Recent ucpress_ucpl items

Yuki Grammar

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Yuki language, including Huchnom and Coast Yuki, was spoken in Mendocino County until relatively recently (the last speaker died in 1983). This grammar is based primarily on spoken narratives recorded by Alfred Kroeber between 1901-1911. While Yuki was extensively documented over the course of the twentieth century, there is relatively little in the way of actual published works on the language. Balodis discusses the language within the historical and cultural context of the people who spoke it.

A Grammar of Cupeño

Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In one of the most thorough studies ever prepared of a California language, Hill’s grammar reviews the phonology, morphology, syntax and discourse features of Cupeño, a Uto-Aztecan (takic) language of California. Cupeño exhibits many unusual typological features, including split ergativity, that require linguists to revise our understanding of the development of the Uto-Aztecan family of languages in historical and areal perspective.

A Reference Grammar of Wappo

Fri, 13 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Wappo is an indigenous language, generally regarded as a language isolate, which was once spoken in the Russian River Valley, just north of San Francisco, California. This reference grammar is based on the speech of Laura Fish Somersal, its last fluent speaker, who died in 1990, and represents the most extensive data and grammatical research ever done on this language. The grammar focuses on morphosyntax, particularly nominal, verbal, and clausal structures and clause combining patterns, from a functional/typological perspective.

Chimariko Grammar: Areal and Typological Perspective

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Chimariko language, now extinct, was spoken in Trinity County, California. This reference grammar, based on data collected by Harrington in the 1920s, represents the most comprehensive description of the language. Written from a functional-typological perspective this work also examines language contact in Northern California showing that grammatical traits are often shared among genetically unrelated languages in geographically contiguous areas.

The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This pioneering book is the prototype of the etymological thesaurus that has been the goal of the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus project (STEDT) since 1987. It presents nearly 170 Proto-Tibeto-Burman etymologies in the semantic area of the reproductive system, along with discussions of possible Chinese cognates. Special attention is paid to patterns of semantic associations between the reproductive system and other areas of the lexicon.

Crossing Aspectual Frontiers: Emergence, Evolution, and Interwoven Semantic Domains in South Conchucos Quechua Discourse

Fri, 9 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Crossing Aspectual Frontiers: Emergence, Evolution, and Interwoven Semantic Domains in South Conchucos Quechua Discourse

A Grammar of Nzadi [B865] : A Bantu Language of Democratic Republic of Congo

Tue, 1 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This publication presents the first documentation of Nzadi, a Bantu language spoken by fishermen along the Kasai River in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is the product of extensive study by the authors and participants in field methods and group study courses at the University of California, Berkeley, and consists of ten chapters covering the segmental phonology, tone system, morphology, and sentence structure, followed by appendices on the Nzadi people and history and on Proto-Bantu to Nzadi sound changes. Also included are three texts and a lexicon of over 1100 entries, including a number of fish species. Prior to this work, Nzadi had not even been mentioned in the literature, and at this time still has no entry as a language or dialect in the Ethnologue. Of particular interest in the study of Nzadi is its considerable grammatical simplification, resulting in structures quite different from those of canonical Bantu languages. Although Nzadi has lost most of...

Ingush Grammar

Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Comprehensive reference grammar of Ingush, a language of the Nakh branch of the Nakh-Daghestanian or East Caucasian language family of the central Caucasus (southern Russia). Ingush is notable for its complex phonology, prosody including minimal tone system, complex morphology of both nouns and verbs, clause chaining, long-distance reflexivization, and extreme degree of syntactic ergativity.

Consonant Harmony: Long-Distance Interaction in Phonology

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Consonant Harmony: Long-Distance Interaction in Phonology

Dictionary of Upriver Halkomelem, Volume I

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Dictionary of Upriver Halkomelem, Volume I

Coproduction and Coarticulation in IsiZulu Clicks

Mon, 3 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This book provides an in-depth look at the production of clicks using a variety of different techniques. Static palatography, linguography, electropalatography, and aerodynamic data, including the intra-oral pressure of the click cavity, never previously before measured, all combine to create a comprehensive picture of click consonants. This important work provides conclusive evidence that click consonants co-articulate, or adjust their articulation, with adjacent consonants in interesting ways.

Although clicks are widely considered to be among the most interesting classes of segments, many aspects of their phonetics are little known. This book examines how the three different click types of IsiZulu differ from each other in their production in both spatial and temporal dimensions, and considers the question of how these complex segments are integrated into the stream of speech. Strong claims have been made in the literature that clicks do not coarticulate, but there...

English-Lahu Lexicon

Mon, 17 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Lahu is an important minority language of Southeast Asia, belonging to the Lolo-Burmese subgroup of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is spoken by over 500,000 people in China. Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

This English-Lahu Lexicon (ELL) is a computer-aided but manually edited "reversal" of the author's monumental Lahu-English dictionary (The Dictionary of Lahu, UCPL #111, 1988, xxv + 1436 pp.).

ELL contains nearly 5400 head-entries and well over 10,000 carefully arranged subentries. Every Lahu expression is provided with a form-class designation to indicate its grammatical function. Eight useful Appendices (e.g. Plant and Animal Names) round out the volume's 450 pages.

Proto-Wintun

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This volume represents a reconstruction of Proto-Wintun, the parent language of a group of California Indian languages. It includes a grammatical sketch of Proto-Wintun, cognate sets with reconstructions and an index to the reconstructions. The book fulfills a need for in-depth reconstructions of proto-languages for California Indian language families, both for theoretical purposes and deeper comparison with other proto- or pre-languages.

Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman: System and Philosophy of Sino-Tibetan Reconstruction

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This 800-page volume is a clear and readable presentation of the current state of research on the history of the Tibeto-Burman (TB) language family, a typologically diverse group of over 250 languages spoken in Southern China, the Himalayas, NE India, and peninsular Southeast Asia. The TB languages are the only proven relatives of Chinese, with which they form the great Sino-Tibetan family.

The exposition is systematic, treating the reconstruction of all the elements of the TB proto-syllable in turn, including initial consonants (Ch. III), prefixes (Ch. IV), monophthongal and diphthongal rhymes (Ch. V), final nasals (Ch. VII), final stops (Ch. VIII), final liquids (Ch. IX), root-final *-s (Ch. X), suffixes (Ch. XI). Particular attention is paid to variational phenomena at all historical levels (e.g. Ch. XII "Allofamic variation in rhymes").

This Handbook builds on the best previous scholarship, and adds up-to-date material that has accumulated over the past 30 years....