six types of noun phrases. Sentence structure: Simple [nominal, verbal], expanded and compound sentences. Clause structure: finite, nonfinite. Clause chaining: coordination by juxtapositon, connective gerunds, and conjunctions. Subordination: The main sentence. Relative clauses, completive clauses.

ISBN 9783895865633. Languages of the World/Materials 155. 448pp. 2001.

Vogul (Mansi)

Timothy Riese
University of Vienna

The Vogul language (endogenous name: Mansi) is spoken by approximately 3.000 speakers in northwestern Siberia. Together with Ostyak, it forms the Ob-Ugrian branch of the Finno-Ugrian language family and is generally considered to be closest relative of Hungarian. In the introductory section general information on the Vogul people and their sociolinguistic situation is given. The dialect described in the following sections on Vogul phonology, morphology, and syntax is the Northern one, spoken by the greatest majority of modern Voguls and forming the basis for the literary language. Vogul is in the most respects a typical agglutinative language and its grammar is relatively straightforward, i.e. unencumbered with major rules of inflection. In this study particular care is taken to place (Northern) Vogul in a general Finno-Ugrian and a complete Vogul context. This means that although the major emphasis lies on the synchronic description of (Northern) Vogul, the discussion is supplemented by obervations of a historical nature to show to which extent (Northern) Vogul has adhererd to general Finno-Ugrian patterns and to which extent it has diverged both from the related languages and other Vogul dialects. This study closes with a (Northern) Vogul folklore text with an interlinear transcription and translation

ISBN 9783895862311. Languages of the World/Materials 158. 92pp. 2001.

Mandan

Mauricio J. Mixco
University of Utah

Mandan, sole member of one of the four branches of Siouan (within Catawba-Siouan), has under 10 speakers, among some 200 tribal members. Epidemics and inter-tribal warfare reduced these Missouri River village-dwelling horticulturists, from 5000 to under 200 members by 1837. With the Hidatsa (Siouan) and the Arikara (Caddoan), they constitute today's, Three Affiliated Tribes Nation (Ft. Berthold Indian Reservation; North Dakota). Mandan has vocalic epenthesis, is notable for only 10 consonants, 9 vowels (plus length) and no nasal stops, despite nasal spread from 3 nasal vowels. Mandan is a verb-final, head-marking language, with positional auxiliary verbs (sit, stand, lie) marking tense-aspect-modality (these auxiliaries also serve as classificatory NP determiners); other auxiliaries mark diminutives, benefactives and causatives, etc.

Evidentiality, subject-number and other TAM distinctions are mostly suffixal. The verb has active/stative, subject-object split-transitive prefixation and distinguishes addressee gender in its illocutionary suffixation. Coordinate and subordinate clauses suffix a three-way distinction of realis vs. irrealis subject-continuity/switch-reference.

ISBN 9783895862137. Languages of the World/Materials 159. 62pp. 1997.

Upper Sorbian

Gunter Schaarschmidt
University of Victoria

The area inhabited by the Sorbs corresponds roughly to the regions of Upper Lusatia (Oberlausitz) for Upper Sorbian and Lower Lusatia (Niederlausitz) for Lower Sorbian. At present, this area covers appr. 95km in its north/south expansion, and appr. 60km in its widest west/east expansion. According to recent statistics (1991), the number of Upper Sorbian speakers does not exceed 53,600, a 44% reduction since the mid 1880s (by comparison, Lower Sorbian declined by 81% in the same period). Upper Sorbian is classified as belonging to the West Slavic group of languages. However, Upper Sorbian (like Lower Sorbian) has a number of linguistic features that are not found in any of the other members of that group: it has retained the Old Slavic tense system with aorist, imperfect, and perfect past tenses. In many dialects, the dual number is marked for both nominals and verbals. Centuries of contact with German have left an indelible imprint, especially on colloquial Upper Sorbian and on dialects. The Upper Sorbian language area, small as it is, is divided into at least nine major dialects. There are, in addition, many regional dialects. Politically, Upper Sorbian is part of Saxony ("Freistaat Sachsen"). The German Unity Treaty of 1990 guarantees the rights of Sorbian speakers to use their language in the public domain and in the courts in the Sorbian-speaking areas.

ISBN 9783895862601. Languages of the World/Materials 160. 60pp. 2nd edition. 2004.

A Grammar of Kalaallisut

(West Greenlandic Inuttut)
Jerrold M. Sadock
University of Chicago

West Greenlandic ("Kalaallisut") is a language of the Inuit branch of Eskimo spoken by about 45,000 people on the West Coast of Greenland. There is near hundred percent literacy and there is a flourishing literary tradition of all genres in the native language. Grammatically, West Greenlandic is typical of Inuit. Verbs and nouns are both highly inflected and there is an very unusually rich system of derivation in both categories. There are about 500 fully productive derivational affixes altogether, all of which are semantically transparent and some of which are syntactically transparent.

The case marking is ergative and the syntax verb final. This sketch of the grammar of West Greenlandic is descriptive and non-technical in tone, but adheres to the principles of Autolexical Syntax in radically separating syntax, morphology, and semantics. In each of these components no mention is made of information belonging to the others. Rather, there is a separate chapter on matching and mismatching of structures across components. The aim is both to make the basic structure of West Greenlandic clear to the general reader and to demonstrate that a grammar consisting of autonomous modules connected by a lexically centered interface is both feasible and illuminating.

ISBN 9783895862342. Languages of the World/Materials 162. 80pp. 2003.

ISBN 9783862889570 (e-book, pdf)

ISBN 9783862889570 (e-book, pdf)

Tol (Jicaque)

Dennis Holt
Quinnipiac College, Hamden

The Tol language (also known as Jicaque), long considered a member of the far-flung Hokan phylum, is spoken by 250-300 speakers in north central Honduras.

Tol is quite complex in terms of both phonology and inflectional morphology. However, there is very little in the way of productive derivational morphology. There are 22 consonant and 6 vowel phonemes in Tol, as well as one suprasegmental phoneme of stress. There is a three-way contrast among stop consonants (plain, aspirated, and glottalized), which is partially neutralized in syllable-final position. There is also a pervasive system of vowel-harmony governed by vowel height. Morphological processes include vocalic ablaut and apocope, prefixation, infixation, and suffixation, as well as shift of stress, and these are associated with an extensive set of morphophonemic variations, especially within the verbs. In addition to the lexical stem, verb-forms in Tol are marked only for subject and tense. Tol tense- and aspect-systems seem to be quite rudimentary: only present, past, and future have been recognized by most researchers. Basic sentence word-order is Subject-Object-Verb, but when a pronominal subject is involved the usual order is Object-Verb-Subject. Many nouns have variant forms as subject and as object. There is a separate category of adjectives, which follow their associated nouns. There is also a large set of postnominal particles which specify case-relationships and express locational notions.

ISBN 9783895862779. Languages of the World/Materials 170. 60pp. 1999.

Khamnigan Mongol

Juha Janhunen
University of Helsinki

Khamnigan Mongol is a Mongolic language used as the principal community language of the Khamnigan, an ethnic group in the Amur source region, in the borderzone of China, Russia, and Mongolia. The only vigorous community of Khamnigan Mongol speakers (ca. 2,000 people) today lives in the basins of the Mergel and Imin rivers of Hulun Buir League, Inner Mongolia, China.

Khamnigan Mongol remained virtually unexplored until the 1950s, when preliminary field surveys were made of its last speakers in northeastern Mongolia and Russian Transbaikalia. The Khamnigan community in China, officially classified as a local group of the Ewenki nationality, was only identified in the 1980s. The present description is based on the variety of Khamnigan Mongol spoken by the Khamnigan in China.

As a Mongolic language, Khamnigan Mongol is characterized by exceptional conservativeness, in that it lacks most of the innovations that separate the neighbouring Mongolic languages, including Mongol proper, Buryat, and Dagur, from their Proto-Mongolic ancestor. Khamnigan Mongol is therefore of considerable importance for the diachronic study of the entire Mongolic language family. It also provides an interesting case for the study of the phenomenon of linguistic conservativeness, in general.

Another important property of Khamnigan Mongol is its close and prolonged symbiosis with the Ewenki language within the Khamnigan community. A large part of the Khamnigan in China today still speak ethnospecific forms of Ewenki as their other native language. The two languages have long interacted at the social and linguistic levels, with various kinds of interference phenomena as a result.

Due to its conservativeness, Khamnigan Mongol is structurally close to Middle Mongol, though some of its morphosyntactic features also resemble Buryat. Like Buryat and Dagur, but unlike most other Mongolic languages, Khamnigan Mongol has a fully-developed system of personal marking on the finite predicate. In the phonology, there are properties, including the vowel system, which show an areal parallelism with Ewenki.

Juha JANHUNEN is professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

ISBN 9783895862267. Languages of the World/Materials 173. 66pp. 2005.