Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

3-2001

Abstract

This thick book is the first supplement to the Handbook of Amazonian languages (henceforward, HAL) to appear in nearly a decade. Building upon the best tradition of missionary-inspired descriptive linguistic work fostered in connection with Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) activities, editors Desmond Derbyshire and Geoffrey Pullum launched HAL during the mid1980s as a means of attracting scholarly attention to one of the world's most persistently ignored linguistic areas. With the appearance of Vol. 4, HAL coverage of the Amazon now increases to three typological studies, four historical-comparative analyses, and ten grammatical descriptions of languages belonging to eight different genetic groupings. Unfortunately, this tally barely begins to approach exhaustive coverage of the region, since the rain forests of South America are home to at least 300 languages divided among about 20 families and two dozen isolates. Nevertheless, given the spate of new publications on Amazonian languages over the past decade, many by linguists with SIL affiliation or who were inspired by exposure to earlier volumes of HAL, the series has clearly achieved the goal of drawing the serious attention of a growing number of linguists to the Amazon.

Publication Title

Journal of Linguistics

Volume

37

Issue

1

First Page

187

Last Page

194

Required Publisher's Statement

Copyright 2001 Cambridge University Press. The original published version may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022226701238766.

Subjects - Topical (LCSH)

Indians of South America--Brazil--Languages; Amazon River Region--Languages

Geographic Coverage

Brazil; Amazon River Region

Genre/Form

reviews (documents)

Type

Text

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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