I Introduction
II The Mapy and Accompanying Texts
1: Phonology
2: Morphology
3: Nominal Categories
4: Nominal Syntax
5: Verbal Categories
6: Word Order
7: Simple Clauses
8: Complex Sentences
9: Lexicon
10: Sign Languages
11: Other
III Reference Material
Index
CV
Martin Haspelmath is Senior Scientist at the Department of
Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology and an Honorary Professor at the University of
Leipzig. After studies in Vienna, Cologne, Buffalo, and Moscow, he
received his Ph.D. from the Free University of Berlin in 1993.
Before moving to Leipzig in 1998, he held teaching positions in
Berlin, Bamberg, and Pavia, and he has taught at summer schools in
Albuquerque,
Mainz, Düsseldorf, Cagliari and at MIT. His research interests are
in comparative, diachronic, and theoretical morphology and syntax.
He is the author of A Grammar of Lezgian (1993), Indefinite
Pronouns (1997), and
Understanding Morphology (2002) and co-editor of Language Typology
and Language Universals: An International Handbook (2 vols, 2001).
Matthew S. Dryer received his Ph.D. in Linguistics at the
University of Michigan. After ten years at the University of
Alberta, he came to the University at Buffalo in 1989 where he is
Professor of Linguistics. He has held visiting positions at UCLA,
the University of Oregon, the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics in
Nijmegen, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology in Leipzig. His primary research interest is in
typology and syntax. Since 1983 he has been working on a project
establishing a large cross-linguistic database on word
order and related typological characteristics. His other research
interests include discourse, pragmatics, American Indian languages
(particularly Kutenai), and Papuan languages. Since 2001 he has
been engaged in joint field research with Lea Brown on two
languages of Papua New Guinea, Walman (in the Torricelli family)
and Poko-Rawo (in the Sko family). David Gil has been a Senior
Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology since 1998. He graduated
from UCLA in 1982 and held positions at the University of
Washington, the University of Tel Aviv, the University of Haifa,
the National University of Singapore, and Universiti Kebangsaan
Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur). His
interests are in syntactic, semantic, and phonological typology, as
well as Malay/Indonesian and other Southeast Asian languages. He is
the head of the Jakarta Field Station of the Max Planck Institute,
and has more recently also worked on language acquisition and the
relation between language structure and thought. Bernard Comrie is
Director of the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, and Distinguished
Professor of
Linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara. His main
interests are language universals and typology, historical
linguistics (including in particular the use of linguistic evidence
to reconstruct aspects of
prehistory), linguistic fieldwork, and languages of the Caucasus.
Publications include Aspect (1976), Language Universals and
Linguistic Typology (1981, 2nd edn 1989), The Languages of the
Soviet Union (1981), Tense (1985), The Russian Language in the
Twentieth Century (with Gerald Stone and Maria Polinsky, 1996). He
is also editor of The World's Major Languages (1987), co-editor
(with Greville Corbett) of The Slavonic Languages
(1993), and managing editor of the journal Studies in Language.
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a lot of fun ... Addictively much fun ... To say that WALS significantly increases the degreee to which linguists are exposed to typological mapping is to make a great understatement ... the CD is wonderful ... This is a very real chance to spot correlations between different linguistic features, between linguistic features and areas, and between linguistic features and language families. And, to return to the start of this review: it's a lot of fun. Mark Donohue, Monash University and National University of Singapore I suspect that many linguists will not be able to resist curling up with this massive volume on rainy days just for the fun facts. Books & Culture Handsome, original, and incredibly useful. John A. Hawkins, University of Cambridge
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