LINGUIST List 17.57

Wed Jan 11 2006

Books: Language Description, Mina: Frajzyngier et al

Editor for this issue: Megan Zdrojkowski <meganlinguistlist.org>

Directory         1.    Julia Ulrich, A Grammar of Mina: Frajzyngier, Johnston, Edwards
Message 1: A Grammar of Mina: Frajzyngier, Johnston, Edwards
Date: 29-Dec-2005
From: Julia Ulrich <julia.ulrichdegruyter.com>
Subject: A Grammar of Mina: Frajzyngier, Johnston, Edwards


Title: A Grammar of Mina Series Title: Mouton Grammar Library 36 Published: 2005 Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
                http://www.mouton-publishers.com

Book URL: http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-3110185652-1&l=E

Author: Zygmunt Frajzyngier, University of Colorado at Boulder Author: Eric Johnston Author: Adrian Edwards Hardback: ISBN: 3110185652 Pages: xx, 512 Price: Europe EURO 148.00
Hardback: ISBN: 3110185652 Pages: xx, 512 Price: U.S. $ 207.20 Comment: for USA, Canada, Mexico
Abstract:

"A Grammar of Mina" is a reference grammar of a hitherto undescribed andendangered Central Chadic language. The book contains a description of thephonology, morphology, syntax, and all the functional domains encoded bythis language. For each hypothesis regarding a form of linguisticexpression and its function, ample evidence is given. The description offormal means and of the functions coded by these means is couched in termsaccessible to all linguists regardless of their theoretical orientations.

The outstanding characteristics of Mina include: vowel harmony; use ofphonological means, including vowel deletion and vowel retention, to codephrasal boundaries; two tense and aspectual systems, each system carrying adifferent pragmatic function; a lexical category 'locative predicator'hitherto not observed in other languages; some tense, aspect, and moodmarkers that occur before the verb, and others that occur after the verb;the markers of interrogative and negative modality that occur inclause-final position; the conjunction used for a conjoined noun phrase inthe subject function that differs from the conjunction used for a conjoinednoun phrase in all other functions.In addition to the coding of argumentstructure, adjuncts, tense, aspect, and mood categories, Mina also codesthe category point-of-view. The language has a clausal category 'commentclause' used in both simple and complex sentences, which overtly marks thespeaker's comment on the proposition. The discourse structure has theprinciple of unity of place. If one of the participants in a describedevent changes scene, that is coded by a special syntactic construction inaddition to any verb of movement that may be used. Because of these unusuallinguistic characteristics, the "Grammar of Mina" will be of interest to awide range of linguists.

AUTHORS:

Zygmunt Frajzyngier is Professor at the Department of Linguistics,University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.Eric Johnston is affiliated with the Department of Linguistics, Universityof Colorado at Boulder, USA.

TO ORDER, PLEASE CONTACT

SFG Servicecenter-FachverlagePostfach 434372774 Reutlingen, GermanyFax: +49 (0)7071 - 93 53 - 33E-mail: deGruyterpresswarehouse.com

Linguistic Field(s): Language Description
Subject Language(s): Mina (hna)
Written In: English (eng )

See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=17735


-------------------------- Major Supporters --------------------------

Blackwell Publishing 		http://www.blackwellpublishing.com

Cambridge University Press 		http://us.cambridge.org

Cascadilla Press 		http://www.cascadilla.com/

Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd 		http://www.continuumbooks.com

Edinburgh University Press 		http://www.eup.ed.ac.uk/

Elsevier Ltd. 		http://www.elsevier.com/linguistics

Equinox Publishing Ltd. 		http://www.equinoxpub.com/

European Language Resources Association 		http://www.elda.org/sommaire.php

Georgetown University Press 		http://www.press.georgetown.edu

Hodder Arnold 		http://www.hoddereducation.co.uk

John Benjamins 		http://www.benjamins.com/

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 		http://www.erlbaum.com/

Lincom GmbH 		http://www.lincom.at

MIT Press 		http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Mouton de Gruyter 		http://www.mouton-publishers.com

Oxford University Press 		http://www.oup.com/us

Rodopi 		http://www.rodopi.nl/

Routledge (Taylor and Francis) 		http://www.routledge.com/

Springer 		http://www.springeronline.com

---------------------- Other Supporting Publishers ----------------------

Anthropological Linguistics 		http://www.indiana.edu/~anthling/

CSLI Publications 		http://cslipublications.stanford.edu/

Graduate Linguistic Students' Assoc. Umass 		http://glsa.hypermart.net/

International Pragmatics Assoc. 		http://ipra-www.uia.ac.be/ipra/

Kingston Press Ltd 		http://www.kingstonpress.com/

Linguistic Assoc. of Finland 		http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/

MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 		http://web.mit.edu/mitwpl/

Multilingual Matters 		http://www.multilingual-matters.com/

Pacific Linguistics 		http://pacling.anu.edu.au/

Palgrave Macmillan 		http://www.palgrave.com

SIL International 		http://www.ethnologue.com/bookstore.asp

St. Jerome Publishing Ltd. 		http://www.stjerome.co.uk

Utrecht Institute of Linguistics / LOT Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistic 		http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/