Mouton-CASL Grammar Series [MCASL]
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Edited by:
Anne Boyle David
, Claudia Brugman , Thomas J. Conners and Amalia Gnanadesikan
The series aims to make a significant contribution to modern language studies by providing up-to-date, linguistically sophisticated, and comprehensive language materials, of use to a wide spectrum of users, on major world languages which have hitherto been largely neglected.
Topics
This book offers a contemporary look at Somali from the standpoint of its major varieties and provides a comprehensive account of the language that is grounded in linguistic theory and the latest scholarship. The grammar includes an extensive array of examples drawn from online corpora and from fieldwork with native speakers of the language.
Hindko, Panjabi, and Saraiki are three closely related, geographically contiguous languages of Pakistan. Together, they are the native language of some 125 million people. Panjabi alone ranks among the 15 most widely spoken languages in the world. The Grammar of Hindko, Panjabi, and Saraiki provides a comparative description of these three language varieties, focusing, where possible, on the variety of Hindko spoken in Abbottabad, the Panjabi spoken in Lahore, and the Saraiki spoken in Multan. Based on both fieldwork and corpus research, the grammar provides coverage of the phonology, orthography, morphology, and syntax of the language, with extensive exemplification presented in the native Perso-Arabic script along with standard Roman representations and morphological analysis. Written in an accessible style from a basic linguistic theory perspective, this work will be of use to linguistic researchers, language scholars, and students of the languages of Pakistan and South Asia.
Dhivehi, the language of the Maldives, has received little attention in the linguistic literature, and no other comprehensive grammar of the standard language has yet been published.
This work describes the phonology, unique orthography, morphology, and syntax of standard Dhivehi. Plentiful examples with native orthography, Roman transliteration, and morpheme-by-morpheme glossing illustrate the various features of the language.
This grammar will be of use both to linguists and to students of Dhivehi.
Bangla is spoken as the majority language in Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India, and as a minority language in several other Indian states. With almost 200 million native speakers, it ranks among the top ten languages in the world in number of speakers.
Based on both primary and secondary materials, the CASL Bangla grammar provides comprehensive coverage of the phonology, orthography, morphology, and syntax of Bangla. Plentiful examples of naturally-occurring sentences provide native orthography, Romanization, and morpheme-by-morpheme glossing along with free translations. Unlike many Romanizations of Bangla, our system eschews Sanskritic influence and instead reflects actual Bangla phonology. We also offer comparative information of use to linguists, highlighting features of Bangla shared with the South Asian sprachbund, such as light verb constructions, as well as those that differentiate Bangla from its Indo-Aryan relatives; for example, its unique NP structure.
Written in an accessible style from a theory-neutral perspective, this work will be of use to linguistic researchers, language scholars, and students of Bangla. A formal grammar focusing on the morphology is an available companion work.
Pashto/Pushto/Pukhto is a group of varieties used by as many as 30 million people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, yet a grammar describing these varieties collectively has not been published. The CASL Pashto grammar originates from extensive use of both primary and secondary materials. It attends to features of both spoken and written forms of Pashto and exemplifies the latter generously with naturally-occurring sentences. Detailed descriptions are provided of the phonology and orthography and of the inflectional and derivational morphology applied to all major word classes, with special attention to the complex morphology of verb formation and descriptions of the multiple pronominal systems. Notes on some of the prominent syntactic constructions are provided as a descriptive basis for learners of Pashto and for those interested in syntactic properties characteristic of South Asian languages. For the first time, the highly distinctive Middle dialects, including Waziri, receive attention next to the other major dialect groups. A formal grammar focusing on the morphology is an available companion work.