The Art of Grammar

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Distinguished Professor, Australian Laureate Fellow, and Director of the Language and Culture Research Centre at James Cook University. She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (Cambridge University Press, 2003), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American languages. Her other major publications, with OUP, include Language Contact in Amazonia (2002), Evidentiality (2004), The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea, (2008), Imperatives and Commands (2010), and Languages of the Amazon (2012).

• 1. Introduction: To write a grammar ; 2. A language and its setting ; 3. Basics ; 4. Sounds and their functions ; 5. Word classes ; 6. Nouns ; 7. Verbs ; 8. Adjectives and adverbs ; 9. Closed classes ; 10. Who does what to whom: grammatical relations ; 11. Clause and sentence types ; 12. Clause linking and complex clauses ; 13. Language in context ; 14. Why is a language the way it is? ; 15. How to create a grammar and how to read one ; Glossary ; References

An excellent guide for any linguist wanting to carry out the description of a language. The wealth of clear data from a range of language families ... makes for both an exciting and enriching read. Ultimately, what emerges is that writing a grammar is certainly an art, but also a Herculean task.