The World's Major Languages

by Bernard Comrie (Editor)

Overview

The World's Major Languages features over 50 of the world's languages and language families.

This revised edition includes updated bibliographies for each chapter and up-to-date census figures. The featured languages have been chosen based on the number of speakers, their role as official languages and their cultural and historical importance. Each language is looked at in depth, and the chapters provide information on both grammatical features and on salient features of the language's history and cultural role.

The World's Major Languages is an accessible and essential reference work for linguists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367580711
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2020
Edition description:	3rd ed.
Pages:	952
Sales rank:	535,277
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bernard Comrie is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Indo-European Languages 2. Germanic Languages 3. English 4. German 5. Dutch 6. Danish, Norwegian and Swedish 7. Latin and the Italic Languages 8. Romance Languages 9. French 10. Spanish 11. Portuguese 12. Italian 13. Romanian 14. Slavonic Languages 15. Russian 16. Polish 17. Czech and Slovak 18. Serbo-Croat: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian 19. Greek 20. Indo-Aryan Languages 21. Sanskrit 22. Hindi-Urdu 23. Bengali 24. Iranian Languages 25. Persian 26. Pashto 27. Uralic Languages 28. Hungarian 29. Finnish 30. Turkish and the Turkic Languages 31. Afroasiatic Languages 32. Semitic Languages 33. Arabic 34. Hebrew 35. Amharic 36. Hausa and the Chadic Languages 37. Tamil and the Dravidian Languages 38. Tai Languages 39. Thai 40. Vietnamese 41. Sino-Tibetan Languages 42. Chinese 43. Burmese 44. Japanese 45. Korean 46. Austronesian Languages 47. Malay-Indonesian 48. Javanese 49. Tagalog 50. Niger-Kordafian (Niger-Congo) Languages 51. Yoruba 52. Swahili and the Bantu Languages

Editorial Reviews

This is a treasury of authoritative yet concise information about major languages and language families. The emphasis is on Indo-European, over half the book being devoted to that family. Each of the 50 chapters is written by an expert in that field. Phonology, morphology, and syntax are discussed, and, where appropriate, the writing system. Some chapters, such as that on Chinese, are very lucid and accessible to the non-expert; others are more difficult. This is not a book for beginners, and specialists will have more detailed treatments at their disposal. Its best use would seem to be in an academic reference collection, for the scholar to dip into to refresh his or her memory of a language once studied, or to get a birds-eye view of a language not studied. Includes a language index and bibliographies. Catherine V. von Schon, SUNY at Stonybrook Lib.

Library Journal

"A magnificent piece of scholarship and editorical assembling, at—considering what books cost today—a surprisingly low price."—R.M.R. Hall, Queens College, CUNY

"This is the most thorough survey of languages and language families that I have seen which is suitable for undergraduate courses. The scholarship offers models to emulate while the selection of language groups and contributors can only serve to broaden multi-cultural awareness in students."—Patricia S. Burton, Northeast Missouri State University

"The best extant survey on the subject. It would be an excellent text for a course on world languages, or even one in general linguistics."—William E. McMahon, University of Akron

"The amount and quality of historical, sociological, and linguistic information presented in typical chapters dealing with a given language are amazing. Most chapters also include extensive descriptions of the phonological and graphic systems, morphology, word-formation, syntactic patterns, and characteristic features of the lexicon. For inflected languages, detailed and synoptic charts of major declension and conjugation classes are provided....This unique work is an important and reliable source of extensive knowledge about particular languages and their families."—American Reference Books Annual

"This impressive volume supersedes similar ones...in its treatment of families of languages and individual idioms."—Language Problems and Language Planning

"An excellent survey....The volume is recommended as a standard reference for all institutional libraries and for general readers."—Choice

"A treasury of authoritative yet concise information about major languages and language families."—Library Journal

"A substantial resource on modern languages....Recommended for all academic and large public libraries."—The Reference Book Review

From the Publisher