Lexical Acculturation in Native American Languages

Lexical acculturation refers to the accomodation of languages to newobjects and concepts encountered as the result of culture contact. This uniquestudy analyzes a survey of words for 77 items of European culture (e.g. chicken,horse, apple, rice, scissors, soap, and Saturday) in the vocabularies of 292Amerindian languages and dialects spoken from the Arctic Circle to Tierra delFuego. The first book ever to undertake such a large and systematiccross-language investigation, Brown's work provides fresh insights into generalprocesses of lexical change and development, including those involving languageuniversals and diffusion.