A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia PDF
by Alexandra Y. (La Trobe University, Victoria) Aikhenvald
Part of the Cambridge Grammatical Descriptions series
Description
This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle.
Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages.
Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number.
Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else.
This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.
Information
-
Download - Immediately Available
- Format:PDF
- Pages:58 Tables, unspecified; 58 Plates, unspecified; 1 Maps; 1 Halftones, black and white; 1 Line drawing
- Publisher:Cambridge University Press
- Publication Date:01/10/2013
- Category:
- ISBN:9781107266629
Information
-
Download - Immediately Available
- Format:PDF
- Pages:58 Tables, unspecified; 58 Plates, unspecified; 1 Maps; 1 Halftones, black and white; 1 Line drawing
- Publisher:Cambridge University Press
- Publication Date:01/10/2013
- Category:
- ISBN:9781107266629
