American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native AmericaNative American languages are spoken from Siberia to Greenland, and from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego; they include the southernmost language of the world (Yaghan) and some of the northernmost (Eskimoan). Campbell's project is to take stock of what is currently known about the history of Native American languages and in the process examine the state of American Indian historical linguistics, and the success and failure of its various methodologies. There is remarkably little consensus in the field, largely due to the 1987 publication of Language in the Americas by Joseph Greenberg. He claimed to trace a historical relation between all American Indian languages of North and South America, implying that most of the Western Hemisphere was settled by a single wave of immigration from Asia. This has caused intense controversy and Campbell, as a leading scholar in the field, intends this volume to be, in part, a response to Greenberg. Finally, Campbell demonstrates that the historical study of Native American languages has always relied on up-to-date methodology and theoretical assumptions and did not, as is often believed, lag behind the European historical linguistic tradition. |
Contents
3 | |
2 The History of American Indian Linguistics | 26 |
3 The Origin of Native American Languages | 90 |
4 Languages of North America | 107 |
5 Languages of Middle America | 156 |
6 Languages of South America | 170 |
The Methods | 206 |
The Proposals | 260 |
9 Linguistic Areas of the Americas | 330 |
Maps | 353 |
Notes | 377 |
References | 429 |
483 | |
504 | |
510 | |
Other editions - View all
American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America Lyle Campbell Limited preview - 1997 |
American Indian Languages: The Historical Linguistics of Native America Lyle Campbell No preview available - 1997 |
Common terms and phrases
Algonquian American Indian languages Amerind Arawakan areal Atakapa Athabaskan Aymara Beothuk Boas borrowing Brazil Brinton California Campbell Carib Cariban Chapter Chibchan cited classification list Coahuilteco cognate Comecrudo compared comparisons consonants Cotoname Darnell dence dialects diffusion Duponceau evidence example extinct forms Gatschet glottalized Goddard Golla grammatical Greenberg groups guages Haas Haida Hokan Hokan languages hypothesis Iroquoian Kaufman Kinkade Kroeber language families lexical linguistic area Maipurean Mayan Mayan languages methods Miwok Molala morphemes morphological Muskogean Na-Dene Nahuatl nasals Natchez Native American languages North America Northern Northwest Coast nouns obsolescent onomatopoetic Penutian phonetic phonological possible Powell prefixes presented pronominal pronoun proposed Proto Proto-Mayan Quechua Rankin reconstruction River Ruhlen Sahaptian Salishan Sapir scholars second person semantic shared similar Siouan Siouan languages sound correspondences South Southern Spanish speakers spoken subgroup suffix Swadesh Swanton Takelma Timucua tion Tlingit traits Uto-Aztecan verb vocabulary vowel Wappo words Yokuts Yuman