Böcker av Patience Epps

The goal of this handbook is to provide a comprehensive resource on the Amazonian languages that synthesizes a diverse body of work by a highly international group of linguists. It will provide a review of the current state of the art, thus laying the groundwork for future scholarship in this important area. Volume 2 will focus on theory-neutral grammatical descriptions of smaller Amazonian language families.

This handbook provides the first broadly comprehensive, typologically-informed descriptive overview of the languages of Greater Amazonia. Organized by genealogical units, the chapters provide empirically rich descriptions of the phonology and grammar of all Amazonian families and isolates for which data and descriptions exist. Volume 1 focuses on the many isolates of the region - those languages for which no extant sisters can be identified.

This work is a reference grammar of Hup, a member of the Nadahup family (also known as Maku or Vaupes-Japura), which is spoken in the fascinatingly multilingual Vaupes region of the northwest Amazon. This detailed description and analysis is informed by a functional-typological perspective, with particular reference to areal contact and grammaticalization. The grammar begins with an introduction to the cultural and linguistic background of Hup speakers, gives an overview of the phonology, and follows this with chapters on morphosyntax (nominal morphology, verbs and verb compounding, tense, aspect, modality, evidentiality, etc.); it concludes with discussions of negation, the simple clause, and clause combining. A number of features of Hup grammar are typologically significant, such as its strategy of inversion in question formation, its system of Differential Object Marking, and its treatment of possession. Hup also exhibits several highly unusual paths of grammaticalization, such as the development of a verbal future suffix from the noun'stick, tree'. The book also includes a selection of texts and a CD-ROM with audio files.