11. Other Publications of Interest

Evolution Publishing: A Vocabulary of Wyandot by John Johnston, Benjamin Smith Barton, et al.

This volume (no. 30 in the American Language Reprints series) contains over 140 words of Wyandot collected by Col. John Johnson in 1819. Johnston was an Indian agent and “beloved friend” who was associated with the Wyandot and Shawnee tribes in Ohio for over 50 years. The volume also includes a smaller sample of about 40 Wyandot words collected by Benjamin Smith Barton in the late 18th century. Also included are three sets of Wyandot numerals collected by Conrad Weiser (1755), William Walker (1851), and Samuel Haldeman (1847).

January, 2003 ~ 45 pp. ~ clothbound ~ ISBN 1-889758-32-9 ~ $28.00

Evolution Publishing is dedicated to preserving and consolidating early primary source records of Native and early colonial America with the goal of making them more accessible and readily available to the academic community and the public at large.

English-Only Europe? Challenging Language Policy, by Robert Phillipson.

The languages of European nations are being changed by globalization, the EU, and English. It is arguable that all continental European languages are on a fast track to second-class status. The book presents the historical background of linguistic diversity in Europe, and explores how the advance of English is affecting the economy, science, culture, education, and politics. It explains the policies for multilingualism in EU institutions. As the EU takes in new members, the challenge of coping with many languages multiplies. Despite a rhetoric of the equality of the official languages and working languages (currently eleven), French has always had a special status, one that English is taking over. Language rights are so politically sensitive that language policies tend to be left to market forces. Criteria for guiding the formulation of language policy, and maintaining a rich ecology of languages in Europe are proposed.

Published by Routledge. Hbk: 0-415-28806-1 £45; pbk: 0-415-28807-X £12.99

Pazih Texts and Songs
Pazih, a Formosan language formerly spoken in the western plains of Taiwan, has come down to the very last good speaker, who is 89 years old. Recorded in the new publication Pazih Texts and Songs, are 13 texts and 13 songs (with words and musical notes). The earliest Pazih text was recorded in 1897 by Ino, 3 texts in 1936 by Asai, 4 texts in 1969 by Tsuchida, and the rest between 1976 and 1999 by Li, and 3 traditional ritual songs were recorded probably before 1930, all checked and corrected with the help of the Pazih informant. This publication is accompanied by 2 CDs: one for some of the texts and the other for all of the songs. It has just won a prize for one of the best publications from the Ministry of Education, Taiwan. The book may be obtained for US$20 hardcover, plus $10 for shiping and handling. Contact the Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taipei 115, Taiwan. Alternatively, the books can be ordered by email: Error! Reference source not found.. Personal checks in US$ are acceptable.

Peru. El Diamante. Indigenous Peruvian Music

Group: Albalonga Ensemble
Conductor: Cetrangolo, Annibal E.
Label: Opus
Catalogue Number: OPS30265
Released: 11 June, 1999
Songs from an unpublished 18th century manuscript that include texts in Chimu and Mochica (pre-Inca languages of the Andean coast of South America).

Roger Blench writes: “an astonishing CD”.

Observations on the Mahican Language - Jonathan Edwards, 1788

"Perhaps the most significant grammar of a North American language published in the eighteenth century was a sketch of Mahican by Jonathan Edwards, Jr., who as the son of a missionary grew up at Stockbridge with a native speaker's command of the language." --Ives Goddard in "The Description of the Native Languages of North America before Boas," Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 17, pg. 23.

One of the most interesting linguistic records from the 1700s is Jonathan Edwards' "Observations on the Language of the Muhhekaneew Indians" (1788), recorded in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. While not a complete grammatical treatment of Mahican, his text is one of the best works of the era, as it was compiled by an individual who spoke the language fluently, and took the additional step of having the text approved by members of the tribe. This new edition reprints the original book in full, and also features separate bidirectional Mahican-English and English-Mahican indexes for the approximately 150 Mahican words cited.

July 2002 ~ 47 pp. ~ clothbound ~ ISBN 1-889758-23-X ~ $28.00

Evolution Publishing is dedicated to preserving and consolidating early primary source records of native and early colonial America with the goal of making them more accessible and readily available to the academic community and the public at large.

For further information on this and other titles in the ALR series:

Error! Reference source not found.

Karen Davis: A grammar of the Hoava language, Western Solomons
xvi + 332 pp, Pacific Linguistics, 2003
PL 535, 2003 ISBN 0 85883 502 9

This description of Hoava, an Oceanic Austronesian language spoken on parts of New Georgia in the western Solomon Islands, is the first published reference grammar of a language from this area. The islands of the New Georgia group are home to a remarkable diversity of languages, and their Austronesian languages bear an unusual mixture of conservative and innovative features.

The author pays particular attention to verbal morphology and its relation to argument structure and applicativisation, and her description will interest Oceanists and typologists alike.

Hoava is genealogically quite a close relative of Roviana, aspects of which are described in S.H. Corston's _Ergativity in Roviana, Solomon Islands_ (Pacific Linguistics 1996). Nonetheless, the grammars of the two languages differ quite sharply, in which ways which diachronic syntacticians will find intriguing.

Within Australia A$75.90 inc. GST; International A$69.00; to order, contact:
PICS, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU, Canberra ACT 0200 Australia
Tel: +61 (0)2 6125 -3269 Fax: -9975
e-mail: Thelma.Sims(at)anu.edu.au
Prices are in Australian dollars (one A$ is currently equivalent to about US$ 0.65). Credit card orders are accepted.

Many Ways to Be Deaf: International Variation in Deaf Communities: Leila Monaghan, Constanze Schmaling, Karen Nakamura, and Graham H. Turner, Editors

The recent explosion of sociocultural, linguistic, and historical research on signed languages throughout the world has culminated in Many Ways to Be Deaf, an unmatched collection of in-depth articles about linguistic diversity in Deaf communities on five continents. Twenty-four international scholars have contributed their findings from studying Deaf communities in Japan, Thailand, Viet Nam, Taiwan, Russia, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Great Britain, Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Nicaragua, and the United States. Sixteen chapters consider the various antecedents of each country’s native signed language, taking into account the historical background for their development and also the effects of foreign influences and changes in philosophies by the larger, dominant hearing societies.

The topics covered include, inter alia:
the evolution of British finger-spelling traced back to the 17th century;
the comparison of Swiss German Sign Language with Rhaeto-Romansch, another Swiss minority language;
the analysis of seven signed languages described in Thailand and how they differ in relation to their distance from isolated Deaf communities to Bangkok and other urban centers;
and the vaulting development of a nascent sign language in Nicaragua. ISBN 1-56368-135-8, 7 x 10 casebound, 288 pages, glossary, references, index, $69.95s

Contents.