Language, Society, and Paleoculture: Essays by Edgar Charles Polomé (1920-2000) - 1982

xiii+387 pages with charts, tables and bibliography. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6 1/4") bound in original publisher's grey cloth with black lettering to spine in original jacket. Introduction by Anwar S Del. Volume 19 in the series Language, Science and National Development. First edition. These eighteen essays treat three aspects of a leading sociolinguist's research on language, culture and society: the languages of eastern and central Africa, the process of ereolization, and linguistic paleontology and the reconstruction of proto-cultures. The book is divided into four parts. Part I consists of eight papers giving a sociolinguistic perspective on language policies of Zaire and Tanzania, including the dimension of multilingualism in Zaire, and on the problems, techniques and results of language surveys in eastern Africa. Part II contains two papers on Swahili: one tracing its development in Zaire up to the present creolized form, the other dealing with its modernization in Tanzania. The three papers of Part III explore the theory of creolization. Part IV comprises five papers on the use of lexical data to probe the cultural and religious past of the Indo-Europeans and the Bantus. The volume concludes with an Author's Postscript, in which Polome offers a perspective on his work to date and a complete bibliography of his published work. Condition: Jacket light edge wear else very good to fine in a near fine dust jacket.