“And he knew our language”

Missionary Linguistics on the Pacific Northwest Coast
Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-90-272-4607-3
Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Buch, Englisch, Band 116, 203 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 245 mm, Gewicht: 560 g

Reihe: Studies in the History of the Language Sciences

This ambitious and ground-breaking book examines the linguistic studies produced by missionaries based on the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America (and particularly Haida Gwaii) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Making extensive use of unpublished archival materials, the author demonstrates that the missionaries were responsible for introducing many innovative and insightful grammatical analyses. Rather than merely adopting Graeco-Roman models, they drew extensively upon studies of non-European languages, and a careful exploration of their scripture translations reveal the origins of the Haida sociolect that emerged as a result of the missionary activity. The complex interactions between the missionaries and anthropologists are also discussed, and it is shown that the former sometimes anticipated linguistic analyses that are now incorrectly attributed to the latter. Since this book draws upon recent work in theoretical linguistics, religious history, translation studies, and anthropology, it emphasises the unavoidably interdisciplinary nature of Missionary Linguistics research.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tomalin, Marcus

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Einzelne Sprachen & Sprachfamilien
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Historische & Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Ethnolinguistik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

ix
Abbreviations

xi
1. Introduction

1–29
2. Culture and contact

31–53
3. Initial encounters

55–86
4. Analysing and assessing

87–117
5. Translating scripture

119–150
6. Anthropological approaches

151–177
7. Conclusion

179–185
References

187–197
Index of biographical names

199
Index of subjects and terms

201–203