Bøker av John Haiman

The goal of John Haiman's study is to challenge the monopoly of arbitrariness, which he believes has affected in significant ways many models of linguistic description and analysis, notably those proposed by Saussure and more recently by Chomsky and his associates.

The first general description of these languages to be written in English, provides a critical look at the phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax of modern RR dialects within the broader perspective of Romance comparative linguistics.

This cross-linguistic study explores the role of the ideophone - a single word that conveys an impression of what it describes - in language evolution. It argues that ideophones provide the 'missing link' in our knowledge of how communication has evolved from early gestured performance through to spoken language today.