The nearly 300 languages indigenous to North America present a dazzling variety of phonological, morphological, syntactic, and discourse structures. We will begin with an overview of the genetic relations among the languages, both established and proposed. At present more than 50 distinct families are recognized, though there have been numerous hypotheses concerning deeper relationships, many long since abandoned but some still considered promising. As part of the picture we will also consider issues of language contact and linguistic areas. Next we will survey the kinds of sounds and sound systems found, ranging from surprisingly simple and straightforward to highly elaborate and intriguing. We will then consider the nature of the word cross-linguistically. Single words in many North American languages can convey what can be expressed only in elaborate sentences in other languages. We will look at differences in function between complex words and longer sentences, and between roots and affixes Certain languages provide strong challenges to hypotheses about the universality of lexical categories. The defining features of lexical categories in these languages will be examined, and their use traced in speech. We will then move to the kinds of grammatical categories that are unusual or unusually well developed in North America, considering kinds of person systems; inflectional, derivational, and lexical number; gender, shape and consistency; means and manner; the notion of control; location and direction; time; and modality, particularly realis/irrealis distinctions and evidentiality. In syntax, we will examine the distribution of predication and reference over clause structure, see alternative organizations of grammatical relations and case, and discover different bases for constituent order patterns. Various kinds of clause combining strategies will be surveyed, from simple concatenation to elaborate marking, with a special look at switch-reference systems. Finally, grammar beyond the sentence will be considered, with patterns that call into question the homogeneity of sentence boundaries cross-linguistically.

[Back ]