Native Languages of North America

2000

Mithun estimates that at least 300 distinct languages may have been spoken in North America on the eve of European contact. Of these, many disappeared without being adequately recorded or were not recorded at all. Of those that remained long enough to be documented in some appreciable detail, Goddard (I996: 3) lists I20 as already extinct by the mid I990s, and 72 as spoken by only a handful of elderly speakers. Of the remaining languages, 91 are no longer being learned naturally by children, and only 46 are still currently spoken by appreciable numbers of people of all ages. To this Mithun adds precise detail as to the exact number of speakers still extant, though unfortunately even her numbers are now probably a bit optimistic in some cases. This ongoing, catastrophic loss of so much of the continent\u27s linguistic diversity makes Mithun\u27s book all the more important as a record of what is being lost and as a possible inspiration to today\u27s linguists to take up the synchroni...

Diachronica, 2002

The latest survey in the Cambridge series on linguistic geographic areas is clearly the product of years of fieldwork and meticulous research, yielding a detailed synthesis of diverse descriptive traditions of the isolates, creoles and at least 50 different language families of North America. The book is also supported

1999

Campbell, Lyle. (1997). American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native North America. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Campbell, Lyle & Mithun, Marianne (eds.) (1979). The languages of Native America: historical and comparative assessment. Austin & London: University of Texas Press. Goddard, Ives (ed.) (I996). Handbook of North American Indians, vol. I7: Languages. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. Greenberg, Joseph. (I987). Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mithun, Marianne (I99I). Agentive/active case marking and its motivation. Language 67.

Diachronica, 2002

The latest survey in the Cambridge series on linguistic geographic areas is clearly the product of years of fieldwork and meticulous research, yielding a detailed synthesis of diverse descriptive traditions of the isolates, creoles and at least 50 different language families of North America. The book is also supported

American Anthropologist, 2001

Southeastern Indian Languages, 2000

A survey of the native languages of the Southeastern United States in the form of lectures and handouts from a course taught at Florida State University in 2000.

A paper by MICHAEL DURR and EGON RENNER (4-18) briefly reviews the various opinions that have been voiced concerning the genetic relationship among the group of languages that Sapir (1915) called Na-Dene. Ever since Sapir suggested that Haida, Tlingit, and Athapaskan are genetically related there have been skeptics. Pliny Goddard and Franz Boas were among the early opponents. Major breakthroughs came in the 1960s when Michael Krauss showed that Eyak is related to Athapaskan and when Pinnow was able to substantiate the view that Tlingit is related to Eyak-Athapaskan. The latter view was slow to gain acceptance, but even Krauss, who had been a staunch opponent, was converted by the early 1980s. Diirr and Renner are upset because consensus has still not been reached concerning the inclusion of Haida. But this state of affairs only seems natural, considering that only Dell Hymes in the mid 1950s and Pinnow in the mid 1980s have invested any major effort in trying to verify the hypothesis.

Historiographia Linguistica

Reviewed by John E. Joseph (University of Edinburgh) In this review I hope to give a clear picture of the originality, solidity and significance of the research here contained, but must first advise readers that this is not the broad history that the title leads one to expect. Its scope is in fact quite narrow. Having detected how "little attention has been paid to the history of individual linguistic examples" (p. 1), Kilarski says in the introductory chapter that "This book aims at filling the gap in the historiography of Americanist linguistics by offering a comprehensive analysis of the variable functions of references to Algonquian, Iroquoian and Eskimo-Aleut languages […]" (p. 2). "More specifically, I examine descriptions of selected phonological, lexical and grammatical phenomena" which commentators have used "to illustrate what they perceived as the most characteristic properties of the languages and their speakers" (p. 1). To be sure, much of what Kilarski demonstrates concerning the use of particular examples in accounts of three of the several dozen North American language families can be extrapolated and generalised; 1 but a more precise title would equally surely have done better service to the book and its potential readership. If it is a history of the study of the indigenous languages of North America that you are looking for, Andresen (1990) remains your best bet, though it stops with the founding of the Linguistic Society of America in 1924. The perceived properties Kilarski refers to are summarised quite succinctly with an "Overview of structural characteristics" in Chapter 2, which opens with a history of the three language families, the languages they include, and the causes of their decline in the 19th and 20th centuries. The key characteristics include the languages' phonetic inventories, often described in terms of whatever makes them look anomalous in comparison with what Benjamin Lee Whorf (1896-1941) called "Standard Average European". In terms of grammatical structure, polysyn

2019

This paper, intended for the non-specialist, reviews the historical and current status of the native languages of the southeastern United States. Each of the languages families is described and discussed, and an overview of language and culture issues is presented, with suggestions for further research.