The Integration of Language and Society

Each language bears an imprint of the society that speaks it — speakers' relationships to each other, their beliefs and ways of viewing the world, and other facets of their social environment, alongside speakers' habitat, subsistence, and physical environment. A grammar of each language will relate to, and be integrated with, the meanings and the choices which reflect societal practices. Ihe integration of language and society, as reflected in grammatical features of languages, is what this volume is about. It starts with a typological introduction summarising the main issues relevant to the integration of language and society, with special focus on grammatical phenomena. These include honorific forms, genders and classifiers, possession, evidentiality, comparative constructions, and demonstrative systems. It is followed by several studies focused on the ways in which societal norms and beliefs are reflected in languages of diverse typological profiles. The data are drawn from languages of Australia and New Guinea (Dyirbal and Idi), South America (Chamacoco, Ayoreo, Murui, and Tariana), Asia (Japanese, Brokpa, and Dzongkka), and Africa (Iraqw). The volume advances our understanding of the ways in which non-linguistic traits have their correlates in language, and how they change if the society undergoes transformations. The outcomes will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of typology, general linguistics, linguistic and cultural anthropology, and social sciences.