This book is the first comprehensive grammatical description of Uchumataqu, the lost language of the Uru of Lake Titicaca in north-western Bolivia . The Uchumataqu language became extinct around 1950 and although several researchers had documented the language during the first half of the 20 th century, their results were never considered in a comprehensive context. Some of the most ample studies even remained unpublished.

Furthermore, this book is the first to take into consideration every study on the Uchumataqu language. The grammatical description is based on former publications and archive material on this language and seeks to provide an insight in Uchumataqu as comprehensive as possible. The study comprises a detailed description of the data source situation as well as an introduction to the research carried out by those investigators who provide the data base for the present book. It includes a description of the phonological system of Uchumataqu as well as a presentation of its morphological processes. The nominal and verbal systems are discussed in detail. Particular attention is paid to the complex person-marking system of Uchumataqu, of which person-marking clitics are a vital part that distinguishes Uchumataqu from the neighbouring Aymara and Quechua language. Another important issue are nominalisation and subordination strategies as well as adjectives which form a word class of its own.

Uchumataqu forms part of the isolated language family Uru-Chipaya but has been influenced to differing degrees by Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish. The relation Uchumataqu has to the surrounding Aymara and Quechua language, and particularly the way in which influence on Uchumataqu was exerted, are described in detail.

The appendices contain a transcription of the afore unpublished manuscripts of Max Uhle and Walter Lehmann on Uchumataqu as well as a comparative and diachronic dictionary.

This book is aimed at linguists from all disciplines but is of equal interest to anthropologists, Americanists, historical linguists, typologists, and linguists with a special interest in Andean studies. It is not only an important contribution to the study of Andean languages and their interrelationship, but also an account for the descendants of the last Uchumataqu speakers of their lost language.
(In English, 304 pp.)

Mauritiana is een serie die tot doel heeft om geschreven documenten en kaarten over Nederlands Brazilië (1624–1654) toegankelijker te maken door middel van tweetalige uitgaves, Nederlands en Portugees. De naam van de serie is een eerbetoon aan graaf Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604–1679), een militair die door het bestuur van de West Indische Compagnie als gouverneur van Nederlands Brazilië (1637–1644) werd aangesteld. Onder zijn bewind bereikte de Nederlandse aanwezigheid in Brazilië haar hoogtepunt.

Dit derde deel omvat de inventaris van het Koninklijk Huisarchief betreffende de correspondentie van Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. De inventaris wordt voorafgegaan door twee inleidende artikelen over deze collectie. Daarna volgt een inventaris van de Staten-Generaal uit het Nationaal Archief, betreffende documenten inzake Nederlands Brazilië over de periode 1637-1655. Deze inventaris wordt eveneens ingeleid door twee artikelen. Dit deel wordt afgesloten met een collectie kaarten van Salvador da Bahia tot aan Maranhão.

Mauritiana é uma série que tem como objetivo facilitar o acesso a documentos escritos e cartográficos relativos ao Brasil neerlandês (1624–1654), graças a edições bilíngües, em neerlandês e português. O nome da série é uma homenagem ao Conde João Maurício de Nassau-Siegen (1604–1679), um militar que foi nomeado governador do Brasil (1637–1644), pelos administradores da Companhia das Índias Ocidentais. Durante a sua administração, a presença neerlandesa no Brasil alcançou seu apogeu.

Este terceiro volume contém o inventário do Arquivo da Casa Real relativo à correspondência de João Maurício de Nassau-Siegen. O inventário é precedido de dois artigos sobre esta coleção. Há também um inventário dos Estados Gerais do Arquivo Nacional que trata de documentos relativos ao Brasil neerlandês no período 1637-1655. Esse inventário também é introduzido por dois artigos. No final do volume encontra-se uma coleção de mapas de Salvador da Bahia ao Maranhão.

(Bilingual edition: Dutch and Portuguese, 606 pp.+XXIV, incl. indexes, glossary, maps. Hardback edition)

This book is first and foremost a grammatical description of Baure, a seriously endangered language from Bolivian Amazonia. Baure belongs to the Southern Arawak language family and it forms part of the Guaporé-Mamoré linguistic area. This book is the first detailed and comprehensive grammatical description of Baure, covering its phonology, morphology, syntax, and discourse stucture. It is based on the author's extensive fieldwork in Bolivia in 2003, 2004, and 2006. The book furthermore addresses the historical, cultural, and sociolinguistic background of the speakers of Baure.

Special attention is given to th e complex (morpho)phonological processes within a phonological phrase, the rich noun classification system, the distinction of verbal and non-verbal predicates with respect to the argument marking pattern, the three-level distinction of verbal morphology, and specific clause types based on different nominalization strategies, which also play an important role in clause subordination. The relation to the surrounding Southern Arawak languages Trinitario, Ignaciano, and Paunaca is investigated through comparison of the lexicon and the grammar.

The appendices contain different text types, lists of grammatical morphemes, classifiers, and the Swadesh 200 word list. It is a highly valuable addition to our knowledge of South American languages and cultures in general and the Arawak languages in particular. This book is aimed at linguists from all backgrounds and is of special interest to typologists, historical linguists, Arawakanists, Americanists, and anthropologists. It is also an important record of a dying language for its speech community and their descendants.
(In English, 480 pp., ill.)

About the author

Swintha Danielsen studied English Linguistics, Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Hanover and received her Magister degree with a thesis on article and aspect in English and English-based Creoles. She participated in the LEXIKURS-project at the University of Hanover and obtained a doctoral scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Radboud University in Nijmegen , the Netherlands to carry out research on the Baure language and more in general on comparative issues concerning Arawak languages in Bolivia.

The first part Language Endangerment and Endangered Languages deals with issues related to language endangerment and the problems linguists and other researchers encounter when documenting these languages, both in general terms and with an eye on the Andean/Amazonian situation. Among the problems discussed are: the tension between the simultaneous need to describe the innovative language of the youngsters and preserve the more conservative variants typical of older speakers; the great importance of spontaneous material for the description of several core areas of the grammar as opposed to the danger involved in working with recorded translations; the degree of endangerment of particular indigenous languages and the tensions between native languages and the national language; the importance of the use of narratives for linguistic description; and legal issues of cultural heritage and intellectual property.

The second part, Specific Studies: Languages and Cultures of the Andean-Amazonian Border Area , contains three sections. The first deals with topics that relate to the Maku peoples and languages of Brazil (Eastern Maku) and Colombia ( Western Maku ). The second section features papers that address anthropological and grammatical issues concerning the Nambikwara peoples and languages ( Brazil ). The third section discusses various other languages in the Andean/Amazonian border area. The contributions contained in this part of the book deal with a wide variety of linguistic themes, involving tone, tone reconstruction, stress, lexical categories, clause linking, evidentiality, predication, as well as questions relating to language classification and language reconstruction.

About the editor

The editor of the book, Leo Wetzels, was recently appointed as a research director (directeur de recherche) at the Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (LPP), Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)/Paris III, Sorbonne Nouvelle, in Paris . He has retained a part-time appointment as Professor of Romance and Amazonian languages at the VU University Amsterdam to supervise his PhD students, who are working mainly on endangered South-American languages. His personal research is directed towards questions of phonological and morphological typology, for which the properties of the Amazonian languages play a decisive role, and the phonology of Brazilian Portuguese.

(In English and Portuguese, 440 pp., ill.)

The archaeological site of Chichén Itzá, one of the best known ancient Maya cities, is located in the northern section of the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico.
Chichén Itzá has figured prominently in both past and present discussions on the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods in the northern Maya lowlands. Based on archaeological information and information derived from ethnohistorical sources, this city can be dated to a period from circa A.D. 700 to circa A.D. 1250, with its apogee placed between about A.D. 800 to A.D. 1050. The past and present discussions were directed specifically towards the origin of the inhabitants of the city, the arrival of K'uk'ulkán (“Feathered Serpent”), the origin of non-Mayan (“Toltec”) architecture and sculptural programmes at the site, and the model of its political organization.
The centre of Chichén Itzá is dominated by a raised platform, which harbours buildings now known as El Castillo (The Castle), the Great Ballcourt, and the Temple of the Warriors. These buildings contain various non-Mayan architectural and sculptural traits. Buildings south of the centre, erected in a regional Maya style, contain a large number of inscribed monuments (mostly lintels) carrying long hieroglyphic texts, which provide Chichén Itzá with the largest corpus of surviving inscriptions in the northern Maya lowlands. Chichén Itzá figures prominently in a wide range of ethnohistorical sources from the Colonial period, such as the “Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán” by Fray Diego de Landa and the “Relaciones Geográficas” by various authors, all in Spanish, and the so-called “Books of Chilam Balam” of Chumayel, Maní, and Tizimín, all in Yucatec Maya.
In this study Erik Boot discusses the southern Maya lowland origin of the inhabitants of Chichén Itzá, the arrival of K'uk'ulkán and the introduction of so-called Toltec architecture and iconography, the identification of both gods and human beings in the inscriptions, and the political organization at Chichén Itzá. He presents extensive and detailed analyses of architectural and sculptural programmes, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and the Yucatec Maya “chronicles” from the Books of Chilam Balam.
(In English, 580 pp. ill., incl. bibl., appendices and a Dutch summary)

'This book will be indispensable to all Mayanists with serious interests in the Late Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods of that civilisation's history' - Prudence M. Rice in Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 61, 2005.