Books published by Sil International, Global Publishing

Gives a grammatical sketch of Zapotec (Mitla Vallay, Oaxaca, Mexico). This third volume in the series Folklore Texts in Mexican Indian Languages consists of eight stories narrated by native speakers, transcribed phonemically, with glossing in English and free translations in English and Spanish.

This book utilizes principles of discourse analysis, cultural anthropology, and biblical studies to analyze First Corinthians. It draws on concepts of text organization from the work of Robert E. Longacre and Kenneth L. Pike. It demonstrates that discourse analysis is an important tool for the study of texts, even ancient ones.

Sentence repetition testing (SRT) is a methodology for investigating patterns of community-wide bilingualism. It is a screening device for testing for bilingualism in an entire community, and it is a valid test for second-language proficiency. High correlations have been found between the performance of second-language speakers on SRTs and descriptive estimations of second-language proficiency. These two methodologies give promise of being reliable in the assessment of language proficiency in low literacy rate contexts.

The papers in this volume are based on sixty-three pages of folktale and historical text in the Waorani language, which is a language of Ecuador.ArticlesHow to know what to remember: Affixal clues, by Gilley, Leoma G.Hypothesis on helping to identify Waorani discourse types, by Hepner, Carol.Thematic unity as evidence for the presence of paragraphs, by Hepner, Mark.The function of ayæ̃ ''then'' in Waorani, by Holman, Mary E.Waorani verb affixes, by Holman, Thomas W.What can mark the peak of a story?, by Miller, Michael.Trees for constituent analysis from discourse to morpheme, by Pike, Evelyn G.Chronological and logical discourse chains, by Ross, Deborah.Part IV: The texts, by Saint, Rachel and Evelyn G. Pike, editors.Notes on referential elements in three texts, by Wilkendorf, Patricia.Waorani clause formulas, by Wilkendorf, Patricia.Prominence of waves of space and time, by Wilt, Timothy L.Tracking participants at points where they are not named, by Zander, Lynn.

Shows how to conduct sociolinguistic surveys on a small scale without access to funding sometimes available to national language planners. Prepares to train people with little background in social research methodology. Spells out how those primarily concerned with local languages can learn to make informed decisions about language choice at local levels. Provides invaluable background on bilingualism and language use and attitudes. Shows how bilingualism develops and is maintained in different situations. Describes several methods for testing dialect comprehensibility in considerable detail, and gives advantages and disadvantages of each. It combines academic sophistication with realism and is a major contribution for conducting sociolinguistic surveys in general.

People everywhere enjoy storytelling, and stories are an excellent source of data for linguistic analysis. Rupp and Rupp have compiled seven stories narrated by a native speaker of this language group located in southern Mexico. They give the phonemic transcription of each text, with detailed glossing in English as well as free translations in English and Spanish. They also include a brief sketch of the culture, a phonemic description of the language, and background information about the narrator. Thus, this book is valuable for both anthropologists and linguists. This is the second volume in the series Folklore Texts in Mexican Indian Languages. The Rupps have been conducting field work among the Ozumacín Chinantec since 1984, under the sponsorship of the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

In this volume Elisabeth and Marinus Wiering present five articles which represent their research on the Doyayo language using a descriptive linguistic approach. Doyayo, which is spoken by 15,000 people, belongs to the Duru group of the Adamawa-Eastern language family in the North Cameroon and Northwest Cameroon regions. This volume was written to make the Wierings'' collected data available to the academic community, as well as to educated Doyayos, with the hope that it would contribute to the ongoing study of their language. The articles cover phonology, structure of indicative verbs, tone patterns of nominals, some major syntactic structures, and some features of folk-tales.

Presents results of study of the factors that affect literacy acquisition in both the mother tongue and Spanish by the indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon.

Discusses how Otomí verb prefixes include deixis in their function. States that a key element to understanding the makeup of Otomí verbs is the role of deixis in the verb and elsewhere in the sentence. Discusses how every independent Otomi sentence is grounded in reality through deixis, and every dependent sentence depends upon deictic grounding in sentences around it.

Mada is spoken in southeastern Nigeria and is a member of the Benue-Congo subfamily of languages.

Looks at the culture of the Ketengban people (eastern highlands of Irian Jaya, Indonesia). Describes Ketengban cosmology and their view of man and the spirits, pregnancy and childbirth practices, and kinship system.

The author describes how, by making use only of evidence from languages spoken today, he reconstructed the protolanguage of six languages found in the Amazonian areas of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.

This is a collection of studies of Papua New Guinea cultures, each isolating one key concept that is believed to define the whole of that culture. Such concepts include: (1) the "big man" in the "father-of-the-village" role; (2) the pig, which highlights important values in Melanesian culture; (3) shell money, used among people of New Britain; and (4) mami `yam''.

Presents studies focusing on world view and cultural change from five Amazonian communities. Documents some of the results of modernizing influences from the outside as well as some of the underlying ideologies used to interpret these influences.

Describes Latin American lifestyles and value systems from an anthropological perspective. Shares procedures to increase effective interpersonal relations: mutual respect, awareness of differences, and bridges of rapport. Looks at the family, values, status, and honor.

Studies the culture and religion of the Chamba, Duru, Gula, and Gbaya of Cameroon. Discusses attempts of expatriates and Africans to ask questions, to learn, and to interpret what is important in the lives and traditions of African societies in the light of the Christian Church.

Reconstructs the protolanguage of six languages found in the Mexico. The book has two major section, Analysis and Data for the language family groups: Oto-Manguean kinship terms, Mixtecan kinship terms, Popolocan kinship term, Otopamean kinship terms, Zapotecan kinship terms, Chinantecan kinship terms, and other Oto-Manguean kinship terms.

Describes Filipino lifestyles and value systems from an anthropological perspective. Shows points of potential conflict between North American and Filipino cultures, and emphasizes the importance of observing a society''s norms to ensure satisfactory relationships.

The literature reviewed in this book has to do with cognition and learning relative to ethnolinguistic minorities, and it deals with three areas of knowledge important in the field of education: developmental and information-processing theories, and learning styles. The focus of the book is on application of theory to cross-cultural education.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (University of Pennsylvania, 1983) under title: Some aspects of formal speech among the Western Subanon of Mindanao.

Shows how to reconstruct syntactic constructions, their constituents, and the functions of these constituents for a protolanguage by applying certain procedures of internal and comparative reconstruction to data from other languages concerned.

This book has two parts. Part one presents a grammatical sketch of the Hixkaryana language--which is a member of the Carib language family and is spoken in northern Brazil--and the other part suggests the place Hixkaryana has in syntactic typology.

The thirteen papers in this volume are new contributions-in terms of fieldwork or of analysis-to the study of Kadai languages other than those of the Tai branch. The specific languages in focus are: Kam, Sui, Maonan, Mulam, Mak, Then, Ai-Cham, Be, Hlai (Li), and Lakkia.

A sampling of some of the diverse studies recently carried out by investigators with varying divergent yet partially overlapping interests in the Spanish language. This book includes information on: Recent trends in Hispanic linguistics / Frank Nuessel; African influence on Hispanic dialects / John Lipski; The Spanish teacher as dialectologist / Mark G. Goldin; Noun gender categories in Spanish and French / Richard V. Teschner. This book is published by SIL International and is part of our series on Linguistics.

To the author, who is a mother tongue speaker, the verbal piece of Ebira, a Nigerian language, is the most complex unit in the language--phonologically and grammatically. Thus, this part of the Ebira grammar is the focus of the author''s description in this book.

This study, by a native speaker of the Dényá language-a language of Cameroon-shows how discourse structure seems to influence the use of verb forms.

While investigating endangered languages, many researchers become interested in developing literacy for these languages. However, often their linguistic training has not provided practical guidance in this area. This book, with contributions by experienced practitioners, helps fill this gap. Both foundational theory and specific case studies are addressed in this work. Non-linguistic factors are described, particularly sociolinguistic issues that determine acceptability of orthographies. A principled approach to the level of phonological representation for orthographies is proposed, applying recent phonological theory. The thorny issues of how to determine word breaks and how to mark tone in an orthography are explored. "Overly hasty orthographies" and the benefits of allowing time for an orthography to settle are discussed. Principles of the foundational chapters are further exemplified by detailed case studies from Mexico, Peru, California, Nepal, and Southeast Asia, which vividly illustrate the variety of local conditions that must be taken into account. The combination of theoretical and practical makes this book unique. It will benefit those involved in helping establish orthographies for hitherto-unwritten languages, and provide concrete guidance through crucial issues.Michael Cahill (Ph.D. 1999, Ohio State University) developed the Konni orthography in Ghana. He was SIL''s International Linguistics Coordinator for eleven years, and is on the LSA''s Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation.Keren Rice (Ph.D. 1976, University of Toronto) helped standardize the orthography of Slavey, and has taught on orthography development at InField/CoLang. She was LSA President in 2012 and is currently University Professor at the University of Toronto.

Understanding Language Choices is an introductory textbook for anyone studying the motivations behind language use choices. It provides an introduction into the numerous factors, both internal and external, influencing such choices in a speech community: language attitudes, language learning, identity, the mobility of the community, and much more. The book also provides a foundation for the study of linguistic variation within a speech community, as well as an introduction to methods of data collection when studying the outcomes of language use choices. An important aspect of this book is its emphasis on a participatory approach to language choice research that empowers the speech community. The final chapter discusses lifestyle concerns that researchers may encounter when conducting field studies in developing nations.Written with the beginner in mind, this textbook includes numerous examples and case studies from around the world to illustrate the realities of sociolinguistic field research. A companion website keeps users of the book up to date with descriptions of the most current research methodologies.Ken Decker received his M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1992. He brings to this book over 25 years'' experience in field research in the sociology of language and language development. He has conducted sociolinguistic surveys in more than 35 languages in Asia and the Americas and served as consultant on surveys in Africa, Australia, Europe, and the Pacific. Ken is particularly interested in the role of language research in strategic language development.John Grummitt received his M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Leicester in 2002, drawing on his decade''s experience as an academic writing tutor and trainer of teachers in ESL programs in Japan and South Korea. His more recent survey work in Papua New Guinea has given him a perspective supplementary to Decker''s on sociolinguistic fieldwork and language development.

This book applies a literary functional equivalence (LiFE) approach ina practical, procedure-documented manner to the text analysis andtranslation for various literature of the Scriptures. Eight case studies from thelyric corpus of the Hebrew Bible are considered: Job 28, Psalm 73, Proverbs31, Psalm 137, Proverbs 26, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes 12 and Psalm 24.The author explains and illustrates a rhetorical literary-structure methodwith different focus and emphasis depending on the form, content andcommunication aim of the poetic book. Chapters conclude with implicationsand applications for Scripture translation. The biblical passages includedhere are not so frequently considered by scholars, teachers, and preachers, andmay be neglected by translators due to their perceived difficulty.My cravings as a linguist, translator, poet, and ethno-arts supporter were allsatisfied by the buffet Wendland sets before us. He compares...structures ofHebrew with those of...[African] vernaculars...suggesting ways to translatethem...using dynamic target language poetic devices and cultural forms. This isliterature translating literature....Dr. Brenda H. Boerger, from the ForewordErnst R. Wendland (Ph.D., African Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin) is an instructor at Lusaka Lutheran Seminary and a dissertation examiner in Zambian languages at the University of Zambia. A former UBS Translation Consultant, he still serves as Professor Extraordinary in the Centre for Bible Interpretation and Translation in Africa, Department of Ancient Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.