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

(In a private email to me, Adam Parrish asked a couple questions which
I thought I'd reply to publicly:)

>btw, might you be able to recommend any reference grammars based on
>their clarity/readablity?  I'm specifically looking for something that I
>can use as an organizational model for my next Doraja reference grammar
>revision (in addition to wanting some good leisure reading for the
>summer.  heh). Dirk Elzinga already recommended Lyle Campbell's Pipil
>grammar (which is remarkably lucid) and Carusso's grammar of Kabardian
>(this language completely blew my mind; how these people actually
>pronounce words in that phonology baffles me <g>).
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.

Another good grammar is Foley's grammar of Yimas (a highland
Papuan language).  It's a lot denser than Haspelmath's Lezgian grammar,
but then, Yimas is a very dense language; I couldn't imagine a more
straightforward presentation.

R.M.W. Dixon's grammars of Dyirbal, Yidiny, and Boumaa Fijian are
also classics.  If I'm not as partial to them as to some others, it's
only because Dixon is a little inconsistent in providing fully glossed
example sentences.

The grammars from the Croom Helm series tend to be very good, except
I hate the way they're organised:  Complex sentences, ellipsis, and
discourse at the beginning; noun and verb morphology in the middle;
and phonology/orthography at the end.  Talk about putting the cart
before the horse!  Whenever I try to read a Croom Helm grammar, I
always start at the end and work my way backwards.

>Anyway.  Thanks for your commentary.  When will the Tokana grammar be
>back online?
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...

Matt.