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The Use and Development of the Xinkan Languages
Once spoken only in Santa Rosa Department, Guatemala, the Xinkan language family is unique within Mesoamerica, comprising four closely related languages that are unrelated to any of the other language groups used within the region. Descriptions of Xinkan date to 1770 but are typically only sketches or partial word lists. Not even the community of indigenous people who identify as Xinka today—the last speakers—have had access to a reliable descriptive source on their ancestral tongue. Preserving this endangered communication system in accurate, thorough detail, The Use and Development of the Xinkan Languages presents a historical framework, internal classifications, and both synchronic and diachronic descriptions, incorporating all elements of grammar based on extensive unpublished data collected in the 1970s by Lyle Campbell and Terrence Kaufman.This valuable contribution is enhanced by author Chris Rogers's emphasis on contextualizing the findings. Introducing the languages, Rogers presents important information regarding the social and cultural milieu of the speakers. He also traces a phonological reconstruction of Proto-Xinkan and reconstructs historical morphology and syntax. These revelations are of particular interest because the development of Xinka and the many aspects of Xinka morphosyntax have not been well understood. A sample text, \"Na Mulha Uy,\" is included as well. Solving numerous complex, centuries-old linguistic puzzles, The Use and Development of the Xinkan Languages unlocks new potential for the rediscovery of a rich cultural history.
eBook
The greatest invention : a history of the world in nine mysterious scripts
\"Silvia Ferrara leads a code cracking mission to decipher the hidden truths and histories of our greatest invention--the art of writing\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Variation, contact, and reconstruction in the ancient Indo-European languages : between linguistics and philology
This book reflects the vibrancy of historical linguistics, showing how research on ancient Indo-European languages contributes to the understanding of the principles and patterns of language organization and change, including studies on typologically natural tendencies and cognitive universals.
eBook
The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia
This book, derived from the acclaimed Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages, describes the ancient languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia, for the convenience of students and specialists working in that area. Each chapter of the work focuses on an individual language or, in some instances, a set of closely related varieties of a language. Providing a full descriptive presentation, each of these chapters examines the writing system(s), phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of that language, and places the language within its proper linguistic and historical context. The volume brings together an international array of scholars, each a leading specialist in ancient language study. While designed primarily for scholars and students of linguistics, this work will prove invaluable to all whose studies take them into the realm of ancient language.
eBook
The precursors of Proto-Indo-European : the Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic hypotheses
\"In The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European some of the world's leading experts in historical linguistics shed new light on two hypotheses about the prehistory of the Indo-European language family, the so-called Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic hypotheses. The Indo-Anatolian hypothesis states that the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family should be viewed as a sister language of 'classical' Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all the other, non-Anatolian branches. The common ancestor of all Indo-European languages, including Anatolian, can then be called Proto-Indo-Anatolian. The Indo-Uralic hypothesis states that the closest genetic relative of Indo-European is the Uralic language family, and that both derive from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-Uralic. The book unravels the history of these hypotheses and scrutinizes the evidence for and against them. Contributors are Stefan H. Bauhaus, Rasmus G. Bj²rn, Dag Haug, Petri Kallio, Simona Klemenéciéc, Alwin Kloekhorst, Frederik Kortlandt, Guus Kroonen, Martin J. Kèummel, Milan Lopuhaèa-Zwakenberg, Alexander Lubotsky, Rosemarie Lèuhr, Michaèel Peyrot, Tijmen Pronk, Andrei Sideltsev, Michiel de Vaan, Mikhail Zhivlov\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Religious Texts of the Khotons of Mongolia: “Garvaa Gorvoo”
The purpose of this article is driven by the need to interpret linguistic facts found in the folklore of particular people in order to archive their extinct language. To achieve this goal, a task was set to study one of the religious texts of the Khotons – a small Turkic ethnic group living in Mongolia – which has been preserved orally. Using a comparative-historical research design and the methods of internal and external reconstruction, morphological structures within the sampled text were studied and loanwords identified. Variation A of Garvaa Gorvoo in the Khoton language acted as the primary source for this study. a distributive analysis was conducted encompassing both semantic and phonological features of the Mongolian language and the text written in Mongolian Cyrillic, which greatly resembled the Khoton language of the sampled text. For the first time, the unique winding speech style of the Khoton ethnic group in Mongolia was analyzed, translated into Kazakh and English, and its content revealed. The results reveal that due to the close connection of religious texts with Arabic, Garvaa Gorvoo was determined by the meaning of the Arabic word ġurbat (غربة) or gharbā; hence proving the association with the Arabic language. This analysis also revealed grammatical forms and previously undocumented lexical items. The results of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of the historical and cultural identity of the Khotons in Mongolia. Furthermore, they help determine the phonetic and lexico-grammatical characteristics of their spoken language, revealing its connections to Turkic languages, and open the way to archiving the language by presenting a \"living fact\" of this extinct language to the international scholarly community.
Journal Article