Studies in Burmese Linguistics (Pacific Linguistics, 570)

Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. 2005. Trade paperback. Very good.. 328 p. Audience: College/higher education; Professional and scholarly. . Studies in Burmese Linguistics' is a unique collection of articles dedicated to the linguistics of Burmese, a major language of South East Asia with perhaps forty million speakers, more than any other language in the diverse Tibeto-Burman language family. The articles cover various sub-disciplines within linguistics which will be of general interest to a broad constituency of linguists, including the phonology and the phonetics of constituent focus, a synchronic and diachronic treatment of reflexives, a discussion of optionality in morphosyntax, an analysis of the grammaticalisation of the verb 'give' as a causativiser, three complementary articles on the verbal tense-mode-aspect system and two on Old Burmese, the language of 11-13th Century inscriptions. There is also a report of a major German-Burmese lexicography project. The contributors were invited to write on research topics of their own choosing, making the volume a representative of current research on Burmese rather than a systematic linguistic survey of the language. While not all the articles are theory-neutral, the book has been edited to ensure accessibility to a broad readership, as well as consistent transcription, transliteration and linguistic glossing across all the articles.