Grammars in Contact

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor and Associate Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University. She has worked on descriptive and historical aspects of Barber languages and published, in Russian, a grammar of Modern Hebrew (1990). She is a major authority on typological and areal features of South American languages, particularly of the Arawak family: Bare (1995, based on work with the last speaker, who has since died), Warekena (1998), and Tariana (2003). Her monographs include Classifiers: a Typology of Noun Categorization Devices (2000, 2003), Language Contact in Amazonia (2002) and Evidentiality (2004), all published by OUP. She is currently working on a reference grammar of Manambu, from the Sepik area of New Guinea. R.M.W. Dixon is Professor and Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University. He has published grammars of a number of Australian languages (including Dyirbal and Yidiñ), in addition to A Grammar of Boumaa Fijian (1988), The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia (2004) and A Semantic Approach to English Grammar (2005). His works on typological theory include Where have All the Adjectives Gone? and Other Essays (1982) and Ergativity (1994). His essay The Rise and Fall of Languages (1997) expounded a punctuated equilibrium model for language development which is the basis for his detailed case study Australian Languages: their Nature and Development (2002). He is currently working on an extensive study of the basic linguistic theory.

Aikhenvald's numerous publications, study, and research are evident in this edited collection...Its descriptive approach with an underlying functional explanation of language contact principles makes it a readable collection of well-edited articles on language contact.

• 1. Grammars in Contact: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective ; 2. Grammatical Diffusion in Australia: Free and Bound Pronouns ; 3. How Long do Linguistic Areas Last? Western Nilotic Grammars in Contact ; 4. Grammars in Contact in the Volta Basin (West Africa): On COntact Induced Grammatical Change in Likpe ; 5. Basque in Contact with Romance Languages ; 6. Language Contact and Convergence in East Timor: The Case of Tetun Dili ; 7. Language Contact and Convergence in Pennsylvania German ; 8. Balkanizing the Balkan Sprachbund: A Closer Look at Grammatical Permeability and Feature Distribution ; 9. Cantonese Grammar in Areal Perspective ; 10. Semantics and Pragmatics of Grammatical Relations in the Vaupes Linguistic Area ; 11. The Vaupes Melting Pot: Tukanoan Influence on Hup ; 12. The Quechua Impact in Amuesha, an Arawak Language of the Peruvian Amazon ; 13. Feeling the Need: The Borrowing of Cariban Functional Categories into Mawayana (Arawak) ; Glossary of Terms ; Index