Central Eurasian Language Grammars project

This page is here for presenting the current state of the Central Eurasian Language Grammars project to contributors. Members of the editorial committee should see Central Eurasian Language Grammars project/organising.

The purpose

This project's mission is probably something like this:

In light of the stark lack of serious materials of use to linguists on many languages of Central Eurasia, this project aims to clearly present data, generalisations, and open questions about languages which have some [significant] connection to the [various] Central Eurasian Sprachbund[s throughout history], which linguists may find useful as a source for typological and theoretical work, or as a starting place for deeper research on any of these languages.

And, er, copy-edited so it's legible (thanks Tristan):

we don't think there's enough serious materials for linguists to use when working with central eurasian languages, so we started this project. We aim to produce materials which clearly present data, generalisations, and remaining/unsolved questions about languages that are connected to the various historical central eurasian sparchbunds. We hope linguists will find the materials useful for typological and theoretical work, or as a starting place for deeper research on any of these languages.

The plan

We are currently planning a series of volumes, organised by language size and area. The first volume will be on the "medium-density non-peripheral languages" of Central Asia. Later volumes will be on low-density, critical, and extinct / historical languages, potentially for various regions of Central Eurasia.

The first volume

The first volume is on the core languages of Central Asia—that is, languages with at least one million speakers that are not located on the edges of Central Asia.

Turkic

• Tashkent Uzbek
  (23.5M speakers)
  • Contributor: ??
  • Informant: Umida Khikmatullaeva
• Kazakh
  (12M speakers)
  • Contributor: Jonathan?
  • Informant: ???
• Uyghur
  (10M speakers)
  • Contributor: Niko
  • Informant: ???
• Turkmen
  (9M speakers)
  • Contributor: Elliott Hoey
  • Informant: ???
• Kyrgyz
  (3.5M speakers)
  • Contributor: Jonathan
  • Informant: Tolgonay
• Uzbeki
  a.k.a. Afghan Uzbek (1,451,980 speakers)
  • Inviting: ???

Mongolic

• Khalkha
  (2.6M speakers)
  • Contributor: Andrew
  • Informant: ???

Tibeto-Burman

• Central Tibetan
  (3-6 million speakers speakers)
  • Inviting: ???
• Amdo Tibetan
  (800'000 speakers)
  • Inviting: ???

IE

• Pashto
  (~26M speakers)
  • Inviting: ???
• Balochi
  (8M speakers)
  • Inviting: ???
• Dari
  (7.6M speakers)
  • Inviting: ???
• Tajik
  (4.5M speakers)
  • Inviting: ???