Lessons from documented endangered languages (review)

This valuable and interesting volume is one of many outputs of the Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen (Documentation of endangered languages; DoBeS) project, funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung starting in 2000. It follows up on the Brenzinger 2007 volume, which was also supported by the same funding source and surveyed overall worldwide levels of language endangerment. The volume provides a very substantial contribution of case studies on linguistic and other implications of endangerment and various ways of documenting endangered languages. It is also of more general interest in covering a rich array of data that illustrate the effects of language contact on linguistic structure at all levels from phonology to discourse. After a brief introduction by the editors, eleven chapters range over methodological issues, ethical issues, and linguistic outcomes, as well as some sociolinguistic, anthropological, and historical factors. The three editors are US-based, and the twenty authors include scholars based in Europe, the US, and Latin America.

Areal and genetic coverage is very broad, representing thirteen languages from eleven language families in eight countries on five continents, as well as a historical reconstruction of a linguistic area with multiple languages in four families. There are four chapters on Latin America (including three on languages of Brazil and three including Tupi languages) and three on languages of various parts of Asia (Siberia, China, and Sri Lanka). This represents a desirable extension beyond the usual focus on North America and Europe in some similar collections (e.g. Hinton & Hale 2001, King et al. 2008). Focal areas include linguistic structure (nine chapters), sociolinguistics (four chapters), and methodology (two chapters), with the main structural focus on morphosyntax (five chapters), discourse (two chapters), and suprasegmentals (two chapters).

After an introduction by the editors that sets the context of DoBeS and outlines the content and results of each chapter (1–11), the volume contains the following chapters: Ch. 1, 'Sri Lanka Malay revisited: Genesis and classification' by Umberto Ansaldo (13–42); Ch. 2, 'Working together: The interface between researchers and the native people—The Trumai case' by Aurore Monod Becquelin, Emmanuel de Vienne, and Raquel Guirardello-Damian (43–66) on an isolate language of Brazil; Ch. 3, 'Tense, aspect and mood in Aweti verb paradigms: Analytic and synthetic forms' by Sebastian Drude (67–109) on a Tupi language of Brazil; Ch. 4, 'Tonogenesis in Southeastern Monguor' by Arienne Dwyer (111–28) on a Mongolic language of China; Ch. 5, 'Language, ritual and historical reconstruction: Towards a linguistic, ethnographical and archaeological account of Upper Xingu society' by Carlos Fausto, Bruna Franchetto, and Michael Heckenberger (129–57) on the three language families in this area of Brazil; Ch. 6, 'Endangered Caucasian languages in Georgia: Linguistic parameters of language endangerment' by Jost Gippert (159–93) discussing three Caucasian languages in two families; Ch. 7, 'Contact, attrition and shift in two Chaco languages: The cases of Tapiete and Vilela' by Lucia A. Gollus-cio and Hebe GonzÁlez (195–242) on a Tupi language and an isolate; Ch. 8, 'Tofa language change and terminal generation speakers' by K. David Harrison and Gregory D. S. Anderson (243–70) on a Turkic language in Siberia; Ch. 9, 'Hočank's challenge to morphological theory' by Johannes Helmbrecht and Christian Lehmann (271–315) on a Siouan language of the US also known as Winnebago; Ch. 10, 'A preliminary study of same-turn self-repair initiation in Wichita conversation' by Armik Mirzayan (317–54) on a Caddoan language of the US; and Ch. 11, 'Multimedia analysis in documentation projects: Kinship, interrogatives and reciprocals in ǂAkhoe Hai∥om' by Thomas Widlok, Christian Rapold, and Gertie Hoymann (355–70) on a Khoisan language of Namibia.

The authors approach their data from very...