Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.2843

EDITOR: Carmen Dagostino
EDITOR: Marianne Mithun
EDITOR: Keren Rice
TITLE: The Languages and Linguistics of Indigenous North America
SUBTITLE: A Comprehensive Guide, Vol 1
SERIES TITLE: The World of Linguistics
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: Matthew Windsor

SUMMARY

Based on the available documentation of Indigenous North American (INA) languages, 54 identifiable language families are recognized in the region (Campbell 2021). Many of these are known today only through historical records, while many others continue to be spoken in small communities scattered across the continent. The present volume adds to previous handbook-style treatments by focusing on recent trends in research, typologically unusual features, and topics important to indigenous communities (p. v). The volume will be published in two parts: the first, under review, contains 31 chapters treating topics in linguistics. Part II, forthcoming, will feature issues in language revitalization and present sketches of select languages and families. A distinctive feature of the work is the editors’ goal to have chapters written in an accessible way for indigenous communities and those working in language revitalization.
In the following summary I will deliver a few points from each chapter that I consider notable for potential readers; full abstracts are available from the publisher’s website. Chapters marked with an asterisk are those I particularly recommend for reference.
Part I, “Sounds and Sound Structure” contains seven chapters introducing phonetics (acoustic and articulatory), tone, segmental phonology, prosodic morphology, and prosody (within and beyond the word).
In Chapter One, Bird, Claxton and Nolan introduce the field of acoustic phonetics as it relates to language revitalization, including how to begin recording and viewing waveforms. In comparison to other world regions, there are fewer acoustic phonetic descriptions of INA languages (of the sort published by the International Phonetic Association). More thorough work is needed in this area.
Bliss, Bird, and Gick discuss articulatory phonetics in Chapter Two. They overview modern methods used to study movement in the vocal tract: video, ultrasound, laryngoscopy, palatography and aerodynamic methods. Notable INA phenomena include “soundless vowels” pronounced by speakers of Oneida (with visible lip gesture) and a “tongue rolling” strategy (visible by ultrasound) used by a speaker of Central Salish to pronounce difficult /iq/ and /qi/ sequences (p. 50).
Chapter Three on tone, by Uchihara, gives a practical heuristic for discovering tonal contrasts. He discusses orthography before moving to types of meaning and patterning. There are already several standard resources available for studying tone, but a unique addition is the summary of tonal features of INA languages, including a dedicated bibliography.
Chapter Four on segmental phonology (Fitzgerald and Gordon) highlights typological trends in INA, such as small vowel inventories and large consonant inventories (in the Northwest Coast). Rare segments include pharyngeals, uvulars, ejectives, laterals and glottalized nasals and approximants. Some northwest languages feature contrastive use of creaky voice.
Chapter Five treats prosodic morphology, that is, word patterns which make reference to prosodic units of one kind or another. Urbanczyk assumes a universal prosodic hierarchy and the structure of the chapter reflects this. These complex morphological processes can be difficult to know how to approach in language classrooms, but she suggests some ideas for language games and advocates for more pedagogical research.
Gordon covers word prosody in Chapter Six, which is based on his previous typological work. In studying prosody it is essential to distinguish between prominence at different prosodic levels. Word prominence is often realized in the same way as phrase or utterance-level prominence, and it is important to isolate the two. Prosodic systems also change easily through language-internal shifts (ex. Northern Iroquoian) or through language contact (ex. Michif).
*Chapter Seven by Siri Tuttle features prosody beyond the word. Tuttle connects the inherent linguistic properties of pitch, duration and loudness to the various uses they may have in demarking intonation units and word units, as well as indicating different kinds of prominence. She includes interesting examples from a wide range of languages and includes the many ways intonation interacts with other domains such as style in storytelling.
Part II contains two functional-typological oriented chapters exploring issues in wordhood and word classes.
Zúñiga (*Chapter Eight) provides critical discussion of diagnostics used to identify phonological and grammatical words and then outlines the types of relationships between them. This chapter as well as his other works on wordhood form a good starting point for understanding issues of wordhood in the Americas.
Hieber’s *Chapter Nine on word classes gives an orientation to the two broad theoretical approaches to word classes, then reviews major class types. Two areas of debate have centered around the “locus of categoriality” (whether some words or roots are unspecified for word class) and the universality of the noun-verb distinction. His overview is insightful and considers diachronic factors in the comparison of different systems.
Part III treats sentence-level constructions, with chapters on syntax within the clause, negatives, questions and requests, information structure, relative clauses, subordination and switch-reference.
In Chapter 10, “syntax within the clause,” Broadwell addresses a non-linguistics-trained audience. He narrows his broad topic to the domains of possession and transitivity, overviewing some familiar distinctions between head vs. dependent marking and types of alignment.
In Chapter 11, van Gelderen summarizes some structural variables in the marking of negation, largely based on published typological studies. She discusses the use of negative affixes vs. negative particles, issues of word order, auxiliaries, and interaction with tense aspect and mood marking.
Chapter 12 by Lovick discusses questions (which seek a verbal response) and requests (which seek some action on the part of the hearer). Compared to languages worldwide, INA languages more frequently use specialized particles or verb paradigms to mark questions rather than relying on intonation. Notable features include elaborated sets of interrogative words (p. 286), the use of lexicalized interrogative verbs, and first-person hortatives (‘I might as well have tea!’ p. 292). Requests may differ within a language according to factors including politeness, timing of execution, or gender of the addressee.
In *Chapter 13 on information structure, Berge introduces the notions of topic and focus, relating the general literature to the unique contributions INA languages make to our understanding. Many of these use complex morphology to help track topical references. Although many initial descriptions of pragmatic word order predicted that given information always precedes new information, the opposite order occurs in a number of unrelated INA languages and this chapter updates the list of these (p. 309).
In Chapter 14, Thornes narrows his topic to canonical restrictive relative clauses (RCs) -- a construction he says is often absent in natural speech of INA languages. Notable examples include Crow, where a determiner suffix indicates RCs, and Slave, which formally distinguishes definite from indefinite RCs. In Saanich an “attributive construction” plays the role of RC but is not formally differentiated.
In Chapter 15, Dahlstrom discusses structural patterns in the marking of subordinate clauses. Some interesting cases are Cherokee, which distinguishes subordinate clauses using tone, and Kiowa, which merely juxtaposes clauses rather than using any subordinate marking at all. Intermediate cases of “cosubordination” combine characteristics of subordination and coordination (Crow, Nootka).
Mckenzie in Chapter 16 covers switch-reference, a morphological reference-tracking system which indicates whether a given clause continues using the same subject as the previous clause. In many INA languages, switch-reference markers have extended functions, sometimes indicating event continuity rather than referential continuity. Mckenzie also discusses related morphological strategies for indicating inter-clausal coherence, such as obviation systems and special reflexive markers in Eskimo-Aleut languages.
Part IV, on discourse, contains two chapters which provide excellent points of departure for exploring the literature on verbal art and conversation structure.
*Chapter 17, by Webster, is anthropological in orientation and covers a wide array of phenomena under the heading of verbal art, defined as uses of language considered artistic from the point of view of the given speech community. He discusses features of genre, speech play and poetic structuring. Language-specific genres include not only stories and songs, but also “speaking with names” in Western Apache, or the use of puns in Seneca or Navajo. Webster provides an excellent up-to-date bibliography of sources documenting verbal art across North America.
Conversation is the main way we use language everyday but is not yet central to the way linguists describe language. *Chapter 18 by Sammons brings together important work in this area, discussing three case studies: the Tlingit conversation project, Kawaiisu conversations and landscapes, and the Michif conversation project. In many INA contexts speakers may feel insecure about their language use and this can make it hard to record conversation. Some strategies shared include bringing a baby along to get people talking and moving the recording location to a place of community significance on the land.
Part V on meaning contains two chapters by Sally Rice on lexical meaning and lexicography, as well as several chapters on common grammatical meanings: evidentiality, pluractionality and distributivity, mass and count nouns, expressions concerning sense of place, tense and aspect, and pragmatics.
Chapter 19 by Sally Rice overviews themes in INA lexicalization patterns, including units below and above the word. She highlights the ways lexicalization patterns reflect aspects of culture -- how particular languages frame different types of events differently or use specific terminology in given domains. Many INA languages have words which are only partly compositional and should be presented with literal glosses which reflect the internal structure of morphemes (e.g. ‘person-head-diminutive’) as well as the (often figurative) conventionalized meaning of the whole word (e.g. ‘postage stamp’) (p. 466; example from Dene Sųłiné).
In Chapter 20 Rice then gives practical advice for creating dictionaries. She emphasizes the advantages of technology for making accessible products which can easily incorporate textual examples, audio recordings, grammatical information and more. She recommends listing not only whole words but also other units like morphemes and idioms. A practical section demonstrates parallel entries from various model dictionaries which are useful for helping the reader envision what kind of product their own dictionary project could aim for.
In Chapter 21 on evidentials, Peterson surveys types of evidential meanings and introduces methods for exploring them in a given language. A few languages have evidential-like affixes with quite concrete meaning, such as the final sensory suffixes in Ojibwe (e.g. good-taste for ‘it tastes good’). He emphasizes the inaccuracy of attempting to elicit evidentials via translation and instead recommends semantic fieldwork methods such as creating stories and describing hypothetical situations to isolate nuances of meaning.
In Chapter 22, Henderson covers pluractionality (roughly, pluralized events) and distributivity (roughly, plural events performed on or by different participants). In documentation he recommends the use of video to capture gestures, controlling for the way lexical aspect interacts with pluractionality, and having speakers demonstrate pluralized actions using a prop.
Chapter 23 by Wilhelm covers count nouns and mass nouns, understood as a semantic distinction which does not correspond to a well-established grammatical subclass in most INA languages but nevertheless manifests in various ways. In many languages, nouns referring to substances, for example, may be counted but are then understood to refer to individuated units of measurement. An interesting case is Koasati, where number is not indicated directly on nouns but through a class of suppletive plural verbs. “Mass nouns” in this case are distinct in that they only occur with plural verbs, never singular ones.
Under the title “sense of place: space, landscape, and orientation” Holton and Berez-Kroeker’s *Chapter 24 surveys diverse topics: spatial orientation, demonstratives, topological relations, landscape features, place naming, community mapping initiatives and recent efforts to rename indigenous places of significance. Their multifaceted approach mirrors the way indigenous communities often approach a topic holistically -- without segregating issues of language, culture, and land use.
*Chapter 25, by Chen and Matthewson, outlines important factors for describing the semantics of tense, aspect and mode (TAM). The authors include many examples of the ways INA languages lump or split semantic distinctions and the ways TAM categories interact. For example, Blackfoot eventive predicates (lexical aspect) are by default interpreted as having happened in the past (tense).
In Chapter 26 on pragmatics, Bogal-Allbritten discusses conversational implicature, politeness and presupposition, mainly relying on published studies which treat these topics explicitly. A few Algonquian languages are highlighted for studies which have explored direct and indirect request strategies. Pacific Northwest languages are highlighted for studies which have explored the language-specific role of presuppositions.
Part VI “languages over space and time” treats topics in diachrony, contact, classification, and sociolinguistic variation.
In *Chapter 27, Mithun shows how grammar emerges from “what speakers… have chosen to express particularly frequently over long periods of time” (p. 624). Drawing from primary language descriptions, she shares examples of grammaticalization and examples of special elaboration such as categories of lexical suffixes in Salishan and Wakashan. On the topic of language contact, she shows how multilingual speakers will transfer frequently used distinctions “into another language they speak, even if they do not transfer the actual forms” (p. 643).
In *Chapter 28 Thomason surveys patterns of multilingualism, language contact, borrowing and diffusion, mixed languages and linguistic areas. Her discussion is one of the most comprehensive in that she gives broad historical context and names each known contact language and linguistic area. Her discussion of Indigenous-European contact is the only place in this volume that explicitly explains the context of residential schools and indigenous responses to language loss.
*Chapter 29 by Haynie gives a brief but representative survey of the history and evolving methods of language classification in North America. Her discussion is augmented by maps of early proposed classifications. She integrates discussion of recent methods such as Bayesian phylogenetic modeling, as well as debates such as the Dene-Yeneseian hypothesis.
Chapter 30 by Spence looks at sociolinguistic variation as it can be studied from archival materials. Working from archival materials involves extra steps in interpreting each document critically and evaluating what can be reliably inferred from it (i.e. the practice of philology). For philological methods he refers the reader to a series of recent dissertation grammars based on legacy materials of Californian languages (p. 693).
Chapter 31 by Palakurthy covers sociolinguistic variation more generally. She discusses geographic, age-based and gender-based variation as well as community attitudes toward variation. It can be difficult to distinguish relatively time-stable systems of variation such as age-grading from language-wide changes in progress (p. 706). Both Chapters 30 and 31 touch on this subject only briefly, though this difficulty seems to be a relevant issue for many INA language communities where elders hold a very distinct social role.
Finally, the volume also includes a set of maps reprinted (or redrawn) from the Smithsonian’s Handbook of North American Indians series, including a map of the whole continent from vol. 17 (Goddard 1996).

EVALUATION

This is a mammoth volume written by many of the leading linguists working with INA languages today. Modern handbooks typically function to help a reader break into the literature of a given field, and this is where the chief value of the book lies. It makes an excellent companion to some of the classic monographs on the area such as Campbell (1997) or Mithun (1999), updating the reader on the breadth of work being done today.
According to the goals of the editors, each chapter aimed to:
· address a primary academic audience as well as a secondary non-academic audience involved in community language revitalization;
· include good cross-linguistic coverage as well as coverage of current work being done;
· connect the topic to language revitalization.
Many chapters also included a guide for what to investigate in individual INA languages.
It is difficult to write for a dual audience, especially when community audiences differ drastically from community to community across the continent. Chapters can be divided according to whether the author explicitly included (non-academic) community members in their intended audience or whether they simply wrote with clear academic style. Chapter 1 on acoustic phonetics, for example, includes paragraphs headed “what you need to know” addressed to non-academic readers. Many authors explicitly identify which sections of their chapter will be useful to each audience. Mercifully, S. Rice was allowed to write two chapters, both written in a cohesive style but one addressing theoretical preliminaries (lexicalization) and the other giving practical advice on creating dictionaries. Consequently, individual chapters will vary in their appeal based on the reader’s background, as the editors acknowledge in the preface.
The best community-oriented sections came from authors who have extensive experience working alongside particular communities and were able to include topics important to them. Chapter two included a straightforward guide for community members to begin recording elders. Others chose to highlight case studies from communities who are heading their own initiatives (e.g. chapters 18, 20, 24). Some integrated discussion of common situational or cultural factors that affect working with elders in many INA communities. For example, often the number of fluent speakers is small, elders hold a highly respected social role, and speakers young and old may face significant emotional barriers to speaking their language due to histories of linguistic oppression. It was refreshing to see these factors integrated in a natural way. Some more technical chapters integrated other “field guide”-like advice or simple heuristics for community members working to revitalize their language.
In my opinion, a handful of chapters struggled to address a clear audience. These contained content most relevant to academic linguists (e.g. structural grammatical surveys) but used a style addressed to non-linguists. In my experience, most community practitioners are concerned with how to apply concepts to one language, while linguistics students and scholars dealing with multiple languages need a more thorough introduction to the concepts complete with adequate terminology.
Regarding cross-linguistic coverage, authors used different methods for collecting examples from INA languages. Chapters can be grouped loosely into those whose authors already perform a lot of typological/areal comparison in their work, and those who conducted a library study specifically for the writing of their chapter. Identifiable methods involved: performing library and journal searches (chapters 1, 26); consulting the results of published typological studies and grammars (chapter 11), summarizing the author’s own typological work (chapter 6, 8); drawing examples from the author’s wide familiarity with the literature of the area (7, 17, 19, 27, 28); or foregoing any survey due to the state of the field (chapter 2).
Authors also varied in the voice they gave to the large quantity of historical language documentation. As the field of linguistics has grown, the literature for each sub-field has grown increasingly specialized. Some authors limit their discussion to more recent literature explicitly addressing their topic (e.g. Chapters 1, 26, 31), while others also draw more widely from grammars and structuralist-era descriptions (e.g. 7, 9, 17). These differences are in part due to the nature of each topic -- some fields rely on modern technology or recent theoretical approaches. However, Tuttle’s chapter is a good example of what can be gained from reading whole descriptions of languages. Even though her chapter covers a topic often neglected in older grammars (prosody above the word) she manages to wring out an impressive amount of information from them. She writes, “these generalizations are not based on first impressions, but often on decades of work by a linguist with a language community” (p.162). Explaining the distinction between quantitative vs. qualitative studies, she encourages the use of both.
Tuttle also tactfully addresses the temptation of some researchers to search after their own ideal of an “authentic,” pre-contact, version of a language while missing important questions about present-day sociolinguistics and language contact. She and other authors also acknowledge the role that language attitudes play at the community level (e.g. p. 4, 89, 708). Many indigenous speakers place value on a standard version of the language considered “authentic” in the eyes of the community, and this ideal may be an important factor in language revitalization.
Overall, it is exciting to see a book of this scope prioritizing community-based linguistic work. For linguists working with indigenous communities in long-term partnerships, it is rewarding when research can be used to support community goals, and when indigenous perspectives keep us asking grounded, holistically oriented questions. I would recommend select chapters of this book for use with students, language revitalization practitioners and linguists familiarizing themselves with the state of the field in North America.

List of content errors:
References
o Chapter 3 is missing Cruz & Woodbury 2014; Pike 1948 in the list of references.
o Chapter 13 is missing Berge 2015 in the list of references.
o Chapter 14 is missing an in-text citation for Starks 1995.
o Chapter 18 lists Spielman 1998 with the year 2017.
o Chapter 30 is missing Jany 2009 in the list of references.
Text
o Chapter 4 on segmental phonology contains typos in the consonant inventory of Sm’álgyax. The alveolar affricates should be /ts’, ts, dz/ (p. 93).
o The Blackfoot language is mislabelled as Plains Cree on p. 317.
o Ojibwe matwe- is a preverb/initial (type of loosely bound prefix), not a suffix as represented on p. 503.
o The phrase “number and animacy (i.e., obviation)” (p. 555) is inaccurate. Obviation in Ojibwe is not equivalent to number and/or animacy, though the categories are morphologically co-expressed.

REFERENCES

Campbell, Lyle. 1997. American Indian languages: The historical linguistics of Native America (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics 4). New York: Oxford University Press.

Campbell, Lyle. 2021. The historical study of American Indian languages: A forty-year retrospective. In Lucy Thomason, David Costa & Amy Dahlstrom (eds.), Webs of relationships and words from long ago: A festschrift presented to Ives Goddard on the occasion of his 80th birthday, 45–62. Petoskey: Mundart Press.

Goddard, Ives (ed.). 1996. Handbook of North American Indians, vol 17: Languages. Washington: Smithsonian.

Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The languages of native North America (Cambridge Language Surveys.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Matthew Windsor is a member of SIL and the resident linguist at Mishamikoweesh Corp., based in Kingfisher Lake First Nation (Canada). His publications include “The Rise of Unemphatic Negation” (2022) and “Rhythm and Intonation in Oji-Cree” (forthcoming).