Languages of the Himalayas: An Ethnolinguistic Handbook of the Greater Himalayan Region : Containing an Introduction to the Symbiotic Theory of Language, Volume 1

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Brill, 2001 - Foreign Language Study - 1375 pages
The survey work Languages of the Himalayas provides a bird's eye view of Himalayan languages and language communities. It also constitutes a primary source for much new, hitherto unpublished data on several languages. The demographic mosaic of the Himalayas today is viewed in a historical and comparative linguistic perspective. The reader will find an outline of the historical and prehistorical developments that have determined the modern ethnolinguistic composition of the Himalayan region, involving various independent linguistics stocks or language families. Maps illustrate the distribution of language communities and trace the routes of ancient migrations. There is an illuminating discussion of grammatical features found in Himalayan languages.

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About the author (2001)

George van Driem, Ph.D. (1987) in Linguistics, is Professor of Tibeto-Burman linguistics at Leiden University. He has written four grammars of Himalayan languages and published extensively on Tibeto-Burman historical grammar and the linguistic archaeology of the Himalayan region.