New and Upcoming Titles

Beneath the Dust of Time
224 (iv + 220) pages; more than 100 illustrations (including 12 maps), bibliography, index, ISBN 9781903292198; £13.95; December 2009.

Beneath the Dust of Time is an unconventional combination of history and the etymology of names. It was inspired and guided by two new paradigms. The first is the “Sahara hypothesis” which postulates a historical migration from North Africa to Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia thousands of years ago, when the end of the last Ice Age led to the emergence of the Sahara Desert in North Africa and to a retreat of the glaciers in Europe. The second is a radically new view of the history of the languages conventionally classified as Indo-European and Semitic.


Almost all studies of ancient history ignore the origins of the names of the peoples and places that determined its course. This book is different. It aims to explain the origin and meaning of the names of peoples (e.g. Greeks, Germans), countries (e.g. Spain), continents (Europe, Africa), seas (Baltic), mountains (Alps, Pyrenees), rivers (Nile, Rhine, Danube), and cities (Rome, Babylon). These names are generally extremely old, and many can be traced back to migrants who had fled from their desertifying homeland in North Africa and who spoke non-Indo-European languages such as Etruscan.


“Pauwels has written a book for the general public, but historians, geographers, and linguists will also benefit from reading it (...). [He] is a scholar who knows how to tell an intriguing story. Too few of his colleagues possess that talent.”
Wim de Neuter, Uitpers Webzine.

Multilinguals are … ?
96 pages; more than 40 illustrations (mainly cartoons); ISBN 9781903292204, £9.95. January 2010.

Multilinguals are people who use several languages in their everyday life. Attitudes towards them are very diverse: some consider them gifted or unusually intelligent, while others fear that they are not fully competent in any one language. This can lead to conflicting advice about multilin-gualism at home, in school, and elsewhere, particularly nowadays when awareness about multilinguals is growing wherever several languages are used, from London and Amsterdam to New York and California.

This is the first book which discusses, in lay terms, the reasons behind the beliefs and myths traditionally associated with multilinguals. It is written for the general public and is relevant for families, teachers, and everyone else who ever wondered about multilingualism. The style is light, often witty, but is founded on a thorough knowledge of all the solid academic research on this subject.

“This is a breath of fresh air in a field which desperately needs ventilation. It blows away the myths and fantasies about multilingualism, and puts in their place a perspective of sound common sense, grounded in the daily experience of living a life in which several languages form a natural part. For anyone who has ever been uncertain about multilingualism, worried about it, or misrepresented it, this lively and accessible overview is the perfect reality check.”


Professor David Crystal, author of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language.


“Madalena Cruz-Ferreira has crafted a down-to-earth, fun, accessible, and highly informed treatise on multilingualism. The book addresses a wide range of misconceptions about multilingualism in a humorous and entertaining way, and should be required reading for teachers, professionals, and the rest of us who work closely with groups and individuals who use multiple languages!”


Professor Jeff MacSwan, Applied Linguistics, Arizona State University.
Principense
Philippe Maurer, Published May 2009, £24.95, ISBN 978-1-903292-11-2, viii+280 pages, 24 photographs, Princense - English and English - Principense word lists, bibliography, index, and an appendix containing a previously unpublished 19th century sketch of the language.

Philippe Maurer has rescued a critically endangered language from oblivion with this volume, turning Principense – one of the least documented varieties of Afro-Portuguese – into one of the best described creoles of any lexical base. The contents reflect his gift for clear organization and lucid explanation of knotty problems ranging from tone to exotic morphosyntactic structures. He has minutely analyzed an extensive corpus, illustrating his points with over 1,270 Principense sentences and providing a word list as well as a rich collection of texts.This book is one of the finest contributions yet to creole linguistics.

John Holm, Coimbra University.

To access audio files of many of the examples in the book, CLICK HERE.

Simplicity and Complexity
edited by Nicholas Faraclas & Thomas B. Klein, Published July 2009, £24.95, ISBN 978-1-903292-15-0, iv + 220 pages, Introduction, ten chapters (five on phonology, five on morphosyntax), references, index.

This volume is, in a sense, a response to a recent rather extremist view that “the world’s simplest grammars are creole grammars”. It brings together a series of studies of the core levels of language structure (phonology and morphosyntax).

A major merit is that the studies are data-based, ignore the exotic assumptions of creole linguistics and, by the range of coverage and depth of analysis, provide an exceptionally useful additional support to the view that creoles could and should be situated within a general framework of synchronic and contact linguistics, rather than within the shadow of their “lexifier” languages. It thus goes beyond the narrow confines of creole linguistics and provides linguistics in general with a most valuable resource.

Mervyn Alleyne,
University of the West Indies and University of Puerto Rico


The photograph of the cover of this book is Althea N. Sumpter's Land's End Talking Tree. We would like to apologize to the photographer for having mistitled this World's End Talking Tree in the book.