Language Variation: Papers on Variation and Change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in Honour of James A. Matisoff ; [edited By] David Bradley ... [et Al.].David Bradley Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 2003 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 320 pages 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. |
Contents
themes and variations | 21 |
Variegated tonal developments in Tibetan | 35 |
Some case studies on linguistic variation and their implications | 53 |
Copyright | |
2 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Asian Athpare Bantawa Belhare Bodish languages borrowed Boyd Michailovsky Camling Cantonese Chantyal Chinese clause consonants constrain the interpretation construction context David Bradley demonstrative dialects distinction English verb compounding ergative example genitive going to follow Graham Thurgood grammatical grammaticalisation hanzi Hayu Himalayish Hmong Indosphere initial Kiranti languages Kulung Lahu Lepcha lexical Limbu Linguistics Lisu loanwords locative Lolo lug rov Mandarin marker marking Matisoff morphemes nasal Nepali Newari noun onset prothesis Oroqen Pacific Linguistics pattern phonological Phù Phu Kha plural prefixes pronominal pronouns prothesis Randy LaPolla rhyme rimes second person secret languages semantic semanticised Sino-Tibetan languages Sinosphere Southeast Asia speakers split structure Studies suffixes syllabary syllables symbols syntactic T/+N T/+N T/+N Tamang tautomorphemicity third person Thulung Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Area Tibeto-Burman languages time-ordinals tonal tone topic Tsat typological profile voiced voiceless vowel Wambule word wugyo Yamphu Zhang Zheng