Full Description
Every language includes layers of lexical and grammatical elements that entered it at different times in the more or less distant past. Hence, for periods preceding our earliest historical documentation, linguistic stratigraphy — the systematic study of such layers — may yield information about the prehistory of a given tradition of speaking in a variety of ways. For instance, irregular phonological reflexes may be evidence of the convergence of diverse dialects in the formation of a language, and layers of material from different source languages may form a record of changing cultural contacts in the past. In this volume are discussed past problems and current advances in the stratigraphy of Indo-European, African, Southeast Asian, Australian, Oceanic, Japanese, and Meso-American languages.
Contents
1. Preface; 2. Introduction (by Andersen, Henning); 3. Indo-European; 4. Stratum and shadow: A genealogy of stratigraphy theories from the Indo-European West (by Mees, Bernard); 5. Slavic and the Indo-European migrations (by Andersen, Henning); 6. The development of the perfect in Indo-European: Stratigraphic evidence of prehistoric areal influence (by Drinka, Bridget); 7. Africa; 8. Stratigraphy in African historical linguistics (by Ehret, Christopher); 9. Stratigraphy and prehistory: Bantu Zone F (by Masele, B.F.Y.P.); 10. Language contacts in Nilo-Saharan prehistory (by Ehret, Christopher); 11. Southeast Asia; 12. Evidence for Austroasiatic strata in Thai (by Diller, Anthony); 13. Australia; 14. Millers and mullers: The archaeo-linguistic stratigraphy of technological change in holocene Australia (by McConvell, Patrick); 15. Oceania; 16. Loanword strata in Rotuman (by Schmidt, Hans); 17. Japan; 18. Substratum and adstratum in prehistoric Japanese (by Unger, J. Marshall); 19. Meso-America; 20. Uto-Aztecan in the linguistic stratigraphy of Mesoamerican prehistory (by Dakin, Karen); 21. Language Index
