Synopses & Reviews
This book introduces readers to the remarkable linguistic diversity of East and Southeast Asia. It combines serious but accessible treatments of diverse areas not usually found in a single volume: for example, word origins, cultural key words, tones and sounds, language families and typology, key syntactic structures, writing systems, communicative style. Written with great clarity and an eye for interesting examples, the book is a textbook for students of linguistics, Asian languages, and Asian studies.
About the Author
Cliff Goddard is Professor in Linguistics at the University of New England, NSW, Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. His research interests are in the areas of language description, lexical and grammatical semantics, and the intersection between language, meaning, and culture. His books include
Semantic Analysis (1998), and
Meaning and Universal Grammar (co-edited with Anna Wierzbicka, 2002). His numerous scholarly articles include descriptive studies of lexical, grammatical and discourse aspects of Malay, English, and Yankunytjatjara. He is the editor of two forthcoming edited collections of work on
Ethnopragmatics and Crosslinguistic Semantics.
Table of Contents
1. A First Look
1.1. Introductory Remarks
1.2. Lack of Inflection
1.3. Word Order (constituent order)
1.4. Sounds and Writing of East Asian Languages
1.5. Lexical Tone
1.6. Classifier Constructions
1.7. Serial Verb Constructions
1.8. Multiple Pronouns and Other Systems of Address
1.9. Honorific Forms
1.10. Other Common Features
2. Language Families, Linguistics Areas, and Language Situations
2.1. What is a Language Family?
2.2. The Major Language Families of East Asia
2.3. Mainland Southeast Asia as a Linguistic Area
2.4. Language Situations in the Countries of East Asia
3. Words: Origins, Structures, Meanings
3.1. Loans as Indicators of Cultural History
3.2. Word Structure: Derivational Morphology
3.3. Meaning Differences Between Languages
3.4. Cultural Key Words
4. Grammatical Topics
4.1. Classifier Constructions Revisited
4.2. Aspect
4.3. Serial Verb Constructions
4.4. Subject and Topic
4.5. Sentence-final (illocutionary) Particles
5. The East Asian Soundscape
5.1. Phoneme Systems
5.2. Word Shapes: Phonatactics
5.3. Tones and Allotones
5.4. Shifting Sounds: Morphophonemics
5.5. Pitch-Accent in Japanese
6. Writing Systems of East Asia
6.1. Types of Writing System
6.2. Alphabetic Systems
6.3. A Logographic System: Chinese
6.4. Japanese: A Multi-scriptal System
6.5. A Note on Calligraphy
7. The Art of Speaking
7.1. Word Skills in East Asian Languages
7.2. Speech Styles
7.3. The Japanese Honorific System
7.4. Communicative Styles
Exercises
Solutions