Front cover image for Chimariko in areal and typological perspective

Chimariko in areal and typological perspective

One of the tasks typologists engage in is to discover what all languages share and how they can differ. The most striking feature of California and other Native American languages is the amount of information they package into their verbs. But what exactly makes languages the same or different? There are various influencing factors, such as genetic affiliation and language contact, among others. Often, it is difficult to distinguish shared linguistic features attributed to genetic affiliation from those attributed to language contact, in particular if there is an intense contact for centuries and if there are no written records, as in the case of Chimariko, a now extinct Northern California language

Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2007
University of California, Santa Barbara, [Santa Barbara, Calif.], 2007