Language and Linguistic Area: Essays

by Murray B. Emeneau

Book is in good condition and cared for in a professional library.

371 pages, Hardcover

Published December 31, 1980

Reviews

[Silvio Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of papers by a linguist originally from Nova Scotia who was a big specialist on Dravidian languages at UC Berkeley through the mid twentieth century (there's a bio by someone else at the beginning of the book, and another by himself at the end!). Apparently he was influential in applying the concept of a linguistic area to the Indian subcontinent, meaning that multiple characteristics have spread across unrelated languages through bilingualism. South Asia has three major language groups - Dravidian, Munda, and the Indic branch of Indo-European - plus some Iranian Indo-European languages and isolates - and it seems quite a few similarities cross family lines. The papers in this book all have to do with that. As Emeneau himself points out, though, the isoglosses don't bundle - some features only cover parts of the subcontinent, and for others South Asia (or part of it) is only part of a larger area. The book starts out with pretty accessible, theoretical papers, but then two thirds or so of them really get into the nitty-gritty of Dravidian etymologies, so I could only follow the basic outlines of the arguments, and the last short chapters focus specifically on Brahui, a Dravidian language spoken far away from the rest of the family and in close contact with the Iranian language Balochi.