Re: Sino-Caucasian and Nostratic

From: Jedediah Drolet
Message: 34238
Date: 2004-09-22

I was not aware of it before, but I went to the library today and took
a look at it. It looks like a pretty good summary of work on these
languages up to the time it was written; of course, a lot more has
been done since 1902. It contains grammatical sketches, vocabularies,
and texts (for those languages for which texts were available at the
time). Probably the most useful part of it for comparative purposes
is the table of (lexical) comparisons at the back, although the
vocabulary lists might be useful for comparison with Athabaskan. La
Grasserie himself seems to conclude that these languages are not
related and that the similarities among them are due to areal factors,
a conclusion which is clearly right for most of them (Haida and
Tlingit being possible exceptions). As for the accuracy of the
information, I don't know enough about these languages to be able to
judge.

Jedediah

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Harald Hammarström <haha2581@...> wrote:
> (a late reply). Thanks for the references. Do you know anything
about the
> quality of this book?
>
> @Book{,
> title = {Cinq langues de la Colombie Britannique: Ha\"ida, Tshimshian,
> Kwagiutl, Nootka et Tlinkit},
> author = {Raoul de la Grasserie},
> publisher = {Librairie-\'Editeur J. Maisonneuve, Paris},
> series = BLA,
> volume = {XXIV},
> year = 1902
> }