Table of Contents

1: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon: Introduction
2: Peter Bellwood: Archaeology and the Historical Determinants of Punctuation in Language-Family Origins
3: Calvert Watkins: An Indo-European Linguistic Area and its Characteristics: Ancient Anatolia. Areal Diffusion as a Challenge to the Comparative Method?
4: R. M. W. Dixon: The Australian Linguistic Area
5: Alan Dench: Descent and Diffusion: The Complexity of the Pilbara Situation
6: Malcolm Ross: Contact-Induced Change in Oceanic Languages in North-West Melanesia
7: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald: Areal Diffusion, Genetic Inheritance, and Problems of Subgrouping: A North Arawak Case Study
8: Geoffrey Haig: Linguistic Diffusion in Present-Day East Anatolia: From Top to Bottom
9: Randy J. LaPolla: The Role of Migration and Language Contact in the Development of the Sino-Tibetan Language Family
10: N. J. Enfield: On Genetic and Areal Linguistics in Mainland South-East Asia: Parallel Polyfunctionality of 'Acquire'
11: James A. Matisoff: Genetic Versus Contact Relationship: Prosodic Diffusibility in South-East Asian Languages
12: Hilary Chappell: Language Contact and Areal Diffusion in Sinitic Languages
13: Gerrit J. Dimmendaal: Areal Diffusion Versus Genetic Inheritance: An African Perspective
14: Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva: Convergence and Divergence in the Development of African Lanaguages
15: Timothy Jowan Curnow: What Language Features can be 'Borrowed'?

About the Author

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor and Associate Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University. She has worked on descriptive and historical aspects of Berber languages and has published, in Russian, a grammar of modern Hebrew (1990). She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995) (based on work with the last speaker who has since died) and Warekena
(1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (CUP 2003), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages. Her monographs, Classifiers: A Typology of
Noun Categorization Devices (2000, paperback reissue 2003), Language Contact in Amazonia (2002) and Evidentiality (2004) are published by Oxford University Press. She is currently working on a reference grammar of Manambu, from the Sepik area of New Guinea.
R. M. W. Dixon is Professor and Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University. He has published grammars of a number of Australian languages (including Dyirbal and Yidiñ), in addition to A Grammar of Boumaa Fijian (University of Chicago Press 1988), The Jarawara Language of Southern Amazonia (OUP 2004), and A Semantic Approach to English Grammar (OUP 2005). His works on typological theory include Where Have All the
Adjectives Gone? and Other Essays in Semantics and Syntax (Mouton,1982) and Ergativity (CUP 1994). The Rise and Fall of Languages (CUP 1997) expounded a punctuated equilibrium model for language development: this is the basis for his detailed case
study Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development (CUP 2002).

Reviews

`extremely rich, competent, and well-edited.'
Language,
`Review from previous edition This book is a pleasure to sample, and will serve as a resource for years to come. The salutary lesson that emerges from every chapter is that diffusion studies are necessarily complementary to genetic studies, and that our methodology for studying various types of contact needs to be extended and refined.'
Diachronica
`Highly recommended for all those interested in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, language contact and language change ... this book represents a good opportunity to meditate, on the one side, on models of language evolution and, on the other side, on actual phenomena of language change.'
LINGUIST List
`Invaluable ... the uniformly high quality of the contributions demonstrates that all contributors know whereof they speak ... The geographical range of the contributions is impressive. ...The quality of the production is high.'
The Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute
`... A book worth acquiring and reading.'
Journal of Linguistics