Books published by Sil International, Global Publishing

In The Geometry and Features of Tone, linguists will benefit from the theory presented as well as from its practical application to four case studies. First published in 1999, this book has not lost its relevance; it will stimulate the seasoned linguist and provide valuable instruction to students of phonology and tone.The Geometry and Features of Tone describes Register Tier Theory (RTT). Couched within the broader theories of autosegmental phonology and feature geometry, RTT is a model for representing tone phonologically:what features are involved,how the features relate to tone-bearing units, andhow the features interact with one another.Following brief introductions to autosegmental phonology and lexical phonology, as well as following a relatively abstract treatment of RTT, case studies are presented of diverse types of register phenomena. The final chapter critiques a number of alternative proposals.No substantive changes were made in this edition, but typographical errors have been corrected.

Each volume in the Exegetical Summaries series works through the original text phrase by phrase. English equivalents are provided for all Hebrew and Greek words, making this an excellent reference for exegetes of all levels.Questions that occur to exegetes as they study the text are stated and then answered by summarizing the ways many scholars have interpreted the text. This information should help translators or students in making their own exegetical decisions.As a basis for discussion, a semi-literal translation of the text is given. The first question to be answered is the meaning of key words in context. Information from standard lexicons is given and then translations of the word are cited from a dozen major Bible versions and from commentaries that offer their own translations of the text.Questions about the grammar and discourse structure of the original languages are answered by summarizing the views of many commentators. When exegetical disagreements appear in the commentaries and versions, the various interpretations are listed.This book is not intended to replace the commentaries that are consulted. Rather than being a stand-alone commentary, this book summarizes many important details of exegesis that should be considered in studying the biblical text.

Can a culture have a theme that unifies seemingly unrelated practices? In this volume, Collins suggests that Maya-Mam customs as different as constructing a house, staying healthy, seeking God, disciplining children, agreeing to a contract, or just speaking the language, all originate from the same concept- a search for the center. This is far more than mere balance, long recognized as a Mayan cultural value. Rather, center space is a place of physical and metaphysical peace, acceptance, meaning, health, happiness and "home." Collins also shows how cenderedness is deeply embedded in the grammar of Mam- its lexicon, morphology, syntax, and discourse structure. This relatedness of Mam culture and linguistics provides an unusually detailed contribution to the debate on linguistic relativity and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Collins combines historical accounts with firsthand ethnographic and linguistic methodology to explore the concept of centeredness. Detailed accounts of his personal interaction with the Mam illustrate and enrich the book''s concepts. This volume will interest students of the relationship between language and culture generally, and specifically those interested in the study of Maya of Mexico and Guatemala. Wesley M. Collins (Ph.D., The Ohio State University), along with his family, lived and worked among the Maya-Mam people for over 30 years. He currently directs the CILTA linguistic training course in Peru. His academic interests include linguistic development of indigenous languages and Mam-language research

Each volume in the Exegetical Summaries series works through the original text phrase by phrase. English equivalents are provided for all Hebrew and Greek words, making this an excellent reference for exegetes of all levels. Questions that occur to exegetes as they study the text are stated and then answered by summarizing the ways many scholars have interpreted the text. This information should help translators or students in making their own exegetical decisions. As a basis for discussion, a semi-literal translation of the text is given. The first question to be answered is the meaning of key words in context. Information from standard lexicons is given and then translations of the word are cited from a dozen major Bible versions and from commentaries that offer their own translations of the text. Questions about the grammar and discourse structure of the original languages are answered by summarizing the views of many commentators. When exegetical disagreements appear in the commentaries and versions, the various interpretations are listed. This book is not intended to replace the commentaries that are consulted. Rather than being a stand-alone commentary, this book summarizes many important details of exegesis that should be considered in studying the biblical text. Thomas Tehan (Ph.D., University of Kansas), is a member of the Department of Linguistics of Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand. His areas of interest include discourse analysis and text linguistics, translation theory and methods, and sociocultural linguistics and endangered languages. David Abernathy is the author of three of the Exegetical Summary series-Romans 1-8, 2 Corinthians, 1 Peter, and coauthored Sermon on the Mount. He has earned a Master of Theology from Reformed Theological Seminary in 2003. He serves with SIL. He teaches Greek, Hebrew, and Biblical Exegesis at the Pan Africa Christian College in Kenya.

The central idea of this volume is the insistence that the structure of a part of a text must be explained in light of the structure of the whole. This needs to be repeated anew to every generation of linguistics students as a warning against analytic nearsightedness-the fixation on parts of a text without regard to the whole. Holistic Discourse Analysis is not a plea to abandon the analysis of lower levels of grammar, but to enrich the study of them by putting them in broader perspective.The book addresses discourse analysis and its purpose, text typology, and constituent-based charting with an analysis of a story in terms of peak and profile. It discusses functions of different verb types and their tense/aspect/modality, of noun phrases, and of clause combining in discourse. It includes a chapter with a layman''s introduction to discourse analysis, and another with ways to represent combinations of sentences in a paragraph. The last three chapters deal with nonnarrative discourses: procedural, hortatory, and expository.This Second Edition has significantly improved the usability of the volume by employing color-coding in illustrative texts so the reader can more easily visualize multiple levels of prominence in these texts. This book offers itself both as a classroom text and a field manual for discourse analysis. It can also serve as an introduction to the more theoretically oriented volume, Longacre''s The Grammar of Discourse (1996).Robert Longacre has a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife Gwen translated the New Testament into Trique, an Oto-Manguean language. From 1972 to 1991 he taught linguistics at the University of Texas at Arlington and served as a linguistic consultant for SIL. At present, he is researching the discourse structure of biblical Hebrew and also the theory and practice of discourse analysis in general.Shin Ja Hwang, was a student of Robert Longacre in her M.A. and Ph.D. studies and has worked with him as a colleague. She has taught graduate courses on discourse analysis, functional grammar, language universals and typology, and sociolinguistics at Texas SIL, the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, and the University of Texas at Arlington.

They are the last generation to have experienced (as children) traditional life before contact with European cultures in the early 1950s and the first generation to experience the cultural change brought about by that contact - these are ''the in-between people''. As parents, they want their children to experience the best of both the high technology world of today, and the language and culture of their traditional world. The In-Between People studies how the Kaugel-speaking people of Papua New Guinea approach the tension that results from the intersection of the old and new cultures. Specifically, the author focuses on Kaugel pre-primary bilingual education, a nonformal mother-tongue education program whose purpose is to increase the children''s success in formal English education and also to increase their appreciation of and participation in their ethnic language and culture. He approaches his work with three purposes in mind: understanding how the Kaugel pre-primary program has been maintained and expanded, understanding Kaugel parents'' attitude toward their children''s education, and describing how community members resolve the tension between maintaining their mother tongue and succeeding in English-speaking schools. Dennis Malone has lived and worked in Papua New Guinea since 1967, first as an educator in primary schools, later as a mother-tongue literacy specialist for the Kaugel Literacy Project, and as a mother-tongue education advisor to the PNG Department of Education. Since receiving his Ph.D. in Education from Indiana University in 1998 he has served as an International Literacy Consultant for SIL International in the Asia area.

Three of the fall 1982 Linguistics Forum lectures, which were sponsored by the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at the University of Texas of Arlington and the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

The books in this series are analytical commentaries on the Greek text of New Testament books. Each book first identifies the high-level semantic components of the text and indicates the relationships between them. These components are then further analyzed to identify sub-components and their relationships. This process is continued until the basic units of communication, called propositions, are identified. These propositions are stated in semantically unskewed English glosses. Theme statements for paragraphs and larger units are derived from the analysis. A discussion of the evidence supporting the analysis is also given.

This textbook has the basic purpose of preparing students with no linguistic background to discover the grammatical structure of an unwritten language. The Americanist symbols are used. The Laboratory Manual for Morphology and Syntax, 7th ed, (revised, 2003), is a practical supplement to accompany the textbook. It contains 298 datasets of problems taken from 117 spoken languages. (IPA) symbols replaced the Americanist symbols in some datasets.

The books in this series are analytical commentaries on the Greek text of New Testament books. Each book first identifies the high-level semantic components of the text and indicates the relationships between them. These components are then further analyzed to identify sub-components and their relationships. This process is continued until the basic units of communication, called propositions, are identified. These propositions are stated in semantically unskewed English glosses. Theme statements for paragraphs and larger units are derived from the analysis. A discussion of the evidence supporting the analysis is also given.

This manual has been designed to give practice in solving the various problems which the Bible translator faces. Through drill and practice, the student will develop skill in applying the principles of translation which he has learned in Translating the Word of God by John Beekman and John Callow and Discourse Considerations in Translating the Word of God by Kathleen Callow.

The books in this series are analytical commentaries on the Greek text of New Testament books. Each book first identifies the high-level semantic components of the text and indicates the relationships between them. These components are then further analyzed to identify sub-components and their relationships. This process is continued until the basic units of communication, called propositions, are identified. These propositions are stated in semantically unskewed English glosses. Theme statements for paragraphs and larger units are derived from the analysis. A discussion of the evidence supporting the analysis is also given.

In this book, the author presents the results of her analysis of the use of the two tenses, imparfait and passé simple, in French narrative discourse. One conclusion she reaches is that these two tenses can be defined as `state' and `event', respectively, and that, with such definitions, different temporal and aspectual values that have traditionally been associated with these two tenses can be united.

This book describes the nature of communication, the implications it has for the theory of translation, and its application to Bible translation.

The World View of Muslim and Traditionalist in the Senegambia subregion are studied. A world-view approach is followed, based on an eight-level model that is developed in the book. The result is a comprehensive view of the religious practices being followed and a broad understanding of the integrated conceptual system on which they are based. The belief systems of most Muslim societies are expressed through a complex mixture of orthodox and nonorthodox practices. Studies of these systems have usually focused on either orthodox or mystical Islam or on folk beliefs and practices and have not attempted to look at the complete range of beliefs and practices present in one society, as does this volume. Senegambia world view focuses on transcendent peace which is seen to be the pervasive, dominant theme of the culture. It is experienced by individuals when they and society are in balance with cosmic beings and forces, with social units, and with nature. The author, David E. Maranz, received his Ph.D. in Islamic studies in 1991 and has concentrated on the study of Muslim cultures of sub-Saharan Africa since 1975.

This work was the authors'' response to a need they saw for methodology in field research. They give techniques for gathering and processing data from unwritten languages, and include questionnaires for many aspects of both language and culture. Examples of the latter are time, currency, measures, and kinship. This is an English translation of a work that was first published in French in three volumes (Bouquiaux, L. & Thomas, Jacqueline M.C. (eds.), Enquête et description des langues à tradition orale. I L''enquête de terrain et l''analyse grammaticale. II.Approche linguistique (Questionnaires grammaticaux et phrases) III Approche thématique (Questionnaire technique et Guides thématiques). Paris, SELAF, 2nd ed., 1976).

Koasati, a Muskogean language, is spoken by about 200 people in Elton, Louisiana, and by a smaller number near Livingston, Texas. This volume contains a brief sociolinguistic note, a phonological description, and a grammar outline. Then in the remaining two chapters, the salient features of switch reference in the language are described, and it is shown that this feature is not just a syntactic phenomenon but also a pervasive system that interacts with high-level discourse.

The articles in this volume came out of a workshop held by the editors in 1990 on the campus of Pattimura University, in Ambon, Maluku, Indonesia. In these articles, the phonologies of the Sawai, Kisar, Larike, and West Tarangan languages are described. Also, maps and information about the languages' locations, various ethnic features, and suggested classifications are included in the book.