Linguistics and Language: A Research Guide: World Languages

Print only. (Olin Library Reference P 371 .C357 2004 +)
"[C]overage of ancient languages from around the globe. Besides the expected languages such as Sumerian, Akkadian, and Latin, this work is important because of its inclusion of African, Asian, and New World ancient language." [Guide to Reference]

2nd edition.
Print only. (Olin Library Stacks P 371 .C36x 2000)
Each entry contains a brief historical introduction and sections on the language's script, phonology, and morphology and syntax.

2nd edition.
Print only. (Olin Library Reference P 371 .W6 2009)
This scholarly work contains fifty chapters devoted to a language family or language and written by an expert in that field. The emphasis is on Indo-European languages with about half the chapters covering languages of this family. Each chapter on a language contains basic material on its structure and social and historical background. A bibliography of grammars, surveys, and histories, follows each chapter.

Print only. (Olin Library Stacks P 380 .E53x 1998)
The subdivisions of entries varies widely from one language entry to the next. A grab-bag of interesting facts about European languages both modern and ancient.

Print only. (Kroch Library Asia Reference P 40.5 .L332 E45 2007)
"[P]rovides a five-grade scale of the level of endangerment for languages around the world. After a general introd. that covers possible causes for language extinction, each chapter addresses the linguistic situation in a particular geographic region, followed by specific languages in alphabetical order, their precise geographic range, and a ranking (potentially endangered, endangered, seriously/severely endangered, moribund, extinct). The scale is based on the age of fluent speakers and the presence of language use in social institutions." [Guide to Reference]

Print only. (Olin Library Reference P 371 .F33x 2001 +)
This product represents seven years of compilation from the work of nearly two hundred world-renowned scholars in linguistics. The volume explores the structure, history and culture of 191 languages worldwide, with the aim of providing both the general public and linguistics experts with an authoritative source of rich, structured data on the world's major ethnolinguistic groups.

Online.
Also available in print: Olin Library Stacks P 327 .H37x 1998.
Two thousand entries covering all aspects of lexicography. Contains an extensive bibliography.

3rd edition.
Online.
Also available in print: Olin Library Stacks P 371 .K38x 2002.
A very handy guide to the language families of the world. Contains brief descriptions of each language including where and by whom it is spoken. Part I covers language families (e.g. Altaic languages), Part II individual languages (e.g., Russian) including even Esperanto, and Part III a country survey of languages spoken and numbers of people speaking them. A bibliography and an index are included.

International Center for Research on Bilingualism ; editor, Heinz Kloss ; associate editor, Grant D. McConnell.
Print only. (Olin Library Stacks P 120 .I61 +)
The first five volumes of what was to eventually have been a seven-volume set. At this point it is a partial statistical survey of the demography of the world's languages. In the aim to be comprehensive the authors have included all types of language figures (first language, second language, bilingualism, ethnic data, etc.) from all available sources (official, secondary, estimates, scientific, etc.).

Volumes 1-5 cover central and western South Asia, North America, Central and South America, Oceania, and Europe and the USSR, respectively. Each volume begins with an extensive introduction providing background information on languages of the area. This is followed by a bibliography of sources for the data. The statistical tables listing the data comprise the bulk of each volume. The editors provide an index of statistical offices and a language and country index. Explanatory material and headings throughout the volumes are in both English and French.

Print only. (Olin Library Reference P 211 .W714 1996)
An Olin Stacks copy is available to borrow.
"Ranging from cuneiform to shorthand, from archaic Greek to modern Chinese, from Old Persian to modern Cherokee, this is the only available work in English to cover all of the world's writing systems from ancient times to the present. Describing scores of scripts in use now or in the past around the world, this unusually comprehensive reference offers a detailed exploration of the history and typology of writing systems. More than eighty articles by scholars from over a dozen countries explain and document how a vast array of writing systems work--how alphabets, ideograms, pictographs, and hieroglyphics convey meaning in graphic form."" [Oxford University Press: Description]