Central Eurasian Language Grammars project

<accesscontrol>CELGcontributors</accesscontrol> 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

Linguists working with particular theories or typological questions often seek basic facts about some aspect of the grammar of many languages. However, most linguists have little access to information which they might find useful about Central Eurasian languages. Existing grammars, at best, are designed as quick references for reading knowledge for people (philologists, mostly) who may already know a not-distantly-related language. At worst, existing grammars make [lousy] paperweights.

This collection will attempt to provide grammatical sketches of the core languages of modern Central Asia. Its coverage of linguistic topics will not be complete, but it will focus on the most basic and essential elements of the grammar of each language, which are poorly covered elsewhere anyway. These grammars will be written by Linguists who have good knowledge of the language they're describing, and preferably coauthored by a native speaker "informant". One result of this is that outstanding issues in the grammar will be pointed out—that is, topics needing further analysis or which do not lend themselves nicely to analysis within present theoretical models. This furthers the usefulness of the grammars to other linguists, both by being honest about places where our understandings fall short, and by providing research ideas for other linguists.

An ulterior purpose of this volume will be to offer a good reference to people attempting to learn the languages.

Coverage of Topics

Following is a basic list of topics which should be covered by the grammar of each language:

• An introduction, placing the language socio-politically and historically. (½-1 page)
• An overview of socio-linguistic issues such as dialectal distribution, koineisation, bilingualism (and diglossia), language shift, etc. (½-1 page)
• A reasonably complete account of the phonemic inventory, allophones, etc. (2 pages)
• An account of interesting productive or semi-productive phonological processes (like vowel harmony, consonant assimilation, etc.). Subsumed under one section with above. (2-4 pages)
• A nearly complete survey of the language's morphology, including reference to morpho-phonology and semantics of morphology covered (e.g. the general uses of each case morpheme, tense/mood/aspect/voice of each tense morpheme, etc). These should be covered more from a holistic semantic (top-down) view than from a morpheme-by-morpheme view (bottom-up) (e.g., individual uses of a single morpheme shouldn't be listed, but rather a given use should be included where appropriate). I think. This includes negatives (7-12 pages)
• Accounts of syntactic topics of interest and relevance to Central Asia, such as quotatives, relative clauses (and all other multi-clause constructions, though this might be best in the verb morphology section), questions, classifiers, subjunctives(?), etc. A list of specifically desired topics in this and the previous category will be specified by the editors. (3-5 pages)
• A concise list of common and relevant vocabulary, grouped by topic (?); e.g., agricultural terms, body parts, nature-related vocabulary, ideophones etc. (1 page)
  • A top-100-words-by-frequency list (or more than 100?). JNW has software that can be used to generate this sort of thing (and has lists for Uzbek, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz).
• Fully glossed and translated examples of the language in use. At least one text in the following categories: prose text in a modern literary variety, transcription of spontaneous spoken language (preferably conversation/dialogue), and one oral or textual example of verse. (9-18 pages @ ~3 pages each)
• A bibliography of reliable sources on the language (dictionaries, academic articles, and grammars). (½-1 page)

In all, each language's grammar should be no shorter than 25 pages and no longer than 40 pages. Given the language coverage, this should result in a volume of approximately 300-600 pages

We'd also like to have a disc and/or website that supplements the material in the book with:

• audio samples of the examples of language use
• morphological transducers of the languages
• interactive versions of maps
• etc.

The first volume

Ideas for a title

• (JNW) "The core/key languages of Central Asia" ("A reference for the desk or the field")
• (CIB) "The core (? or other word?) languages of Central Asia" (delete parenthetical subtitle "A reference for the desk or the field")
• (NDK) "The major languages of Central Asia" -- unless we run the risk of sounding too much like that Comrie book...
• (JNW) "The languages of the largest Central Asian states" ... Hm, that's not quite right.
• (JNW) "The largest languages of Central Asia" (and then the next volume can be "The next largest languages of Central Asia" :-P ... )

Justification

The justification for including the languages proposed here is that they're all large (medium density—in this case, they all have at least ½ million speakers, but no more than 25 million), and they're all in the heart of Central Asia / non-peripheral (e.g., not Tatar or Sakha or Ossetian or any Uralic languages).

The languages by geography

This volume covers the large "non-intrusive" languages of the core of Central Asia. Languages in italics will probably not be included (as semi-peripheral), but may be worth considering.

• Afghanistan (Pashto, Dari, Afghan Uzbek, Balochi)
• Turkmenistan (Turkmen, (Balochi))
• Uzbekistan (Uzbek, Qaraqalpaq)
• Kazakhstan (Kazakh)
• Kyrgyzstan (Kyrgyz)
• Tajikistan (Tajik)
• Tibet (Amdo, Central Tibetan, Khams)
• Eastern Turkistan (Uyghur)
• Mongolia (Khalkha)

The languages, by family

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: ???