Re: Doraja (was: Re: TRANS: a haiku)

On Tue, 25 Apr 2000, Matt Pearson wrote:

>
> A very good recent reference grammar that I've been reading is "A
> Grammar of Lezgian" by Martin Haspelmath, published by Mouton de
> Gruyter (1993).  It's impeccably organised, impressively complete,
> and includes a variety of useful and unusual features, including a
> concordance of example sentences.  Most importantly, every single
> point in the grammar is illustrated with at least one--and in many
> cases several--example sentences, with full morpheme-by-morpheme
> glosses.  Lezgian (a Caucasian language spoken in Daghestan and
> Azerbaijan) is not my cup of tea when it comes to 'aesthetics', but
> the presentation of the material is excellent.
>
I can't do anything but agree - Mouton grammars are almost always
excellent. But they are pricey into the extreme: this one is $215,-.
That's ridiculous, especially since authors give Mouton camera-ready
copy. Others are even more expensive! Roland Rutgers Yamphu is a
lot more affordable, at about $55,- and has all the good qualities
you mention. (Find it at: http://www.iias.nl/host/himalaya/yamphu.html).

> Not for a while, I'm afraid.  I'm currently revising the most recent edition
> of the hardcopy version (about the 8th edition, I think).  That should be
> ready in a couple weeks, unless I let guilt get the better of me.  Once
> that's done, B.P. Jonsson has generously offered to HTML the whole
> thing.  When it comes to putting the whole thing up on a website, though,
> that might have to wait awhile:  I have no permanent job at the moment,
> no lasting university affiliation, and no computer of my own, so it'll
> probably be a while before I'll be getting a website of my own.  Once
> the HTMLing is finished, I might ask around on the list to see if anyone
> would be willing to host it on their website.  It's gonna be *big*, though.
> The hardcopy edition weighs in at 260 pages...
>
As a temporary measure, we would be very glad to host the Tokana
Reference Grammar at our server. We do have some bandwidth and
provider problems, nothing too severe, but there _is_ a limit. Still,
I don't think the traffic on Tokana would exceed limits - it won't be
more than the traffic on my Python stuff. By the way, does anyone
know what happened with David, conlang.org and the associated server?

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org