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  3. Cambridge Grammatical Descriptions

This series exists to publish comprehensive grammars of previously undescribed languages that are of outstanding theoretical interest. As such, it will assist the development of linguistic theory by making available information on new types of grammatical systems and will also contribute to the documentation of fast-disappearing languages. The length and organisation of each volume in the series will depend on the complexity of the language in question, but each will present a full explanatory account, providing a permanent record and a research resource that will continue to be studied long after the language itself has passed into extinction.

  • General Editors: R. M. W. Dixon, La Trobe University, Keren Rice, University of Toronto

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3 results in Cambridge Grammatical Descriptions

A Grammar of Semelai
  • Nicole Kruspe
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    08 April 2004
  • Semelai is a previously undescribed and endangered Aslian (Mon-Khmer) language of the Malay Peninsula. This book - the first in-depth description of an Aslian language - provides a comprehensive reference grammar of Semelai. Semelai intertwines two types of morphological system: a concatenative system of prefixes, suffixes and a circumfix - acquired through extended contact with Malay - and a nonconcatenative system of prefixes and infixes (including infix reduplication), inherited from Mon-Khmer. There are distinctive word classes - Nominals, Verbs and Expressives - the latter iconic utterances which simultaneously provide information about the predicate and its arguments. Semelai has many derivational processes which change word class or affect transitivity, and it combines both head-marking and dependent-marking profiles. It also has a rich phonemic system of 20 vowels and 32 consonants. Nicole Kruspe's discussion is complemented with a generous number of illustrative examples and texts, creating a reference work that will be welcomed by descriptivists and typologists alike.

A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia
  • Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
  • Published online:
    05 August 2013
    Print publication:
    07 August 2003
  • This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Tariana, an endangered Arawak language from a remote region in the northwest Amazonian jungle. Its speakers traditionally marry someone speaking a different language, and as a result most people are fluent in five or six languages. Because of this rampant multilingualism, Tariana combines a number of features inherited from the protolanguage with properties diffused from neighbouring but unrelated Tucanoan languages. Typologically unusual features of the language include: an array of classifiers independent of genders, complex serial verbs, case marking depending on the topicality of a noun, and double marking of case and of number. Tariana has obligatory evidentiality: every sentence contains a special element indicating whether the information was seen, heard, or inferred by the speaker, or whether the speaker acquired it from somebody else. This grammar will be a valuable source-book for linguists and others interested in natural languages.

A Grammar of Kham
  • David E. Watters
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    14 November 2002
  • First published in 2002, this is a comprehensive grammatical documentation of Kham, a previously undescribed language from west-central Nepal, belonging to the Tibeto-Burman language family. The language contains a number of grammatical systems that are of immediate relevance to current work on linguistic theory, including split ergativity, a mirative system, and a rich class of derived adjectivals. Its verb morphology has implications for the understanding of the history of the entire Tibeto-Burman family. The book, based on extensive fieldwork, deals with all major aspects of the language including segmental phonology, tone, word classes, noun phrases, nominalizations, transitivity alterations, tense-aspect-modality, non-declarative speech acts, and complex sentence structure. It provides copious examples throughout the exposition and includes three short native texts and a vocabulary of more than 400 words, many of them reconstructed for Proto-Kham and Proto-Tibeto-Burman.