A Grammar of Mapuche

Description

Mapuche is the language of the Mapuche (or Araucanians)| the indigenous inhabitants of central Chile. It is spoken by about 400|000 people in Chile and 40|000 in Argentina. The relationship with other Amerindian languages has not yet been established. Mapuche is a highly agglutinative language with a complex verbal morphology. This book offers a comprehensive and detailed description of the Mapuche language. It contains a grammar (phonology| morphology and syntax)| a collection of texts (stories| conversations and songs) and a Mapuche-English dictionary. The abundance of examples both in the grammar and the dictionary makes for a lively description of the language which will be of interest not only to those who practice Amerindian linguistics but also to those interested in language theory and language typology.