Indian borrowings in english

INTRODUCTION

Topicallity. American Indian language is a group of languages that once covered and today still partially cover all of South America, the Antilles, and Central America to the south of a line from the Gulf of Honduras to the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. Estimates of the number of speakers in that area in pre-Columbian times vary from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000. In the early 1980s there were approximately 15,900,000, more than three-fourths of them in the central Andean areas. Language lists include around 1,500 languages, and figures over 2,000 have been suggested. For the most part, the larger estimate refers to tribal units whose linguistic differentiation cannot be determined. Because of extinct tribes with unrecorded languages, the number of languages formerly spoken is impossible to assess. Only between 550 and 600 languages (about 120 now extinct) are attested by linguistic materials. Fragmentary knowledge hinders the distinction between language and dialect and thus renders the number of languages indeterminate.

INTRODUCTION

1. General characteristic of American Indian language

1.1. Investigation and scolarship of American Indian language

1.2. Classification of South American Indian languages

1.2.1. Indian languages and dialects

2. The main features of American Indian language

2.1. Grammatical peculiarities

2.2. Phonological characteristics

2.3. Vocabulary

2.4. Indianisms

2.5. Writing and texts

3. The Indian borrowings in contemporary American

3.1. Processes of word-formation

3.2. Foreign tendencies

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY