Introduction to the Languages of the World

The only textbook of its kind, An Introduction to the Languages of the World is designed to introduce beginning linguistics students, who now typically start their study with little background in languages, to the variety of the languages of the world. It is ideal for use in courses where students have mastered the basic principles of linguistics but lack background in the broad range of language phenomena found in the world's languages, such as vowelharmony and ergative constructions. It offers students an opportunity to explore, at various levels, structures of very different, highly interesting languages without necessarily possessing a speaking or reading knowledge of these languages.Lyovin explains the classification of languages, discussing not only genetic classification but typological and sociolinguistic classification as well. He follows this with an explication of writing systems. A chapter is devoted to each of the world's continents, with in-depth analyses of representative languages of Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America, and a separate chapter covers pidgins and creoles. Helpful features include an appendix of nineteen maps, student exercises, andsuggestions for further reading.

"This book is an important pedagogical resource, presenting in succinct form information on the classification of the world's languages into language families and on the major structural types with regard to a wide range of phonological, morphological, and syntactic phenomena, as well as detailed presentations of languages selected to illustrate interaction of structural features as they occur in texts." --Bernard Comrie, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara "The second edition of An Introduction to the Languages of the World is a leap forward. I welcome the chapter on writing systems and the language sketches. The book stresses the diversity of the world's languages and is well balanced across the globe. The decision to use ISO coding for language names, now the standard nomenclature for languages, is also welcome. Altogether, a fine achievement." --Mark Aronoff, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, Stony Brook University

Born of Russian emigre parents in Leskovac, Serbia, Yugoslavia, in 1938. In 1950 left Yugoslavia, and after one year spent in refugee camps in Italy and Germany immigrated to Canada. Finished high school in Toronto, Canada, and received a scholarship to study at Princeton University in New Jersey. Also studied at the Taiwan National University for one year before completing AB at Princeton. After graduating from Princeton, studied at University of California,Berkeley, for a doctorate in linguistics. Appointed Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the fall of 1968. Retired as an associate professor from that institution in 2000. Taught in Burma, Korea, Japan, and Russia. (Russia and Korea were on a Fulbright.)Presently serving as the rector of the Holy Theotokos of Iveron Russian Orthodox Church, Honolulu, Hawaii, with the rank of an archpriest.