Overview

The Indigenous Languages of the Americas takes stock of what is known about the history and classification of these languages and language families. It identifies the gaps in knowledge and puts them into perspective, and it assesses differences of opinion. It also resolves some issues and makes new contributions of its own. The nine chapters of the book deal incisively with the major themes involving these languages: the classification and history of the Indigenous languages of North American, Middle American (Mexico and Central America), and South American; difficulties involving names of the languages; origins of the languages of the New World; unclassified, phantom, fake, and spurious languages in the Americas; recent hypotheses of remote linguistic relationships; the linguistic areas of the Americas; contact languages, including pidgins, lingua francas, and mixed languages; and loanwords and other new words in the native languages of the Americas.

Full Product Details

9780197673461

Table of Contents

Reviews

Campbell's book is a comprehensive guide to the Indigenous languages of North, Central, and South America and should be of use to any interested reader. It particularly covers the history and current state of the classification of these languages into families, subfamilies, and superfamilies, with updated evaluations of various traditional and recent methods for doing this and of claims of distant relationships. Linguistic areas and the diffusion of words and features between and among related and unrelated languages are also treated, as are contact languages. Particular attention is paid to ambiguous and confusing language and language-group names that appear in the literature. * Ives Goddard, Senior Linguist, Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution * This monumental book encapsulates the latest research on the classification and history of hundreds of indigenous New World languages. In addition to discussing the language families and individual languages of North, South, and Central America in great detail, it includes chapters on linguistic areas, contact languages, mixed languages, and loanwords and other neologisms, as well as a survey of unclassified and (intriguingly) spurious languages. This book is a must-read for anyone with any interest in the languages of the Americas. * Sarah Thompson, University of Michigan * This book offers a detailed account of all the languages which are native to the Americas. Authored by Professor Lyle Campbell, one of the world's greatest experts in this highly complex field, it takes the reader on a breathtaking journey through three subcontinents, home to a thousand languages, either vital or dormant, and divided over more than 160 unrelated language families and isolates. It exposes the incredible linguistic diversity and richness of the New World... struggling to preserve a unique heritage of multilingual and multicultural diversity. The history of pioneering classificatory efforts, as well as significant recent advances in language classification related to the Americas, receive all the attention to which they are entitled. * Willem F.H. Adelaar, Emeritus Professor in Linguistics, Leiden University *

Author Information

Lyle Campbell, PhD is Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawai'i Manoa. His specializations include Indigenous languages of the Americas, historical linguistic documentation, fieldwork, and language typology. He has held appointments in Anthropology, Latin American Studies, Linguistics, and Spanish.

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