Table of Contents

1: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon: Introduction
2: Peter Bellwood: Archaeology and the Historical Determinants of Punctuation in Language-Family Origins
3: Calvert Watkins: An Indo-European Linguistic Area and its Characteristics: Ancient Anatolia. Areal Diffusion as a Challenge to the Comparative Method?
4: R. M. W. Dixon: The Australian Linguistic Area
5: Alan Dench: Descent and Diffusion: The Complexity of the Pilbara Situation
6: Malcolm Ross: Contact-Induced Change in Oceanic Languages in North-West Melanesia
7: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald: Areal Diffusion, Genetic Inheritance, and Problems of Subgrouping: A North Arawak Case Study
8: Geoffrey Haig: Linguistic Diffusion in Present-Day East Anatolia: From Top to Bottom
9: Randy J. LaPolla: The Role of Migration and Language Contact in the Development of the Sino-Tibetan Language Family
10: N. J. Enfield: On Genetic and Areal Linguistics in Mainland South-East Asia: Parallel Polyfunctionality of 'Acquire'
11: James A. Matisoff: Genetic Versus Contact Relationship: Prosodic Diffusibility in South-East Asian Languages
12: Hilary Chappell: Language Contact and Areal Diffusion in Sinitic Languages
13: Gerrit J. Dimmendaal: Areal Diffusion Versus Genetic Inheritance: An African Perspective
14: Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva: Convergence and Divergence in the Development of African Lanaguages
15: Timothy Jowan Curnow: What Language Features can be 'Borrowed'?

About the Author

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Associate Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University in Melbourne. She has published on the Berber languages of North Africa, the Manambu language of New Guinea, and the Arawak languages of South America (grammars of Bare and Warekena have appeared and a comprehensive study of Tariana is almost complete). She is author of A Grammar of Modern Hebrew (1990), and her Grammar of Biblical
Hebrew is in press. Her theoretical publications include work on evidentiality and Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices (OUP 2000). She is currently working on language contact and universals of
borrowings. R. M. W. Dixon, who is Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, has written grammars of five Australian languages -- most notably Dyirbal (1972) and Yidiny (1977) -- and of Boumaa Fijian (1988), in addition to A New Approach to English Grammar, on Semantic Principles (OUP 1991). His theoretical contributions have included work on noun classes, adjective classes, the volume Ergativity (1994), and his acclaimed essay 'The Rise and Fall of Languages'
(1997). He is currently completing a full-scale comparative study of the Australian lingusitic area, and a comprehensive study of the Jarawara language (Arawá family, Brazil).

Reviews

extremely rich, competent, and well-edited. Language, ... invaluable volume ... the uniformly high quality of the contributions demonstrates that all contributors know whereof they speak ... The geographical range of the contributions is impressive ... The quality of the production is high. The Journal of The Royal Anthropological Institute ... certainly a book worth acquiring and reading. Journal of Linguistics This book is a pleasure to sample, and will serve as a resource for years to come. The salutary lesson that emerges from every chapter is that diffusion studies are necessarily complementary to genetic studies, and that our methodology for studying various types of contact needs to be extended and refined. Diachronica This book is highly recommended for all those interested in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, language contact and language change ... this book represents a good opportunity to meditate, on the one side, on models of language evolution and, on the other side, on actual phenomena of language change. LINGUIST List