A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia

by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

Overview

The speakers of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from the northwest Amazonian jungle, traditionally marry someone speaking a different language; therefore, most are fluent in five or six languages. This comprehensive grammar reveals how Tariana combines its own features with those borrowed from neighboring languages because of the rampant multilingualism. The language has many unusual properties, making this grammar a valuable sourcebook for linguists and others interested in natural languages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521826648
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/07/2003
Series:	Cambridge Grammatical Descriptions
Pages:	730
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 1.57(d)

About the Author

Alexandra Aikhenvald is Professor of Linguistics and Associate Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University. Her books include Language Contact in Amazonia (2003) and The Amazonian languages (co-edited with R. M. W. Dixon, Cambridge University Press, 1999). She has done extensive fieldwork on numerous Arawak languages from Brazil and has published a collection of texts in Tariana and also a Tariana-Portuguese dictionary.

Table of Contents

List of tables, schemes and diagrams; Preface; Acknowledgements; Organisation and cross-referencing; List of abbreviations; Map; 1. The language and its speakers; 2. Phonology; 3. Word classes; 4. Nominal morphology and noun structure; 5. Noun classes and classifiers; 6. Possession; 7. Case marking and grammatical relations; 8. Number; 9. Further nominal categories; 10. Derivation and compounding; 11. Closed word classes; 12. Verb classes and predicate structure; 13. Valency changing and argument rearranging mechanisms; 14. Tense and evidentiality; 15. Aspect, Aktionsart and degree; 16. Mood and modality; 17. Negation; 18. Serial verb constructions and verb compounding; 19. Complex predicates; 20. Participles and nominalisations; 21. Clause types and other syntactic issues; 22. Subordinate clauses and clause linking; 23. Relative clauses; 24. Complement clauses; 25. Discourse organisation; 26. Issues in etymology and semantics; Appendix; Texts; Vocabulary; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"[...]a masterly piece of work[...]useful to the ordinary working linguist[...]It can be used as a model for writing a detailed technical grammar of an unusual language. It is an excellent model for anyone who must write a grammar of a severely endangered language, especially when the grammar is likely to be THE scholarly repository for all human time of that language's structure."
-Terry Malone, SIL

From the Publisher