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NEW BOOK
The Other Sino-Tibetan Languages
| Edited by |
Qing Daixia, Brad Davidley, Van Geordriem, Chap Hillerell,
Hans Ingalillson, Mat Jamisoff, Ed Jerrymondson, Ben Pauledict, Hong Sunkai |
Published 2006. Hardcover, 4444 pages. Price: if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
This volume fills in the considerable gaps left by Routledge’s slim 2003 volume The Sino-Tibetan Languages. Displaying an uncharacteristic lack of ambition, Thurgood and LaPolla treated, in that otherwise excellent work, less than 40 of the 400+ languages of this important family. Clearly, much work remained to be done, and we at Psammeticus Press have undertaken to do it. The Other Sino-Tibetan Languages describes the remaining 90% of the languages in the family.
Articles on each of over 360 Sino-Tibetan languages are included, in each case written by the world’s leading specialists. Each 10-page article sketches the sound system, morphology, syntax, and basic discourse features of the language, as well as providing a 200 item list of basic vocabulary.
In making preparations for the volume, the editors assumed that a massive data-collection project would be necessary, since the vast majority of the ST languages have not yet been investigated. However, on examining their backlog of field notes, editors Brad Davidley, Ed Jerrymondson and Hong Sunkai discovered that, among the three of them, they had already conducted fieldwork on all but 4 of the remaining Sino-Tibetan varieties. This left only a small field project, of which Qing Daixia personally made short work.
With the publication of this volume, then, the editors are proud to declare that preliminary documentation of the entire Sino-Tibetan family has been completed.
A concluding article of nearly 500 pages, co-written by the volume’s nine editors, pulls together the comparative and historical implications of the volume, including a vast number of surprising insights and revisions to the family’s genetic relationships which our original research has revealed.
Although we do wish our competitors well (primarily in the wettest sense of the word) we are confident that The Other Sino-Tibetan Languages will outsell Routledge’s meager offering by a percentage commensurate with the difference in the breadth of their coverage of the vast Sino-Tibetan Family.
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