The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages

Description

This volume offers the most comprehensive and wide-ranging treatment available today of the Uralic language family, a group of languages spoken in northern Eurasia. While there is a long history of research into these languages, much of it has been conducted within several disparate national traditions; studies of certain languages and topics are somewhat limited and in many cases outdated. The Oxford Guide to the Uralic Languages brings together leading scholars and junior researchers to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date account of the internal relations and diversity of the Uralic language family, including the outlines of its historical development, and the contacts between Uralic and other languages of Eurasia. The book is divided into three parts. Part I presents the origins and development of the Uralic languages: the initial chapters examine reconstructed Proto-Uralic and its divergence, while later chapters provide surveys of the history and codification of the three Uralic nation-state languages (Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian) and the Uralic minority languages from Baltic Europe to Siberia. This part also explores questions of endangerment, revitalization, and language policy. The chapters in Part II offer individual structural overviews of the Uralic languages, including a number of understudied minority languages for which no detailed description in English has previously been available. The final part of the book provides cross-Uralic comparative and typological case studies of a range of issues in phonology, morphology, syntax, and the lexicon. The chapters explore a number of topics, such as information structure and clause combining, that have traditionally received very little attention in Uralic studies. The volume will be an essential reference for students and researchers specializing in the Uralic languages and for typologists and comparative linguists more broadly. Cover Short contents Detailed contents Series preface Transcription and glossing The contributors Mapping the distribution of the Uralic languages Introduction Part I - The Making of the Uralic Languages 1. Proto-Uralic 2. The divergence of Proto-Uralic and its offspring: a descendent reconstruction 3. The making of the Uralic nation-state languages 4. The Uralic minorities: Endangerment and revitalization 5. Language policy in Russia: The Uralic languages 6. Graphization and orthographies of Uralic minority languages Part II - Language descriptions 7. Saami: General introduction 8. South Saami 9. Lule Saami 10. North Saami 11. Aanaar (Inari) Saami 12. Skolt Saami 13. Kildin Saami 14. Finnic: General introduction 15. Finnish, Meänkieli, and Kven 16. Karelian 17. Veps 18. Ingrian 19. Votic 20. North and Standard Estonian 21. Seto South Estonian 22. Livonian 23. Mordvin (Erzya and Moksha) 24. Mari 25. Permic: General introduction 26. Komi 27. Udmurt 28. Ugric: General introduction 29. North Mansi 30. East Mansi 31. North Khanty 32. East Khanty 33. Hungarian 34. Samoyedic: General introduction 35. Nenets 36. The Enets languages 37. Nganasan 38. Selkup 39. Kamas Part III - General issues and case studies 40. Introduction to Part III: General issues and case studies 41. Palatalization 42. Consonant gradation 43. Prosody 44. Case 45. Person marking 46. TAM and evidentials 47. Negation and negatives 48. Non-finites 49. Word order 50. Adpositions and adpositional phrases 51. Existential, locational, and possessive sentences 52. Nominal predication 53. Clause combining 54. Information structuring References Index