LINGUIST List 9.1722

Fri Dec 4 1998

Sum: Amerind/Armenian Source Query

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. David Harris, Amerind/Armenian Source

Follow-up to the Amerind/Armenian summary:

David Harris writes:
My thanks to John Koonts and Peter Daniels for correcting my
misunderstanding regarding the Boas book. I had thought his _Introduction to
the Handbook of American Indian Languages_ was an introduction to the
on-going Smithsonian work which has a very similar title. In reality, the
_Handbook of American Indian Languages_ and the _Handbook of American
Indians_ are two separate and, evidently, on-going projects. (Well, the
Smithsonian project is, in any case). The Koontz letter follows:

The Boas Handbook is not the small survey, but a three volume series with
fairly detailed descriptions in early formats and BAE phonetic
orthography. Two volumes were published in maybe the 19-teens of the
century by the BAE. A third volume, came out later from another press
(Viking???). Look in the Government document collection in the nearest
University library that houses one. There's at least one per state. You
can also get these books used from time to time. I think Boas was the
series editor, and he was definitely the co-author of the Dakota
description (in V 2?). Sorry I don't have a precise reference at hand.

John E. Koontz
Research Associate
Center for the Study of the Native Languages of the Plains and Southwest
http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz

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Also, one more note regarding Armenian articles:

I have written a chapter on Classical Armenian for a book entitled
'Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages' to be published by CUP and
ed. Roger Woodard. The book aims to give comparable account to those given
in Comrie's book, and should be out next year. The article in the book on
IE languages (ed. by Ramat and Ramat) is OK - but rather slanted towards
diachronic developments. You might also be interested in Charles de
Lamberterie 'Introduction a l'armenien classique' LALIES 10 (1992) 234-289.

James Clackson [jptc1hermes.cam.ac.uk]
Cambridge University
UK

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David Harris