SIL Publications by Category
Historical and Comparative Linguistics

Comparative Kadai: Linguistic Studies Beyond Tai edited by David B. Solnit; Jerold A. Edmondson, PL 86, 1989, 382 pp., ISBN 978-0-88312-066-8, $26.50

Contains thirteen papers on these Kadai languages: Kam, Sui, Maonan, Mulam, Mak, Then, Ai-Cham, Be, Hlai (Li) and Lakkia.

Comparative Kadai: The Tai Branch edited by David B. Solnit; Jerold A. Edmondson, PL 124, 1997, 388 pp., ISBN 978-1-55671-005-6, $36.50

Defines the linguistic range of an immense, interrelated and varied area extending from eastern India to southern China, including the southeast Asian peninsula.

Language Death in Mesmes: a Sociolinguistic and Historical-Comparative Examination of a Disappearing Ethiopian-Semitic Language by Michael B Ahland, PL 145, 2010, 155 pp., ISBN 978-1-55671-227-2, $25.00

Presents an historical examination of sound change and other developments in the very-nearly extinct Gurage language known as Mesmes while also considering the linguistic and social environments in which the language has been lost.

Our Company Increases Apace: History, Language, and Social Identity in Early Colonial Andover, Massachusetts by Elinor Abbot, PE 40, 2007, 279 pp., ISBN 978-1-55671-169-5 $25.00

A new analysis of a famous and well-documented old New England town, Andover, Massachusetts. Using anthropological and linguistic approaches. It treats Andover's history from the settling company to the split in 1710.

Proto Otomanguean Kinship by William R. Merrifield, PE 11, 1981, 408 pp., ISBN 978-0-88312-161-0, $22.00

Reconstructs the protolanguage of six languages found in Mexico.

Proto Witotoan by Richard P. Aschmann, PL 114, 1993, 167 pp., ISBN 978-0-88312-189-4, $18.00

Reconstructs the protolanguage of six languages found in the Amazonian areas of Peru, Colombia and Brazil.

Syntactic Change and Syntactic Reconstruction: A Tagmemic Approach by John R. Costello, PL 68, 1983, 107 pp., ISBN 978-0-88312-092-7, $11.00

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.