Old Church Slavonic

Boris Gasparov
Columbia University

The Old Church Slavonic was a written language created especially for the purpose of serving the needs of the Slavic Orthodox church. Although based on material of a South Slavic vernacular, it showed features most of which were fundamental for all Slavic languages, since at the time of OCS inception (late nineth century) Slavic dialects were still colse to each other. The life span of OCS in its original form, known under that name, comprises approximately two centuries from the time of its formation. Very few texts have reached us from that time; the data base of the OCS proper includes four more or less complete versions of the Gospel, fragments of a Psalterium, and some pieces of pious reading. Eventually, OCS was adopted by different Slavic Orthodox nations (Old Russians, Bulgarians, Serbs) as their sacral and cultural language. In the process, it has branched into different versions, each reflecting some features of the local vernacular. These later modifications of OCS, known as Church Slavic languages, have survived until present in the liturgical service, and layed foundation for literary languages of Slavic Orthodox nations.

Because of the pecularities of the OCS status and history, the author finds it necessary to partly modify the format of its presentation. The language essentially does not have a synchronic phonetics: all pronunciations assigned to it are grounded in later practices within different Church Slavic traditions. On the other hand, phonological shape of the OCS vividly reflects prehistorc processes that had evolved in the Common Slavic (CS). In particular, OCS paradigms feature numerous vocal and phonetic changes that had led to them. Because of that, the author incorporates informrtion on prehistoric phonetic development of the CS into an outline of its phonology. All points in grammar in need of a historical explanation will be then referred to this section.

Table of Contents:

Introduction. OCS: A created language
1. Writing
2. The sound shape of OCS and its historical background
3. An outline of OCS grammar: Forms and their functions
4. Texts: An annotated reading

Selected bibliography, Vocabulary, Index.

ISBN 9783895868894. Languages of the World/Materials 338. 216pp. 2001.

Kunming Chinese

Ming Chao Gui
University of Oklahoma

Kunming Chinese, commonly regarded as lingua franca of Yunnan province, is a major variety of Yunnanese, a member of Southwestern Mandarin. Based primarily on the linguistic typology and geographic distribution, Kunming Chinese has been further classified in one of the four major subgroups of Yunnanese: Central Yunnan group. Kunming Chinese, as well as all the dialects in Yunnan province, has a long history of development, which can probably be traced back to Qin and Han dynasties. The languages of twenty-four ethnic groups inhabiting in the same speech community also play a very important role in the development of Kunming Chinese. Until now Kunming Chinese remains a less studied dialect and no complete work has been done on its major grammatical aspects, especially morphology and syntax.

This book is intended to provide a descriptive account for the grammar of Kunming Chinese as spoken in Kunming city and its vicinities. The major topics discussed are: phonetics and phonology; the phonological developments in the past sixty years; morpheme categories and word formation; grammatical categories, syntactic categories; sentence types and structures.

Special discussions are given to the idiosyncratic features of the dialect: fronting and deletion of nasal in nasal rhymes, loss of rhotic initial series, breathy phonation; infix, the function and loss of "-er” suffix, word blending, reduplication and its interaction with tone change; question words and question formation. The book also features an interlinear text with transcription and translation demonstrating the major features discussed.

The author Ming Chao Gui teaches Chinese and linguistics at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics of the University of Oklahoma, Norman campus, U.S.A.. He has regular publication on this dialect in the past ten years.

ISBN 9783895866340. Languages of the World/Materials 340. 116 pp. 2000.

Warembori

Mark Donohue
University of Sydney

Warembori is a language spoken by 600-700 people living in river mouths on the north coast of the island of New Guinea, in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya. It has not been previously described in any grammatical detail, and this sketch presents some of the complexities of applicative and noun incorporation structures, as well as aspects of its interesting phonology. A structuralist approach is taken to the description, allowing the morphosyntax of the language itself determine the categories used in the description, rather than impose a particular theoretical model on the data. After surveying the main grammatical constructions in Warembori, including notes on the speakers preferences for alternative constructions, the description is concluded with notes on the genetic affiliations of Warembori with respect to nearby Papuan and Austronesian languages, a wordlist and a short text to illustrate the language in spoken context.

Mark Donohue works at the University of Sydney, Australia, and has previously published a reference grammar of Tukang Besi, an Austronesian language of Indonesia, and has worked extensively in eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, publishing both descriptive and theoretical work on languages of the area and their relation to modern linguistic research.

ISBN 9783895866463. Languages of the World/Materials 341. 64pp. 1999.

A Grammar of Mandarin Chinese

Hua Lin
University of Victoria

Mandarin Chinese is the official language in China, Taiwan and Singapore, and the language with the largest number of native speakers. In recent years, Mandarin usage has spread even further: it is now taught in most schools in Hong Kong, and with the influx of immigrants to the West from China and Taiwan, many parts of the world including Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe have seen a steady increase in the number of speakers. Mandarin is not a homogeneous language; any grammar that tries to describe it needs to select one region as its focus. In this book, the focus will be on Mandarin as is spoken in its motherland of Northern China, especially the Chinese capital of Beijing.

The book will begin by an introduction to the geographic characteristics, dialects and historical development of the language. This will be followed by Mandarin phonetics and phonology. Topics covered include the syllable, tones, the consonants, the vowels, the glides and, more importantly, how these interact to create the sound structure of the language. A description of the morphology will follow, addressing special features of the language in terms of compounding, reduplication, word stress, and disyllabicity. The remainder of the book will be devoted to Mandarin syntax. It will first outline the major parts of speech and the major types of phrases; then it will focus on some salient syntactic features, including the topic-comment structure, the serial-verb construction, and the de construction. The book will end with two sample texts, each accompanied by interlinear translation and free translation.

Table of Contents:

1 Introduction
1.1 A Brief History
1.2 The Chinese Dialects
1.2.1 The Northern Dialect
1.2.2 Yue
1.2.3 Min
1.2.4 Kejia
1.2.5 Wu

2 Phonetcs and Phonology
2.1 The Sounds
2.1.1 Consonants
2.1.2 Vowels
2.2 The SyllableE
2.2.1 The Initial And the Final
2.2.2 Phonotactic Constraints
2.2.2.1 Syllabic Consonants
2.2.2.2 Syllable Gaps
2.3 The Processes
2.3.1 Consonants
2.3.2 Vowels
2.3.3 Pinyin and IPA
2.4 THE TONES
2.4.1 Basic Tones
2.4.2 Neutral Tone

3 Morphology
3.1 The Morpheme
3.1.1 Monosyllabicity
3.1.2 Free and Bound
3.2 The Word
3.3 Word Structure
3.3.1 Affixation
3.3.1.1 Suffixes
3.3.1.2 Prefixes
3.3.2 Compounding
3.3.2.1 Coordinative Compounds
3.3.2.2 Endocentric Compounds
3.3.2.3 Verb-Object Compounds
3.3.2.4 Verb-Complement Compounds
3.3.2.5 Subject-Predicate Compounds
3.3.2.6 Noun-Classifier Compounds
3.3.2.7 Multisyllabic Compounds
3.3.2.8 Newer Compounds
3.3.3 Reduplication
3.3.3.1 Noun and Classifier Reduplication
3.3.3.2 Verb and Adjective Reduplication
3.3.3.3 Two Syllable Reduplication
3.3.3.4 Simplex or Complex?
3.3.3.5 Affixation or Compounding?
3.3.4 Abbreviations
3.3.5 Disyllabicity
3.4 Homophones
3.4.1 Lucky and Taboo Expressions
3.5 Word Stress
3.5.1 Meaningful Stress
3.6 Transliteration of Foreign Words
3.6.1 Sound Route
3.6.2 Meaning Route
3.6.3 Sound and Meaning Combined
3.6.4 From Cantonese

4 Parts of Speech
4.1.1 Nouns
4.1.1.1 Types of Nouns
4.1.1.2 Syntactic Properties
4.1.2 Verbs
4.1.2.1 Types of Verbs
4.1.2.2 Syntactic Properties
4.1.2.2.1 Action and Stative
4.1.2.2.2 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs
4.1.2.2.3 Auxiliary Verbs
4.1.3 Adjectives
4.1.3.1 Types of Adjectives
4.1.3.2 Syntactic Properties
4.1.4 Numbers
4.1.4.1 Types of Numbers
4.1.4.1.1 Whole Numbers
4.1.4.1.2 Fractions, Decimals, Multiples and Ordinal Numbers
4.1.4.1.3 Approximate Numbers
4.1.4.2 Syntactic Properties
4.1.5 Classifiers
4.1.5.1 Types of Classifiers
4.1.5.2 Syntactic Propertie
4.1.6 Pronouns
4.1.6.1 Types of Pronouns
4.1.6.2 Syntactic Properties
4.1.7 Adverbs
4.1.7.1 Types of Adverbs
4.1.7.2 Syntactic Properties
4.1.8 Prepositions
4.1.8.1 Types of Prepositions
4.1.8.2 Syntactic Properties
4.1.9 Conjunctions
4.1.9.1 Types of Conjunctions
4.1.9.2 Syntactic Properties
4.1.10 Auxiliary Particles
4.1.10.1 Types of Auxiliary Particles
4.1.10.2 Syntactic Properties

5 Syntax
5.1 General Characteristics
5.2 Phrases
5.2.1 Noun Phrases
5.2.1.1 Coordinate NP
5.2.1.2 Endocentric NP
5.2.2 Verb Phrases
5.2.2.1 Coordinate VP
5.2.2.2 Endocentric VP
5.2.2.3 Verb-Object VP
5.2.2.4 Verb-Complement VP
5.2.2.5 Serial-Verb VP
5.2.3 Adjective Phrases
5.2.3.1 Coordinate AP
5.2.3.2 Endocentric AP
5.2.3.3 Adjective-Complement AP
5.2.4 Prepositional Phrase
5.2.4.1 With Nominal Objects
5.2.4.2 With Verbal Objects
5.2.4.3 Ba PP
5.2.4.4 Bei PP
5.3 Functional Components
5.3.1 Subjects
5.3.2 Predicates
5.3.3 Objects
5.3.4 Attributives
5.3.5 Adverbials
5.3.6 Complements
5.3.7 Functional Usage of Various Words and Phrases
5.3.7.1 Nominals
5.3.7.2 Verbs and VPs
5.3.7.3 Adjectives and APs
5.3.7.4 PPs
5.3.7.5 Adverbs
5.3.7.6 Numbers
5.4 Aspects and Negation
5.4.1 The Perfective Aspect
5.4.2 The Experiential Aspect
5.4.3 The Progressive Aspect
5.4.4 Negation
5.5 Interrogative Sentences
5.5.1 Yes-or-No Questions
5.5.2 Wh-Questions
5.5.3 Choice and Counterfactual Questions
5.6 Complex Sentences
5.6.1 Coordinate Complex Sentences
5.6.2 Endocentric Complex Sentences

ISBN 9783895866425. Languages of the World/Materials 344. 200pp. 2001.

Chichewa

Mayrene Bentley & Andrew Kulemeka
Northeastern State University; University of Dar es Salaam

Chichewa is an eastern Bantu language spoken in Malawi, primarily in the Kasungu, Dowa, and Lilongwe districts. It is also known as Nyanja because of its ethnic and linguistic ties with the Nyanja people. Typical of Bantu languages, Chichewa is tonal with a CV syllable structure, five vowels, and approximately forty consonant sounds. It has an extensive noun class system distinguished by noun prefixes with an accompanying concord system. Its verbal system marks tense and aspect by infixes, tone, and auxiliaries. The passive, stative, causative, reciprocal, and applicative are verbal suffixes. Wh-questions are clefts and relative clauses are marked either by relative pronouns or tones. In recent years, Chichewa has been a rich source of study syntactically for its use of locatives, morphologically for its ideophones, and phonologically for its prosody and phrase structure.

ISBN 9783895869204. Languages of the World/Materials 345. 60pp. 2001.

Persian

Yavar Dehghani


Persian is a member of the Indo-Iranian language group, a subgroup of Indo-European language family. It is considered to be an inflectional language, and has an SOV constituent order. Modern Persian is spoken mainly in Iran with a population of 70 million, as well as in other parts of world especially in USA and Europe. Its close relatives are other Iranian languages like Tajik, which is spoken in the republic of Tajkistan, and Afghani Farsi, which is spoken in Afghanistan. Persian has several dialects like Tehrani, Esfahani, Shirazi, and Yazdi which all are mutually intelligible.

There are two different styles of Persian. The written style is phonologically and syntactically more conservative and has not been changed for at least a century. However, the spoken style has been changed dramatically, especially in phonology. Traditional grammarians use the written style in describing the language. But linguists, as expected, emphasize the spoken style. The spoken style is economical in phonology and morphology.

The grammar of Persian contains chapters on Phonetics/Phonology, Morphology, Syntax and sample texts with interlinear translation.

ISBN 9783895869082. Languages of the World/Materials 348. 72pp. 2000.