The Integration of Language and Society

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Indigenous Health Equity Research at the Cairns Campus of Central Queensland University. She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (CUP, 2003) and The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea (OUP, 2008; paperback 2010), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American and Papuan languages and typological issues including evidentials, classifiers, and serial verbs. Her other recent publications with OUP include Imperatives and Commands (2010), Languages of the Amazon (2012; paperback 2015), The Art of Grammar (2015), How Gender Shapes the World (2016; paperback 2018), and Serial Verbs (2018).R. M. W. Dixon is Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Indigenous Health Equity Research at the Cairns Campus of Central Queensland University. He has published grammars of a number of Australian languages (including Dyirbal and Yidiñ), as well as studies of Boumaa Fijian (University of Chicago Press, 1988) and Jarawara (OUP, 2004). His book The Rise and Fall of Languages (CUP, 1997) expounded a punctuated equilibrium model for language development; this is the basis for his detailed case study Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development (CUP, 2002). His many publications with OUP include the three-volume work Basic Linguistic Theory (2010-12), Making New Words (2014), Edible Gender, Mother-in-Law Style, and Other Grammatical Wonders (2015; paperback 2020), Are Some Languages Better than Others? (2016; paperback 2018), and English Prepositions: Their Meanings and Uses (2021).Nerida Jarkey is Honorary Associate Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Sydney. She has a particular interest in the semantics of grammar, with a focus on transitivity and on multi-verb constructions in Japanese and White Hmong. She also investigates how speakers use grammatical elements not only to convey propositional and interpersonal meanings but also to construct socio-cultural meanings and identities. Her monograph Serial Verbs in White Hmong was published by Brill in 2015 as part of the series 'Studies in Language, Cognition and Culture'.

Overall this is a very welcome book, and it contains abundant references to other writings by the co--editors and by others which evidently give fuller information on some of the phenomena discussed. I very much hope that these and other publications in a similar vein may represent a wider reorientation of linguistics towards the study of the real differences between human languages, and away from the vain efforts of linguists of the recent past to portray all languages as "underlyingly" alike.

• 1: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R. M. W. Dixon, Nerida Jarkey: The integration of language and society: A cross-linguistic view 2: Nerida Jarkey: The grammatical expression of social relations in Japanese 3: Stephen Watters: Honorification in Dzongkha 4: Pema Wangdi: Identifying who is who in Brokpa 5: R. M. W. Dixon: The semantics of the Dyirbal avoidance style: Adjectives 6: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald: The ways of speaking and the means of knowing: The Tariana of northwest Amazonia 7: Katarzyna I. Wojtylak: Links between language and society among the Murui of Northwest Amazonia 8: Luca Ciucci: How grammar and culture interact in Zamucoan 9: Dineke Schokkin: The integration of languages and society: A view from multilingual Southern New Guinea 10: Maarten Mous: The Iraqw society reflected in their language 11: Anne Storch: Waiting: On language and hospitality