London Oriental and African Language Library (vols. 1–4,7,9–10,12–19, 1994–2012)

Mongolian is the principal language spoken by some five million ethnic Mongols living in Outer and Inner Mongolia, as well as in adjacent parts of Russia and China. The spoken language is divided into a number of mutually intelligible dialects, while for writing two separate written languages are used: Cyrillic Khalkha in Outer Mongolia (the Republic of Mongolia) and Written Mongol in Inner Mongolia (P. R. China). In this grammatical description, the focus is on the standard varieties of the spoken language, as used in broadcasting, education, and everyday casual speech. The dialectology of the language, and its background as a member of the Mongolic language family, are also discussed. Mongolian is an agglutinating language with a well-developed suffixal morphology. In the areal framework, the language is a typical member of the trans-Eurasian Ural-Altaic complex with features such as vowel harmony, verb-final sentence structure, and complex chains of non-finite verbal phrases.

Cambodian is in many respects a typical Southeast Asian language, whose syntax at least on first acquaintance seems to approximate that of any SVO pidgin. On closer acquaintance, however, because of the richness of its idioms, the language seems to be a forbiddingly alien form of “Desesperanto” – a language of which one can read a page and understand every word individually, and have no inkling of what the page was all about. Like many of the languages of its genetic (Austroasiatic) family, its basic root vocabulary seems to consist largely of sesquisyllabic or iambic words, although there are an enormous number of unassimilated borrowings from Indic languages (which seem to play the same role in Cambodian that Latinate borrowings do in English). Morphologically, Cambodian has a fairly elaborate system of derivational affixes, and it is possible that the genesis of many of the most common of these affixes is related to (and undoes) the constant reduction of unstressed initial syllables in sesquisyllabic words. Again like many of the languages of Southeast Asia, Cambodian exhibits in its lexicon a penchant for symmetrical decorative compounding, a phenomenon which is so marginally attested in Western languages that the phenomenon has received little attention in the typological literature.

This grammar of Modern Eastern Armenian gives a precise and explicit description of the Eastern Armenian language of the Republic of Armenia. It covers not only the normative tradition but, more importantly, also describes the colloquial language as it is used in Armenia today. With regard to methodological approach and terminology it fully meets the demands of modern general linguistics and typology. This grammar will be of interest not only to the specialised readership of descriptive and comparative linguists, of typologists and of armenologists, but to all those who would like to acquaint themselves with linguistic data from living Armenian. It will also be of use to students wishing to learn Modern Eastern Armenian and to lecturers in Modern Eastern Armenian language courses.

This book presents the structure of Hindi keeping in view the sociolinguistic context of language use. It includes descriptions of sounds, devices of word formation, rules of phrase and sentence construction and conventions of language use in spoken and written texts incorporating the insights gained by application of recent linguistic theories. The account presented here, however, is free from abstruse technical vocabulary and modes of presentation that aim at justifying a particular linguistic model. This volume is primarily designed as a source of reference for linguists and educators who want to be better informed about the forms and functions of Hindi, and a resource for students and teachers of Hindi.

Hindi, the official language of the Republic of India, is the second most widely spoken language with approximately three hundred and fifty million speakers. In its diasporic contexts, it is spoken in Africa, Australia, Europe, Fiji, Guyana, Surinam, Trinidad, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States. An Indo-European language by genetic affiliation, Hindi shares many characteristics with Austro-Asiatic, Dravidian, and Sino-Tibetan languages of the subcontinent. In addition, Hindi has assimilated features of Arabic, Persian and English in a variety of its functionally determined styles.

Somali is spoken by more than nine million people in the Horn of Africa and by expatriate communities in the Middle East, Europe and North America. It is the official language of Somalia and an important regional language in Ethiopia and Kenya. As a Cushitic language Somali is part of the great Afroasiatic language family whose other branches include Semitic, Berber, Chadic and Ancient Egyptian. This book provides a comprehensive description of the grammar of the language that will be of interest to non-specialists and linguists interested in typology and language comparison. The author’s accessible investigation of the phonology, morphology, syntax and discourse structure allows the reader a clear view of the linguistic character of Somali and, through Somali, of a Cushitic language. A further important feature of the book is its use of authentic data from a range of sources, including prose, poetry and proverbs.

An essential descriptive introduction to a South-East Asian language with over seventy million speakers, this book provides a conservative treatment of the phonology, lexicon and syntax of Vietnamese, with comments on semantics and history, with particular reference to writing systems, loan words and syntactic structures. All example texts are transcribed and glossed.Prof. Nguyễn Ðình-Hoà has based this grammar on his vast teaching experience and gives basic insights into “Vietnamese without veneer”.

The Caucasus for its size can boast more languages than any other region on earth. Of the 40 or so native tongues Georgian is the most widely spoken (by up to 5 million, of whom 3 million are ethnic Georgians). With its own unique script, Georgian has been written since the 4th century and has a rich literature of all genres. Outside Georgia, however, it has remained virtually unknown and unstudied, its grammatical intricacies being discussed by a small but ever growing succession of foreign specialists. The present work represents the first Reference Grammar of this challenging language to appear in English and is the summation of 20 years of intensive study by its author.