Language variation: Papers on variation
and change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in honour
of James A. Matisoff
Bradley, David, Randy LaPolla, Boyd Michailovsky
and Graham Thurgood (editors)
OUT OF PRINT - PDF FILE ONLY
This volume discusses the nature
of variation and change in a number of East, Southeast and
South Asian languages, especially of the Sino-Tibetan family,
also extending to other languages, even as far afield as English.
The papers honour the work of James A. Matisoff, in celebration
of his 65th birthday. There are nineteen papers by twenty
authors concerning issues in phonology, morphology, syntax,
language contact, orthography and language documentation.
Randy LaPolla provides a paper with broad theoretical implications,
'Why languages differ: variation in the conventionalisation
of constraints on inference'. Martha Ratliff writes on Hmong
secret languages. Graham Thurgood and Fengxiang Li give an
account of contact-induced variation and syntactic change
in the Austronesian Tsat language of Hainan. Benji Wald's
contribution considers verb compounding in English and East
Asian languages.
The other papers in the volume concern Sino-Tibetan languages.
Balthasar Bickel writes on prosodic tautomorphemicity in Sino-Tibetan
word structure. Robert Bauer discusses the impact of English
loanwords on the Hong Kong Cantonese syllabary. Eleven papers
are on Tibeto-Burman topics. David Bradley discusses deictic
patterns in Lisu and SE Tibeto-Burman. Jackson Sun describes
tonal developments in Tibetan, while Michel Ferlus writes
on borrowing from Middle Chinese into Proto Tibetan. Yasuhiko
Nagano describes negation particles in Gyarong (Sichuan) and
David Peterson agreement and grammatical relations in Hyow
(Bangladesh). Jerold Edmondson provides data from Phù
Lá, Xá Phó, Lô Lô, all located
in Vietnam.
Five of the Tibeto-Burman papers concern languages of Nepal.
Michael Noonan writes on recent language contact among Tibeto-Nurman
languages of the Himalaya. Carol Genetti provides some case
studies on linguistic variation involving Newar. Boyd Michailovsky
describes time-ordinals in Kiranti languages, Aimée
Lahaussois ergativity in Thulung Rai , and Martine Mazaudon
the discourse/grammar interface in Tamang. Two papers deal
with orthographic issues. R.K. Sprigg describes the Lepcha
and Limbu (Tibeto-Burman) scripts of Nepal and Mark Hansell
analyses variations in Chinese character choice in writing
loanwords in Taiwan.
Published: 2003
PL 555, ISBN 0 85883 541
Pages: xii + 320
Prices: Australia A$79.20 (inc. GST), Overseas
A$72.00
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