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Native Languages of the Americas pp 55–62Cite as

Descriptive Linguistics

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Abstract

When Franz Boas introduced the first volume of the International Journal of American Linguistics he had to write: ‘... it is not saying too much if we claim that for most of the native languages of Central and South America the field is practically terra incognita. We have vocabularies; but, excepting the old missionary grammars, there is very little systematic work. Even where we have grammars, we have no bodies of aboriginal texts.’1 The first number of IJAL contains a brief but systematic description by Boas himself,2 and the first two volumes contain four more contributions of the kind Boas asked for.

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Authors
  1. Joseph E. Grimes
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

    Thomas A. Sebeok

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© 1977 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Grimes, J.E. (1977). Descriptive Linguistics. In: Sebeok, T.A. (eds) Native Languages of the Americas. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-1562-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-1562-0_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-1564-4

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