The purpose of this book is to describe the phonological and grammatical structures of modern Guarani, as it is spoken today in Asuncion and neighboring regions of Paraguay. An introductory section considers the linguistic classification of Guarani, gives some background on its speakers, and discusses the sources used for this study. Part I,…

The present volume is intended as an introductory textbook in field analysis of unstudied languages. Chapters discuss (1) language and sound systems; (2) taxonomy and its uses; (3) characterization and breath, rhythmic, syllabic, and phonetic segments; (4) frames; (5) segments; (6) discrimination; (7) classification; (8) matching; and (9)…

The sixteen articles on prosodic analysis collected here were written by members of the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, between the years 1948 and 1961. In 1948, Professor Firth, then head of the department, published his paper "Sounds and Prosodies," in which he launched the new…

This paper proposes a set of underlying vowels, alternate to those of Chomsky and Halle, to account for vowel alternations. This phonetic representational system, which is to a degree an extension of Chomsky's and Halle's basic framework, is demonstrated in the Laxing Rule and the Vowel Alternation Rule for all vowel variables. An appendix…

This paper argues that the origin of the tonal accents in Low German, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian can be explained on the basis of segmental circumstances, that they may be considered as secondary in the historical development of these languages, and that they arise when the redundant tonal transition in centering diphthongs becomes distinctive…

The chief purposes of this book are the illustration of an analytical approach to tone languages, a methodology based upon recent linguistic advance, and the presentation of firsthand data on Mixteco and Mazateco, languages which represent two very different structural arrangements of linguistic tone. Part 1 describes some of the types of…

This dissertation is a grammatical sketch of Colville, a Salishan language of eastern Washington. After an introductory chapter on language family, the phonology (consonants, stops, resonants, vowels) is outlined. The chapter on morphology discusses the basic intransitive nature of all roots and the production of transitive, middle, and…

Chorti, a Mayan language spoken in eastern Guatemala, is analyzed in this paper on the basis of a story text provided by an adult native speaker. A phonological description of Chorti is presented for background information; syllables, suprasegmentals, pause groups, articulation, and phonological rules are all considered. The author presents the…