Ives Goddard (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, 17: Languages. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1996. Pp. xiii, 957. Hb $74.00.

Abstract

The Languages volume has been perhaps the most eagerly awaited of the Smithsonian Institution's monumental revision and updating, over the past three decades, of the Handbook of North American Indians, the original of which was produced by the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) in the early years of the twentieth century (Hodge 1907). Linguists and ethnologists alike will find illustrative data on a range of language-related topics, accompanied by contemporary interpretations. Volume editor Goddard is to be congratulated for the scope and detail of this effort to characterize the state of the Americanist linguistic art. The volume consists of an Introduction by Goddard (1–16), a series of what we may call “discursive” articles by several authors, and a set of “Grammatical sketches,” followed by a Bibliography and Index.