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t-online.de>TOL (JICAQUE) Denis Holt, Quinnipiac College The Tol language (also known as Jicaque), long considered a member of the far-flung Hokan phylum, is spoken by 250-300 speakers in north central Honduras. Tol is quite complex in terms of both phonology and inflectional morphology. However, there is very little in the way of productive derivational morphology. There are 22 consonant and 6 vowel phonemes in Tol, as well as one suprasegmental phoneme of stress. There is a three-way contrast among stop consonants (plain, aspirated, and glottalized), which is partially neutralized in syllable-final position. There is also a pervasive system of vowel-harmony governed by vowel height. Morphological processes include vocalic ablaut and apocope, prefixation, infixation, and suffixation, as well as shift of stress, and these are associated with an extensive set of morphophonemic variations, especially within the verbs. In addition to the lexical stem, verb-forms in Tol are marked only for subject and tense. Tol tense- and aspect-systems seem to be quite rudimentary: only present, past, and future have been recognized by most researchers. Basic sentence word-order is Subject-Object-Verb, but when a pronominal subject is involved the usual order is Object-Verb-Subject. Many nouns have variant forms as subject and as object. There is a separate category of adjectives, which follow their associated nouns. There is also a large set of postnominal particles which specify case-relationships and express locational notions. Dennis Holt is assistant professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut (USA). He is also Secretary-Treasurer of the Endangered Language Fund. His research on Native American languages has primarily focussed on Honduras, where he has also done extensive work on the Pech language. ISBN 3 89586 277 0. Languages of the World/Materials 170. Ca. 60pp. USD 31 / DM 49.30 / \163 18.20. Info: LINCOM EUROPA, Paul-Preuss-Str. 25, D-80995 Muenchen, Germany; FAX : +49 89 3148909; LINCOM.EUROPAMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
t-online.de>ASPECTS OF TSISHAATH NOOTKA PHONETICS & PHONOLOGY John Stonham, University of Hongkong This book provides a characterisation of the sound system of the Tsishaath Nootka language as spoken in the vicinity of Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada. As such, it is the first book to provide a detailed description of the phonetic and phonological systems of any member of the Wakashan family of languages. The book has been written with several groups of readers in mind. For those interested in issues of phonological theory, Tsishaath Nootka provides much of interest including the nature of variable-length vowels, the processes of glottalisation and lenition, the transformation of sounds encountered in special speech forms, the rules for stress placement, the status of the foot, and various types of coalescence and deletion. For comparative linguists and typologists in particular, the book offers a useful description of a little studied language and language family. Finally, it provides teachers and students of linguistics with a richness of data for discussion in classes on phonetics and phonology, following a progression in the exposition similar to that followed in the field in analysing the sound system of an unknown language. John Stonham's previous research in this area includes his book, Combinatorial Morphology, and both theoretical and descriptive papers on Nootka and the closely related Ditidaht. John Stonham is currently Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong. ISBN 3 89586 577 X. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 32. 160 pp. USD 46 / DM 68 / \163 26. Info: LINCOM EUROPA, Paul-Preuss-Str. 25, D-80995 Muenchen, Germany; FAX : +49 89 3148909; LINCOM.EUROPAMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
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