Cecil H. Brown, Lexical acculturation in Native American languages. (Oxford studies in anthropological linguistics, 20.) New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 259. Hb. $55.00.

Abstract

Lexical acculturation has received moderate attention through the years, but largely from the perspective of acculturative studies of individual languages, or from that of the incorporation of loans from one specific language into another. A few authors have attempted comparative studies of patterns across regional areas or several languages, but rarely on the scale represented by Brown's study. In this volume, he looks at 77 concepts and items of acculturation from European sources in 292 Native American languages, covering the whole of the New World. But this work is more than a catalog of these items in the native languages: it is also a thorough discussion and analysis of the apparent processes and principles by which such transfers take place. Brown hopes that, through such massive comparisons and analyses, the basic principles and processes of linguistic acculturation will become better understood and thereby take on some predictive value in specific situations.