LINGUIST List 6.1326

Fri Sep 29 1995

Sum: Summary on Universals and typology

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. , Summary on Universals and typology

 Dear Linguist list netters,

 Last week I posted a request for recommendations for textbooks and
 references to a graduate-level grammar course on language universals
 and linguistic typology. Below is a summary of the responses, and I am
 thankful to the following individuals for responding to my request:

 Jacob Caflisch, Sr. Bernard Comrie
 Matthew Dryer Don Dyer
 Sung-won Koo Stephen Matthews
 Mari Broman Olsen Robin Sackman
 Jae Jung Song Satoshi Uehara
 Lindsay Whaley

 Most recommended Comrie's book "Language universals and linguistic
 typology" (2nd ed., Univ. of Chicago, 1989), and more than half also
 recommended William Croft's book "Typology and universals" (Cambridge
 Univ. Press, 1990). The third book cited was Tim Shopen's (ed.)
 "Language typology and syntactic description" (3 vol. set from
 Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985). Others also referred to Mallinson and
 Blake's "Language typology" (1981), and Greenberg's writings. There
 were two responses with a detailed list of references.

 Keep me posted if anyone has further recommendations and comments.
 Thanks.

 Shin Ja Hwang
 SIL/UTA
 7500 W. Camp Wisdom
 Dallas, TX 75236
 E-mail: shinja.hwangsil.org

 P.S. If anyone is curious about the course, which is one of the
 advanced grammar courses for MA, I can send the course description
 individually. I've decided to adopt the Shopen set as the textbook,
 but will also use the books by Comrie and Croft along with some other
 articles. The decision was based on two factors: (1) I already use
 Comrie's book as one of the two textbooks in the first grammar course
 for MA (the other being Bob Longacre's "The grammar of discourse"
 --prepublication copy of the revised ed. in press), and (2) our
 graduate program at Univ. of Texas at Arlington/ Summer Institute of
 Linguistics has a number of field linguists (future, if not current)
 who would benefit from a strongly data-oriented approach in addition
 to a theoretical one.