On Diversity and Complexity of Languages Spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia

What is it about?

"The main topics of this volume, “On Diversity and Complexity of Languages Spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia”, concentrate on structural typology, clause combining, discourse semantics and historical processes in language change... The articles are organized into three sections.The language The subsection “Verbal Categories and Processes in Categorizations” contains three articles on various aspects on verbal systems: an article on tense and aspect systems in Khorchin Mongolian, a Mongolian dialect spoken in eastern Inner Mongolia, an article on TMA systems in Chalkan, an unwritten Turkic variety spoken in the north of Republic Altai, Russia, and one article on causative and passive systems in Xibe, a Tungusic language spoken in Xinjiang province in North-Western China. In subsection “Syntactic Functions and Case Marking”, there are three articles: syntax and semantics of spatial relationships in Evenki, which is a Tungusic language spoken in eastern Siberia, alignment features in Indo-Aryan (‘Dardic’) languages spoken in the Greater Hindu Kush area, and possession marking in Bashkir, which belongs to the North-Western branch of the Turkic languages mainly spoken in Bashkiria, Russia. The subsection “Clause Combining and Discourse” contains two articles on copular clauses in Turkic languages: an article on Karaim, a North-West (Kipchak) Turkic language spoken Lithuania, and an article on copular markers in Turkish, a South-West Turkic language. The section also contains an article on discourse connectives in Turkish, and an article on anaphora and clause combining in Ossetic (Ossete), a North-East Iranian (Indo-European) language mainly spoken in North Ossetia. Two of articles in the section deal with evidentiality marking: one article on evidentiality in Dzungar Tuvan, a minority Sayan Turkic language spoken in South Siberia, and one article on evidentiality in German, a Germanic (Indo-European) language. In the last two articles, the focus is on “Historical Issues”: the history of the development of the subject reference system in Russian (East Slavonic) and diachrony of some negative markers in the Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic languages. Below, the import of these articles is outlined." (SLCS 164, John Benjamins XI - XII)

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Why is it important?

This volume collects the articles written on the basis of presentations given in the NeoLENCA IV workshop which took place Aug. 28, 2012–Sept. 1, 2012 at Stockholm University. The three LENCA symposia (LENCA = Languages of Europe and North and Central Asia). took place at the University of Izhevsk, Russia (2001), Kazan Federal University, Tatarstan Republic, Russia (2004) and Tomsk State Pedagogical University, Toms, Russia (2006). The workshops was a part of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE). Many of the languages which belong to the LENCA-group are minority languages and poorly documented. The goal of the LENCA-symposia and workshops is to collect together researchers of language typology of these languages. The focus of articles published in this volume is in description of these languages. Theoretical background of the articles published in this volume as well as the articles presented in the other LENCA-symposia is in language typology.

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