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The handbook will offer a survey of the field of linguistics in the early 21st century for the Southeast Asian Linguistic Area. The last half century has seen a great increase in work on language contact, work in genetic, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics, and since the 1990s especially documentation of endangered languages. The book will provide an account of work in these areas, focusing on the achievements of SEAsian linguistics, as well as the challenges and unresolved issues, and provide a survey of the relevant major publications and other available resources. We will address: Survey of the languages of the area, organized along genetic lines, with discussion of relevant political and cultural background issues Theoretical/descriptive and typological issues Genetic classification and historical linguistics Areal and contact linguistics Other areas of interest such as sociolinguistics, semantics, writing systems, etc. Resources (major monographs and monograph series, dictionaries, journals, electronic data bases, etc.) Grammar sketches of languages representative of the genetic and structural diversity of the region.

This volume provides an overview of experimental methods, approaches, and techniques used by field linguists of the Russian school, and highlights the fieldwork experience of Russian scholars working in regions with a range of languages that differ genetically, typologically, and in the degree of their preservation.The collection presents language and sociolinguistic data relating to fieldwork in diverse languages: Uralic, Altaic, Paleo-Siberian, Yeniseian, Indo-European Iranian, Vietic, Kra-Day, and Mayan languages, as well as pidgin.The authors highlight the fieldwork techniques they use, and the principles underlying them.The volume's multidisciplinary approach covers linguistic, ethnolinguistic, sociolinguistic, educational, and ethnocultural issues. The authors explore problems associated with the study of minority languages and indicate diverse and creative techniques for data elicitation. Close collaboration with speakers lies at the core of their approach. The collection presents strategies for eliciting systems of knowledge from mother-tongue speakers, triggering linguistic self-awareness, and providing semantic and morphosyntactic context for their languages.This publication is intended for academics, and for specialists in the field of linguistics and minority and indigenous languages. It will also benefit students as a guide to field research, as well as language activists, interested in documenting and preserving their mother tongue.

The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages provides a comprehensive account of the Transeurasian languages, and is the first major reference work in the field since 1965. The term'Transeurasian'refers to a large group of geographically adjacent languages that includes five uncontroversial linguistic families: Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic. The historical connection between these languages, however, constitutes one of the most debated issues in historical comparative linguistics. In the present book, a team of leading international scholars in the field take a balanced approach to this controversy, integrating different theoretical frameworks, combining both functional and formal linguistics, and showing that genealogical and areal approaches are in fact compatible with one another. The volume is divided into five parts. Part I deals with the historical sources and periodization of the Transeurasian languages and their classification and typology. In Part II, chapters provide individual structural overviews of the Transeurasian languages and the linguistic subgroups that they belong to, while Part III explores Transeurasian phonology, morphology, syntax, lexis, and semantics from a comparative perspective. Part IV offers a range of areal and genealogical explanations for the correlations observed in the preceding parts. Finally, Part V combines archaeological, genetic, and anthropological perspectives on the identity of speakers of Transeurasian languages. The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages will be an indispensable resource for specialists in Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic languages and for anyone with an interest in Transeurasian and comparative linguistics more broadly.