{"id":1495,"date":"2011-04-14T22:00:35","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T20:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1495"},"modified":"2011-03-30T13:34:06","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T11:34:06","slug":"the-ancient-languages-of-asia-and-the-americas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1495","title":{"rendered":"The ancient languages of Asia and the Americas"},"content":{"rendered":"
The ancient languages of Asia and the Americas<\/strong>, Ed. by Roger D. Woodard<\/strong>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. 264. ISBN 9780521684941<\/a>. $39.99.<\/div>\n

Review by Elly van Gelderen<\/strong><\/a>, Arizona State University<\/em><\/p>\n

This book derives from The<\/em> Cambridge encyclopedia of the world\u2019s ancient languages <\/em>(Woodard 2004). It is one of five volumes, organized by region, that provide an affordable introduction for linguistics students and scholars. The four other volumes explore the ancient languages of (i) Europe, (ii) Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Aksum, (iii) Syria-Palestine and Arabia, and (iv) Asia Minor. Languages are considered ancient if they appear before the fifth century BC. The chapters, which are written by the leading specialists in the ancient languages, could be used as case studies in a course on historical linguistics or typology.<\/p>\n

Each chapter focuses on an individual language or closely related set of languages. It includes a description of the name, earliest appearance, and the texts or inscriptions that still exist. I found these descriptions quite useful. The writing system, phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon of each language are the focus of each chapter. By necessity, the descriptions are quite short, and often, especially in the discussions of morphosyntax, I was sorry more information was not provided. However, the chapters provide good overviews that will stimulate further research.<\/p>\n

In Chs. 2 and 3, Stephanie Jamison<\/strong> covers Sanskrit and Middle Indic (also known as Prakrit). The descriptions for Sanskrit are quite to the point, but I missed actual sentences with glosses.<\/p>\n

Ch. 4, by Sanford Steever<\/strong>, covers Old Tamil, a Dravidian language. This chapter includes wonderfully glossed examples of Old Tamil\u2014for example, the functions of the cases are exemplified clearly. The chapter ends with two poems that illustrate connected discourse.<\/p>\n

R\u00fcdiger Schmitt<\/strong> discusses Old Persian in Ch. 5, and Mark Hale Avestan <\/strong>discusses Pahlavi in Chs. 6 and 7. Again, each chapter includes nicely glossed examples and descriptions (e.g. on pronouns, enclitic pronouns, and topicalization) that make me want to read longer versions.<\/p>\n

Ch. 8, by Alain Peyraube<\/strong>, focuses <\/strong>on Ancient Chinese. Two of the controversies that surround Ancient Chinese are whether it had subject-verb-object (SVO) or SOV word order and whether it had parts of speech. Peyraube argues (with excellent examples) that Ancient Chinese was SVO and that words did belong to specific lexical categories. Grammaticalization is also briefly mentioned.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 9, Victoria Bricker<\/strong> discusses Mayan, focusing on the logosyllabic writing system as well as its origin and evolution. Ch. 10 is on Epi-Olmec, written by Terrence Kaufman<\/strong> and John Justeson<\/strong>, who deciphered its script.<\/p>\n

Appendix I, by Don Ringe<\/strong>, focuses on reconstructed ancient languages. Ringe stresses the uniformitarian principle, which states that, if acquisition and use have not radically changed from prehistoric to historic times, \u2018we must assume that the same types of language structures and language changes\u2019 (234) underlie the prehistoric stages as well. He also discusses internal reconstruction and limits on reconstruction.<\/p>\n

In short, this extremely accessible volume provides several interesting case studies of The ancient languages of Asia and the Americas<\/em>.<\/p>\n

REFERENCE<\/p>\n

Woodard, Roger D.<\/span> 2004. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the world\u2019s ancient languages.<\/em> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ancient languages of Asia and the Americas, Ed. by Roger D. Woodard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. 264. ISBN 9780521684941. $39.99. Review by Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University This book derives from The Cambridge encyclopedia of the world\u2019s ancient languages (Woodard 2004). It is one of five volumes, organized by region, that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1496,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions\/1496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}