Preface

Chapters in this book

1. I-IV I
2. Preface V
3. Contributors XI
4. Introduction: The comparative method 1
5. 1. American Indian Languages
6. Summary report: American Indian languages and principles of language change 17
7. The role of typology in American Indian historical linguistics 33
8. Morphosyntax and problems of reconstruction in Yuman and Hokan 57
9. Tlingit: A portmanteau language family? 73
10. Algonquian linguistic change and reconstruction 99
11. Mayan languages and linguistic change 115
12. 2. Austronesian Languages
13. Summary report: Linguistic change and reconstruction methodology in the Austronesian language family 133
14. The "aberrant" (vs. "exemplary") Melanesian languages 155
15. The Austronesian monosyllabic root, radical or phonestheme 175
16. Ergativity east and west 195
17. Homomeric lexical classification 211
18. Patterns of sound change in the Austronesian languages 231
19. 3. Indo-European Languages
20. Summary report of the Indo-European panel 271
21. Phonology and morphology at the crossroads 275
22. Etymologies, equations, and comparanda: Types and values, and criteria for judgment 289
23. The historical grammar of Greek: A case study in the results of comparative linguistics 305
24. A survey of the comparative phonology of the so-called "Nostratic" languages 331
25. A few issues of contemporary Indo-European linguistics 359
26. Is the "comparative" method general or family-specific? 375
27. The homomeric argument for a Slavo-Germanic subgroup of Indo-European 385
28. 4. Australian Languages
29. Summary report: Linguistic change and reconstruction in the Australian language family 393
30. Verbal inflection and macro-subgroupings of Australian languages: The search for conjugation markers in non-Pama-Nyungan 403
31. Social parameters of linguistic change in an unstratified Aboriginal society 419
32. The significance of pronouns in the history of Australian languages 435
33. Prenasalization in Pama-Nyungan 451
34. 5. Altaic Languages
35. Summary report of the Altaic panel 479
36. Morphological clues to the relationships of Japanese and Korean 483
37. A rule of medial *-r- loss in pre-Old Japanese 511
38. Japanese and what other Altaic languages? 547
39. 6. Afro-Asiatic Languages
40. Summary report: Linguistic change and reconstruction in the Afro-Asiatic languages 565
41. Dialectal variation in Proto-Afroasiatic 577
42. Re-employment of grammatical morphemes in Chadic: Implications for language history 599
43. Interpretation of orthographic forms 619
44. The role of Egyptian within Afroasiatic (/Lislakh) 639
45. A survey of Omotic grammemes 661
46. The regularity of sound change: A Semitistic perspective 697
47. Subject index 723
48. Language index 733
49. Author index 745
50. 753-754 753