Graficky přehledně zpracovaný atlas provází bohatstvím světových jazyků, seznamuje s jejich geografickým rozložením a upozorňuje na jejich příbuzenskou provázanost.
Úvod výpravné publikace je věnován otázkám vzniku, vývoje a šíření jazyků. Další kapitoly zkoumají jazykové rodiny a jazyky z hlediska zeměpisných oblastí světa, uvádějí jejich základní charakteristiky a příbuzenské vztahy. V závěru se publikace zabývá původem a vývojem písemných systémů a problematikou přežití jazyků a jazykové pestrosti.
Since its first publication, Language Universals and Linguistic Typology has become established as the leading introductory account of one of the most productive areas of linguistics—the analysis, comparison, and classification of the common features and forms of the organization of languages. Adopting an approach to the subject pioneered by Greenberg and others, Bernard Comrie is particularly concerned with syntactico-semantic universals, devoting chapters to word order, case making, relative clauses, and causative constructions. His book is informed throughout by the conviction that an exemplary account of universal properties of human language cannot restrict itself to purely formal aspects, nor focus on analysis of a single language. Rather, it must also consider language use, relate formal properties to testable claims about cognition and cognitive development, and treat data from a wide range of languages. This second edition has been revised and updated to take full account of new research in universals and typology in the past decade, and more generally to consider how the approach advocated here relates to recent advances in generative grammatical theory.
In this scholarly volume, each of the living Slavonic languages are analysed and described in depth, together with the two extinct languages - Old Church Slavonic and Polabian. In addition, the various alphabets of the Slavonic languages - particularly Roman, Cyrillic and Glagolitic - are discussed, and the relationships of the Slavonic languages to other Indo-European languages and to one another, are explored. The last chapter provides an account of those Slavonic languages in exile , for example, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech and Slovak in the USA.Each language-chapter is written by an expert in the field, in a format designed for comparative study. Information on each language an introductory description of social context and development (where appropriate); a discussion of phonology; a detailed presentation of synchronic morphology, noting major historical developments; comprehensive treatment of syntactic properties; a discussion of vocabulary; an outline of main dialects; and an extensive bibliography, listing English and other sources.
