Standard Basque ─ A Progressive Grammar

A pre-Indo-European language with no known relatives, the Basque language survives inthe Basque region of Spain and France, with about half a million native or near-native speakers. Thelocal diversity of the language, with no fewer than eight different dialects, has hindered thedevelopment of a supradialectical written tradition. Twentieth-century Basque scholars recognizedthat the introduction of a standard language for written communication was vital for the continuedexistence of Basque, and the Euskaltzaindia, the Royal Academy of the Basque Language, hassupervised the creation of a new shared form, Euskara Batua ("Unified Basque"), to be usedas a written standard. Standard Basque: A Progressive Grammar is the first modern pedagogicallyoriented reference grammar in English for this new standard language. It guides the readerprogressively through 33 chapters covering topics that range from orthography and pronunciation tocase endings, verb forms, ergativity, and the antipassive and allocutive forms. In addition toinformation on the various dialects, the book includes thousands of example sentences drawn fromBasque literature and extensive vocabulary listings. Most chapters conclude with exercises. Part 1covers the grammar and Part 2 contains glosses for the example sentences and indexes. Rudolf P. G.de Rijk (1937-2003) brought the study of the Basque language into the generative syntax traditionwith his MIT Ph.D. dissertation on Basque relative clauses in 1972. He taught at Leiden Universityin the Netherlands until his retirement in 2002. This book was prepared for publication after theauthor's death by Virginia de Rijk-Chan with Armand De Coene and Fleur Veraart and the assistance oflinguists at Cornell University, Leiden University, and the University of the Basque Country. Theglosses and supplementary material in Part 2 were prepared by Armand De Coene.

Rudolf P. G. de Rijk (1937-2003) brought the study of the Basque language into the generative syntax tradition with his MIT Ph.D. dissertation on Basque relative clauses in 1972. He taught at Leiden University in the Netherlands until his retirement in 2002. This book was prepared for publication after the author's death by Virginia de Rijk-Chan with Armand De Coene and Fleur Veraart and the assistance of linguists at Cornell University and Leiden University and the University of the Basque Country. The glosses and supplementary material in Part 2 were prepared by Armand De Coene.