Review of the books A Grammar of Bella Coola, by P.W. Davis and R. Sauders and The Lillooet Language: Phonology, Morphology, Syntax by J. van Eijk

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Bella Coola, Lillooet language, Grammar, Book reviews
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Subject-Keyword: Bella Coola Lillooet language Grammar Book reviews
Type of item: Review
Language: English
Place:
Time:
Description:
Date created: 2001
DOI: doi:10.7939-R3C824J0M
License information:
Rights: © 2001 University of Chicago Press
Autor: Beck, D.
Fuente: https://era.library.ualberta.ca/
Introducción
REVIEWS
A GRAMMAR OF BELLA COOLA.
By Philip W.
Davis and Ross Saunders.
University of Montana Occasional Papers in Linguistics, no.
13.
Missoula: University of Montana, 1997.
Pp.
vii 190.
THE LILLOOET LANGUAGE: PHONOLOGY, MORPHOLOGY, SYNTAX.
By Jan
van Eijk.
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1997.
Pp.
xxx 282.
The last two decades of the twentieth century saw the publicationof several major
reference works on Salishan languages (e.g., Czaykowska-Higgins and Kinkade
1997 and Kroeber 1999), including a number of dictionaries (e.g., Kinkade 1991,
Bates, Hess, and Hilbert 1994, ThompsonandThompson 1996, andMattina1997) and
grammars(e.g., Nater 1984, Thompsonand Thompson 1992, and Galloway 1993).
In
its own way, each of these works has had to strike an uneasy balance between the
need for comprehensive, detailed, and accessible documentationof a language and
the need for theoreticallyrelevant and original linguistic analysis.
In the case of Salishan languages, the tension between these two goals is made more acute by the fact
that this language family is not only theoretically interesting and typologically unusual but is also severely endangered,the majority of surviving Salishan languages
having fewer than 20 fluent, elderly speakers.
The two grammarsunder review here
representdiametrically opposed responses to these issues, and the contrast between
them raises questions aboutthe responsibilities of linguists working with endangered
languages both to their profession and to the communities they work with.
Davis and SaunderssA Grammarof Bella Coola falls clearly on the theoretical
side of the divide.
It is a concise and challenging exposition of certain aspects of
Bella Coola (Nuxalk) morphosyntax, couched in terms of an original analytical
framework familiar from previous writings (e.g., Davis and Saunders 1986; 1989)
and briefly expounded, using English examples, in the first chapterof this book.
The
next chapter turns to Bella Coola and outlines wh...