{"product_id":"dying-words-isbn-9780631233060","title":"Dying Words","description":"The next century will see more than half of the world’s 6,000 languages become extinct, and most of these will disappear without being adequately recorded. Written by one of the leading figures in language documentation, this fascinating book explores what humanity stands to lose as a result.  \u003cul type=\"disc\"\u003e \u003cli\u003eExplores the unique philosophy, knowledge, and cultural assumptions of languages, and their impact on our collective intellectual heritage\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eQuestions why such linguistic diversity exists in the first place, and how can we can best respond to the challenge of recording and documenting these fragile oral traditions while they are still with us\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eWritten by one of the leading figures in language documentation, and draws on a wealth of vivid examples from his own field experience\u003c\/li\u003e \u003cli\u003eBrings conceptual issues vividly to life by weaving in portraits of individual ‘last speakers’ and anecdotes about linguists and their discoveries\u003c\/li\u003e \u003c\/ul\u003e \u003cp\u003eAcknowledgments ix\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003ePrologue xv\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA Note on the Presentation of Linguistic Material xx\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart I The Library of Babel 1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e1 Warramurrungunji’s Children 5\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e2 Four Millennia to Tune In 24\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart II A Great Feast of Languages 45\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e3 A Galapagos of Tongues 49\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e4 Your Mind in Mine: Social Cognition in Grammar 69\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart III Faint Tracks in an Ancient Wordscape: Languages and Deep World History 81\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e5 Sprung from Some Common Source 85\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e6 Travels in the Logosphere: Hooking Ancient Words onto Ancient Worlds 105\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e7 Keys to Decipherment: How Living Languages Can Unlock Forgotten Scripts 129\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart IV Ratchetting Each Other Up: The Coevolution of Language, Culture, and Thought 155\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e8 Trellises of the Mind: How Language Trains Thought 159\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e9 What Verse and Verbal Art Can Weave 182\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart V Listening While We Can 205\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e10 Renewing the Word 207\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEpilogue: Sitting in the Dust, Standing in the Sky 229\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNotes 232\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eReferences 249\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIndex of Languages and Language Families 274\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIndex 280\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e“Its straightforward and compelling style will make it appealing to a general audience as well as to professional linguists and anthropologists.”  (\u003ci\u003eJournal of Linguistic Anthropology\u003c\/i\u003e, 10 April 2013)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"This is a wonderful book.... This is story telling of the highest quality - with each story told in its relevant language, together with a translation - but it is also text with some messages of great importance.\" (Aboriginal History, 1 January 2011)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Evans's book is one of the most penetrating and insightful works we have had on language for years.\" (\u003ci\u003eCurrent Anthropology\u003c\/i\u003e, February 2011)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"In sum, this is the best book I've yet seen in terms of its potential to persuade the broader public of the need to value endangered languages and to support the fight to keep them in daily use. Will \u003ci\u003eDying words\u003c\/i\u003e convince my recalcitrant friends? I don't know, but I will urge them to try it.\" (Language Documentation and Conservation, 2010)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"In sum, this is the best book I've yet seen in terms of its potential to persuade the broader public of the need to value endangered languages and to support the fight to keep them in daily use.\" (Language Documentation and Conservation, October 2010)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"The style of this book is at a level that both interested laypersons and undergraduate students of linguistics can understand - and indeed be inspired by - without excessive pondering. But its content is so important, so beneficial - and hitherto, so distinctive among works of general linguistics - that it should be put into the hands of most, if not all, graduate students in this field. It is supported with good bibliographies which will generate further interest in its readers through the examples it discusses. With luck, it will encourage them to go out and do likewise.\" (\u003ci\u003eInternational Journal of Applied Linguistics,\u003c\/i\u003e Spring 2010)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Of all the books on language disappearance that have appeared in the last decade, Dying Words is intellectually the most challenging and the most persuasive. Evans sets out to show why linguistic diversity is an essential part of what makes us human … .Modestly yet persuasively, Evans has thrown down an intellectual guantlet.\" \u003ci\u003e(Times Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e, May 2010)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"I predict that \u003ci\u003eDying Words\u003c\/i\u003e will be an important addition to the fields of linguistics and cultural anthropology.... Evans maintains a style which is thought-provoking without being overbearing. I found the experience of reading \u003ci\u003eDying Words\u003c\/i\u003e to be an exciting one.\" (\u003ci\u003eJournal of Folklore Research\u003c\/i\u003e, January 2010)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Nicholas Evans ... has written a sensitive and deeply persuasive book about what endangered languages can tell us. He gives us a huge mosaic of the dwindling storehouse of human discovery that is our languages. That's why we should care.\" (\u003ci\u003eCourier Mail,\u003c\/i\u003e August 2009)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Dying Words ... is an astonishing book. This is a study of dying languages, of tremendous variety and richness. It makes clear ... the importance of describing each language and each culture on its own terms ... .I recommend this book to any person with an enquiring mind, prepared to be astonished by the variety of languages, living and dead, which enrich our world.\" (\u003ci\u003eTeacher Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, September 2009)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Evans has made an outstanding contribution toward increasing awareness of endangered languages with this book, and it deserves to be one of the go-to books on the topic.\" (\u003ci\u003eLinguist List\u003c\/i\u003e, August 2009)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Evans describes the dimensions of the loss, culled from his years of work in northern Australian Aboriginal communities, in the recently released \u003ci\u003eDying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us.\u003c\/i\u003e\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Australian\u003c\/i\u003e, June 2009)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"While some linguists worry that helping communities shore up their languages saps too much time from research, Evans believes that linguists who document languages in the field should take an active role in such activities.\" (\u003ci\u003eThe Chronicle of Higher Education\u003c\/i\u003e, May 2009)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Nicholas Evans manages to conquer the mammoth task of sharing the plight of the endangered languages of the world in a manner that very few have been able to do. Intertwining anecdote and narrative with concepts of linguistics, Evans touches upon the need for awareness about the plight of the world's languages without unnecessary dramatics.\" (\u003ci\u003eEndangered Languages\u003c\/i\u003e, April 2009)\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cb\u003eNicholas Evans\u003c\/b\u003e is Professor of Linguistics at the Australian National University and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is on the editorial boards of the journals \u003ci\u003eLinguistic Typology\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAustralian Journal of Linguistics\u003c\/i\u003e, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. He is the author of a number of books, including \u003ci\u003eBininj Gun-wok\u003c\/i\u003e (2 volumes, 2001), \u003ci\u003eArchaeology and Linguistics: Aboriginal Australia in Global Perspective\u003c\/i\u003e (co-edited with Patrick McConvell, 1998), and \u003ci\u003eA Grammar of Kayardild\u003c\/i\u003e (1992).  The next century will see more than half of the world’s 6,000 languages go extinct, and most of these will disappear without being adequately recorded. Yet each language contains its own philosophy, knowledge, and cultural assumptions. This compelling book asks what the cost is to our collective intellectual heritage with the death of these languages. It brings conceptual issues vividly to life by weaving in portraits of individual ‘last speakers’ and anecdotes about linguists and their discoveries.  \u003cp\u003eIn exploring what humanity stands to lose with the onset of massive language extinction, \u003ci\u003eDying Words\u003c\/i\u003e considers a variety of connected issues: how can we can best respond to the challenge of recording and documenting these fragile oral traditions while they are still with us? Why does such linguistic diversity exist in the first place, and what can it tell us about the potential variation of languages? And what insights can these languages give us into history? Written by one of the leading figures in language documentation, \u003ci\u003eDying Words\u003c\/i\u003e draws on a wealth of examples from Evans’ own field experience to give us a fascinating insight into the field of endangered languages.\u003c\/p\u003e  \"A fascinating and colourful view of what we are losing as languages die, by a linguist who understands the significance of our loss more deeply than most.\"\u003cbr\u003e –\u003cb\u003eGreville G. Corbett\u003c\/b\u003e, University of Surrey  \u003cp\u003e\"Nick Evans’ book is an elegant, eloquently rendered narrative of the human story as revealed through our languages. With deep erudition in world literatures both oral and written, he captures the interplay between speaker and tradition, word and thought, language and land; and he shares with his readers the intellectual life of speakers and humanist-scientists seeking to preserve and document this heritage.\"\u003cbr\u003e –\u003cb\u003eTony Woodbury\u003c\/b\u003e, University of Texas at Austin\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Wiley-Blackwell","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47989091041509,"sku":"NP9780631233060","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780631233060.jpg?v=1761782758","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/dying-words-isbn-9780631233060","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}