The Munda Verb

The Munda Verb is a unique book on the typology of the verb in the Munda language family, and the first of its kind on any language family of the Indian subcontinent. The author painstakingly works out nearly all the details of the morphology of the verb in each modern Munda language and offers a description of the typology of the Munda verbal systems both individually and collectively. The author uses a large amount of data from modern Munda languages, as well as an extensive cross-linguistic corpus offering comparisons from genetically unrelated languages such as Fox, Amele, Kinyarwanda, Luyia, Takelma, Tonkawa, Burushaski, or Tangut where relevant. Points of note include the unusual incorporation system of South Munda Sora and the elaborate and complex system of verb agreement attested in the Kherwarian Munda languages. Further, the author discusses models for a Proto-Munda verbal system and problems in its reconstruction at various points throughout. This book is of great interest to specialists working on the Munda languages, South Asian linguistics, language typology, historical linguistics and to scholars of both morphology as well as syntax.

The Munda group of languages of the Austroasiatic family are spoken within central and eastern India by almost ten million people. To date, they are the least well-known and least documented languages of the Indian subcontinent. This unprecedented and original work draws together a distinguished group of international experts in the field of Munda language research and presents current assessments of a wide range of typological and comparative-historical issues, providing agendas for future research. Representing the current state of Munda Linguistics, this volume provides detailed descriptions of almost all of the languages in the family, in addition to a brief chapter discussing the enigmatic Nihali language.

This volume elevates historical morpho-syntax to a research priority in the field of Southeast Asian language history, transcending the traditional focus on phonology and lexicon. The eleven chapters reflect work by 13 leading researchers in Austroasiatic language studies.

No detailed description available for "Pratidanam: Indian, Iranian, and Indo-European studies presented to Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper on his sixtieth birthday".

This is a selection of papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics held August 9-13, 1999, at the University of British Columbia. From the rich program and the many papers given during this conference, the present twenty-three papers were carefully selected to display the state of current research in the field of historical linguistics.

Intransitive Predication constitutes a major contribution to the study of typological linguistics and theoretical linguistics in general. Basing his analysis on a sample of 410 languages, Leon Stassen investigates cross-linguistic variation in one of the core domains of all natural languages. The author views this domain as a `cognitive space', the topography of which is the same for all languages. It is assumed to consist of four subdomains, which correspond to a four-way distinction between the semantic classes of event predicates, property predicates, class predicates, and locational predicates. Leon Stassen offers a typology of the structural manifestations of this domain, in terms of the nature and number of the formal strategies used in its encoding. He discusses a number of abstract principles which can be employed in explaining the cross-linguistic variation embodied by the typology. In the final chapter, he brings together the research results in a universally applicable model, which can be read as a `flow chart' for the encoding of intransitive predications in different language types.

The Present Volume Presents A Detailed Account Of Phonological, Morphological And Syntactic Features Of Munda And Himalayan Languages Belonging To Two Ethnically And Linguistically Heterogeneous Groups Of People Of The Indian Subcontinent.