* Linguistics

Biolinguistics at the Cutting Edge: Promises, Achievements, and Challenges by Antonio Benítez-Burraco (Editor); Isabel Fernández López (Editor); Milagros Férnandez-Pérez (Editor); Olga. Ivanova (Editor) This book contains an updated discussion of the most relevant theoretical and methodological aspects, as well as the most important findings of biolinguistics. This field of linguistics is specifically concerned with the biological aspects of language. In doing so, the volume takes a timely look at the different angles of biolinguistics research, in particular considering its multidisciplinary, technical, theoretical, and applied approaches. The volume provides a comprehensive, in-depth, and state-of-the-art overview of the biolinguistics quest, bringing together the most outstanding contributions on exciting subfields such as language evolution, language acquisition, neuro- and psycholinguistics, or clinical linguistics.

The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context by Jesús Romero-Trillo (Editor) For more than a decade, linguistics has moved increasingly away from evaluating language as an autonomous phenomenon, towards analysing it 'in use', and showing how its function within its social and interactional context plays an important role in shaping in its form. Bringing together state-of-the-art research from some of the most influential scholars in linguistics today, this Handbook presents an extensive picture of the study of language as it used 'in context' across a number of key linguistic subfields and frameworks. Organised into five thematic parts, the volume covers a range of theoretical perspectives, with each chapter surveying the latest work from areas as diverse as syntax, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, applied linguistics, conversational analysis, multimodality, and computer-mediated communication. Comprehensive, yet wide-ranging, the Handbook presents a full description of how the theory of context has revolutionised linguistics, and how its renewed study is crucial in an ever-changing world.

Case Studies of Linguistic Representations of Motion by Yo Matsumoto (Editor) How languages describe spatial motion events has been a hotly discussed topic in recent years in cognitive linguistics and linguistic typology. This two-volume book provides new descriptions and proposals on this fascinating topic, based on a large-scale experimental study of motion event descriptions in almost 20 languages across the globe as part of a research project conducted by NINJAL. The chapters are based on papers presented at international conferences (most at NINJAL international symposium held in January 2019, some at International Cognitive Linguistics Conferences in 2017 and 2019). This volume provides valuable descriptions of familiar and unfamiliar languages as well as insightful discussions of controversial issues based on those descriptions. This book would interest students in linguistics and cognitive science in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America.

Connectives and Discourse Relations by Sandrine Zufferey; Liesbeth Degand Illustrated with examples from a rich range of languages and genres, this book provides a state-of-the-art introduction to the meanings and functions of connectives, and the discourse relations they communicate. It begins with theoretical chapters that illustrate the many interfaces present in the study of connectives and discourse relations, using diachronic data to illustrate how connectives incorporate such a wide range of functions in synchronic language use. The second half of the book presents the rapidly growing body of studies that have used empirical data to assess theories of connectives and discourse relations, spanning fields as diverse as discourse processing, first and second language acquisition, and cross-linguistic studies. End-of-chapter discussion questions and lists of further readings are included, along with a comprehensive glossary of key terms.

Dimensions of Linguistic Variation by Christopher Cieri (Editor); Lauren Hall-Lew (Editor); Katie Drager (Editor); Malcah Yaeger-Dror (Editor) In Dimensions of Linguistic Variation, the contributors investigate evidence for the myriad factors which influence language variation and change, and consider how to best account for these factors in data and metadata coding. Given linguists' increasing ability to preserve and share data, questions arise around the possibility of comparing data from different communities: how should a corpus builder model, elicit, encode, analyze, and archive data that have been collected from highly diverse groups of speakers, from situations beyond the sociolinguistic interview, in a way that supports re-use, comparison across collections, and longer-term archiving? Answering these questions requires a highly nuanced understanding of the social influences on speech variation. Social differences between communities and contexts can permit or encourage comparisons, in some cases, and render comparisons impossible, in others. The current volume builds on a rich foundation of insight from the sociolinguistics community as to how community-specific social distinctions shape variation and change within a given community and presents new, state-of-the-art insights from a diverse range of community and context types. The editors have compiled a volume which will enable researchers both to expand the established set of variables expected to be considered in any community study, and to categorize data and results in ways that best permit cross-community comparisons. They present the issues involved in research planning, the modeling of the target community, subject selection, the elicitation and coding of demographic, situational and attitudinal factors, and how they all affect analysis and potential reuse.

A Grammar of Eyak by Michael E. Krauss; Kevin Baetscher (Editor); Gary Holton (Editor) Eyak (dAXunhyuuga') is the traditional language of the Copper River Delta region of the Gulf of Alaska. This posthumous publication reflects Michael Krauss's systematic effort to document every aspect of the language, working closely with the last remaining fluent speakers. Adopting a theory-neutral approach, Krauss focuses on detailed description, providing exhaustive exemplification, as well as ample discussion of comparative and conflicting data from the related Tlingit and Dene (Athabaskan) languages, making the work particularly useful for Dene scholars. Non-specialists will find a window into the structure of a highly synthetic and typologically unusual language. This comprehensive work will also serve as a useful reference for the growing dAXunhyuuga' reclamation effort.

A Grammar of Gurung by Kristine A. Hildebrandt This grammar is a detailed description of Gurung, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in parts of Nepal, India, and Bhutan, and by diaspora communities in Southeast Asia and beyond. Although Gurung is a Bodish language of the Tibeto-Burman family, the speakers have been in intense and long-term contact with Nepali, and so the grammar and lexicon demonstrate interesting aspects of contact-induced language change. This grammar focuses on the variety of Gurung spoken in Manang District Nepal, but it includes detailed comparison with available data on other varieties spoken in other regions of Nepal and in India. The description is based on primary data collected during fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2017, including both natural and elicited data. Of particular interest in this description is the register-based tone system, which diverges from descriptions of tone for other related languages spoken in the region. Also of interest in this language is the phenomenon of differential case marking. The grammar provides new analyses and insights that are relevant to our understanding of the synchronic typology and areal relationships, and also the diachronic changes, within the western Tibeto-Burman region.

A Grammar of Nakoda (Assiniboine) by Linda A. Cumberland A Grammar of Nakoda (Assiniboine) is the first complete grammar of the Native American language Assiniboine, also known by the endonym Nakoda, a member of the Siouan language family. It addresses all major grammatical categories, including phonology, nouns, verbs, adverbs, enclitics, determiners, syntax, and kinship terminology. It also includes groundbreaking analysis of motion verbs of coming and going, demonstrating that such verbs compose a closed system that is consistent in varying degrees across all Siouan languages. Over the past century and a half, the classification of the Assiniboine language has suffered due to a complicated history regarding the Dakotan branch of the Siouan language family. Once spoken over a vast contiguous area of the northern plains, Assiniboine/Nakoda is used today among the Assiniboine people in and around Fort Belknap and Fort Peck in Montana and in five reserves in Saskatchewan. A Grammar of Nakoda (Assiniboine) establishes the singular basis of the language while also relating its unique features to other Great Plains American Indian languages.

A Grammar of Pangkhua by Zahid Akter Pangkhua is an endangered Tibeto-Burman language, spoken by about 2,000 people in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh. This volume provides a comprehensive grammatical description of the language, based on more than a year of original fieldwork in a Pangkhua village. Taking a broadly functional typological perspective, Zahid Akter analyzes Pangkhua phonology, morphology, syntax, and discourse. Some of the typologically notable characteristics of Pangkhua include presence of a relatively large number of sesquisyllabic words, an elaborate person marking on verbs, absence of a clausal conjunctive, and lack of a distinct word class of adjectives. As the first comprehensive description of the language, this grammar contributes to comparative Tibeto-Burman linguistics more broadly by laying the groundwork for further studies locating Pangkhua in its genealogical, areal, and typological contexts. It will also serve as an invaluable resource for the maintenance and revitalization of Pangkhua language and culture.

The Handbook of Berber Linguistics by Alireza Korangy (Editor); Karim Bensoukas (Editor) This handbook is the largest and most comprehensive publication on Berber linguistics to date, covering the variety of Berber dialects and related linguistics trends. Extensive and diverse at thematic and theoretical levels, with the aim of deepening students and scholars' understanding of the workings of Berber as a linguistic phenomenon, it explores a multitude of angles through which the diachronic and synchronic intricacies of Berber varieties can be examined. It enables a better understanding of the issues in the various components of North African languages, as well as their theoretical and typological significance and implications. The work covers phonology and phonetics, morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, socio-linguistics and dialectology, language teaching and psycholinguistics, lexicology, language contact and comparative linguistics, historical linguistics and etymology. Sub-themes explored include prosody, ideophones (and expressive language in general), morpho-syntactic categories, sociolinguistic variation and several other seminal interdisciplinary explorations. The chapters reflect the diversity of Berber varieties and include up-to-date scholarship by leading Berberists, with varieties including Figuig, Kabyle, Senhaja, Siwa, Standard Moroccan Amazigh, Tamazight, Tarifit, Tashlhit, Touareg, Tunisian Berber, Znaga, as well as Proto-Berber. A large geographical territory is covered, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. With contributions from these Berber-speaking countries and their diaspora, there are also chapters from prominent Berber scholars from America, Australia and Europe. To this end, the volume includes perspectives and theories from different schools of linguistics. In including original French contributions and English translations of research from top scholars in the field, the book includes another vital dimension in terms of the resources, and sources. As a comprehensive reference, this work is of interest to North Africanists from various disciplines, including anthropologists, linguists, and sociologists, but particularly linguists interested in endangered languages, and those working on the historical and comparative study of the Afroasiatic language phylum.

The Indigenous Languages of the Americas: History and Classification by Lyle Campbell The Indigenous Languages of the Americas takes stock of what is known about the history and classification of these languages and language families. It identifies the gaps in knowledge and puts them into perspective, and it assesses differences of opinion. It also resolves some issues and makes new contributions of its own. The nine chapters of the book deal incisively with the major themes involving these languages: the classification and history of the Indigenous languages of North American, Middle American (Mexico and Central America), and South American; difficulties involving names of the languages; origins of the languages of the New World; unclassified, phantom, fake, and spurious languages in the Americas; recent hypotheses of remote linguistic relationships; the linguistic areas of the Americas; contact languages, including pidgins, lingua francas, and mixed languages; and loanwords and other new words in the native languages of the Americas.

Interfaces of Phonetics by Marcel Schlechtweg (Editor) The role of phonetic detail within the language system and its interplay with other kinds of linguistic information represent a hotly debated territory. In the current volume, different types of phonetic nuances are examined with a particular focus on their relation to phonological, morphological, and semantic/pragmatic phenomena. These three interfaces - the phonetic-phonological, the phonetic-morphological, and the phonetic-semantic/pragmatic one - are investigated from a variety of angles and by consistently taking the rapport between phonetics and phonology into consideration. In doing so, we provide an up-to-date picture of research dealing with the interaction of distinct linguistic areas, and also discuss the question if and when phonology is needed to mediate between phonetics and other linguistic domains.

Language, History, Ideology: The Use and Misuse of Historical-Comparative Linguistics by Camiel Hamans (Editor); Hans Henrich Hock (Editor) This volume presents twelve in-depth case studies that critically examine the ways in which historical linguistics and language change interact with ideology. These varying interactions have been present since the birth of historical-comparative linguistics as a field of study. Work in historical linguistics may be appropriated or rejected for ideological reasons, most notably in the debates surrounding the Indo-European homeland; it can also by influenced by ideological biases, as in the 'alternative' histories that have been proposed for Moldovan and Maltese. The development of linguistically-defined nation states may itself fuel linguistic change, for instance through the suppression of minority languages or the division of existing languages to mirror political divisions, as occurred in the Balkans; or it may lead to the formulation of pseudo-histories designed to give a nation a more prestigious past. The book will be of interest not only to historical linguists but also to anthropologists, historians, and all those interested in language policy.

Language, Society and Ideologies in Multilingual Egypt: Arabic and Berber in the Siwa Oasis by Valentina Serreli The book explores the change over time in language-society relations in a multilingual periphery of Egypt. It examines the role of language ideologies in the construction and negotiation of social identities in the processes of contact, maintenance and shift typical of multilingualism. Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews, it is the first of its kind to portray the inventory of linguistic and accompanying non-linguistic behaviors observed within and between different ethnolinguistic groups in the Siwa Oasis. It provides first-hand information about the linguistic habits of Siwan women, an aspect which is generally difficult to access in this gender-segregated community. The book sheds light on Berber-Arabic contact at the core of the Arab world and at a critical time when individual linguistic repertoires are expanding and Arabic is emerging as a powerful resource.

Language Is Gesture by David McNeill A new way of viewing language, as a dynamic mode of meaning-making of which gesture is a fundamental part. When David McNeill began his work on gesture more than forty years ago, language and the action of speaking were regarded as separate realms. But language, says McNeill in Language Is Gesture, is dynamic and gesture is fundamental to speaking. Central to his conception of language, and distinct from linguistic analysis, is what McNeill calls the "growth point," the starting point of making thought and speech one. He uses the term "gesture-speech unity" to refer to the dynamic dimension of adding gesture to speaking. It is the growth point that achieves this unity, whereby thought is embedded in gesture and speech at the same time. Gesture is the engine of language. It is foundational to speaking, language acquisition, the origin of language, animal communication, thought, and consciousness. Gesture is global and synthetic and brings energy; speech is linear and segmented and brings cultural standards. The growth point is a snapshot of an utterance at its beginning psychological stage, the starting point of unifying thought and speech. Growth points create gesture-speech unity by synchronizing a bundle of linguistic features with a gesture that carries the same meaning. This gesture-speech unity is a form of thought, a unique form of cognition.

The Languages and Linguistics of Mexico and Northern Central America: A Comprehensive Guide by Søren Wichmann (Editor) The handbook provides a thorough survey of the languages pertaining to the Mesoamerican culture region, including a wealth of new research on synchronic structures and historical linguistics of lesser known languages, also including sign languages. The volume moreover features overviews of recent research on topics such as language acquisition and the expression of spatial orientation across languages of the region.

The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia (2 vols.) by Edward Vajda (Editor) The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia: A Comprehensive Guide surveys the indigenous languages of Asia's North Pacific Rim, Siberia, and adjacent portions of Inner Eurasia. It provides in-depth descriptions of every first-order family of this vast area, with special emphasis on family-internal subdivision and dialectal differentiation. Individual chapters trace the origins and expansion of the region's widespread pastoral-based language groups as well as the microfamilies and isolates spoken by northern Asia's surviving hunter-gatherers. Separate chapters cover sparsely recorded languages of early Inner Eurasia that defy precise classification and the various pidgins and creoles spread over the region. Other chapters investigate the typology of salient linguistic features of the area, including vowel harmony, noun inflection, verb indexing (also known as agreement), complex morphologies, and the syntax of complex predicates. Issues relating to genealogical ancestry, areal contact and language endangerment receive equal attention. With historical connections both to Eurasia's pastoral-based empires as well as to ancient population movements into the Americas, the steppes, taiga forests, tundra and coastal fringes of northern Asia offer a complex and fascinating object of linguistic investigation.

The Life Cycle of Language: Past, Present, and Future by Darya Kavitskaya (Editor); Alan C. L. Yu (Editor) This volume brings together an international group of linguists from a diverse range of research backgrounds to explore the cycles of change in the world's languages. Historical linguistics does not solely focus on reconstructing a language's linguistic past and exploring the mechanisms underlying previous language changes; it also addresses broader questions concerning the development and ongoing evolution of language. The chapters in this book draw on data both from languages from the distant past, such as Hittite, Proto-Turkic, and Proto-Bantu, and from present-day languages including Akan, Cantonese, Kuuk Thaayorre, Selis-Ql'ispé, Nivaclé, and Spanish. The contributions showcase current research in historical linguistics and exemplify the dynamism and inherently interdisciplinary nature of the field.

Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu by Eva-Marie Bloom Ström (Editor); Hannah Gibson (Editor); Rozenn Guérois (Editor); Lutz Marten (Editor) This volume explores the rich and complex pattern of morphosyntactic variation in the Bantu languages, providing a comprehensive overview of the wealth of empirical and conceptual work in the field. The chapters discuss data from some 80 Bantu languages as well as drawing on a wider comparative set of more than 200 languages from across Central, Eastern and Southern Africa: some studies focus on one specific language in a comparative context; some investigate fine-grained variation among a close-knit group of languages; and others present large-scale comparative studies spanning the whole of the Bantu-speaking area. The contributors address a range of topics from a micro-variation perspective, primarily in the areas of nominal and verbal morphology and syntax and information structure. The volume highlights key aspects of contemporary research in Bantu morphosyntax and outlines distinct and novel approaches to prominent questions; it combines the most recent thinking on morphosyntactic variation in Bantu with different theoretical and methodological approaches and novel empirical data from a wide range of languages.

Osage Language and Lifeways by Cameron Pratt; Stephanie Rapp; Marcia Haag; Dylan Herrick The Osage language is a vital part of Osage identity. The language suffered rapid decline during the twentieth century, but the Osage people are taking significant steps to revitalize its use. To that end, this volume--the first ever introductory Osage grammar textbook--is a much-needed resource for students, teachers, scholars, and anyone wishing to learn how to speak and write Osage. Written collectively by bilingual Osage speakers and linguists, Osage Language and Lifeways offers both clear grammatical instruction and valuable cultural information. As the authors explain in their introduction, the Osage language, a Dhegiha language within the Siouan language family, is highly complex. Drawing on their Native language expertise and classroom experience, the authors clarify elements of Osage grammar that are entirely different from English grammar or other European languages. Each chapter begins with a short dialogue or story written by Osage speakers. These passages present commonly used expressions and provide glimpses into Osage life experiences. The lessons are ordered in such a way that students can quickly learn how to pronounce Osage words, understand and make full sentences, and read and write the Osage alphabet. Where possible, the authors limit the amount of difficult linguistic terminology and include numerous examples to illustrate their points. At the same time, this book is sufficiently descriptive for linguists seeking to study the language on a more technical level. An important contribution to the study of indigenous languages, Osage Language and Lifeways opens a new pathway for Osages to learn and practice the language of their ancestors and ensure its continuity for future generations.

The Oxford Guide to the Languages of the Central Andes by Matthias Urban (Editor) This volume presents the most comprehensive overview in English of the languages of the Central Andes, spoken primarily in Peru and Bolivia. Efforts to describe and document Central Andean languages, as well as philological research into colonial documentation and texts, have blossomed in recent decades; here, the major protagonists and drivers of these exciting developments are given the opportunity to showcase their research achievements in one volume. Following an introductory part providing background information on the region and its cultural and linguistic diversity, chapters in Part II provide extensive descriptions of individual languages that not only reflect current knowledge, but also add to our understanding of their phonological and grammatical structures. The third part offers substantial typological comparative analyses that reflect the pivotal role Central Andean languages have played in investigations into topics of current theoretical interest, such as the notions of linguistic complexity and evidentiality. Part IV explores topics relating to the history of the language from early prehistory to the colonial period, while chapters in the final part shed light on the cultural, geographic, and sociolinguistic settings in which Central Andean languages are spoken, and discuss language contact situations and language ideologies. The Oxford Guide to the Languages of the Central Andes will be of interest not only to students and researchers specializing in Andean languages, but also to typologists, comparative linguists, and linguistic anthropologists.

The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony by Nancy A. Ritter (Editor); Harry van der Hulst (Editor) This handbook provides a detailed account of the phenomenon of vowel harmony, a pattern according to which all vowels within a word must agree for some phonological property or properties. Vowel harmony has been central in the development of phonological theories thanks to its cluster of remarkable properties, notably its typically 'unbounded' character and its non-locality, and because it forms part of the phonology of most world languages. The five parts of this volume cover all aspects of vowel harmony from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Part I outlines the types of vowel harmony and some unusual cases, before Part II explores structural issues such as vowel inventories, the interaction of vowel harmony and morphological structure, and locality. The chapters in Part III provide an overview of the various theoretical accounts of the phenomenon, as well as bringing in insights from language acquisition and psycholinguistics, while Part IV focuses on the historical life cycle of vowel harmony, looking at topics such as phonetic factors and the effect of language contact. The final part contains 31 chapters that present data and analysis of vowel harmony across all major language families as well as several isolates, constituting the broadest coverage of the phenomenon to date.

Predication in African Languages by James Essegbey (Editor); Enoch O. Aboh (Editor) This book discusses patterns of predication and their grammatical and semantic implications in a variety of African languages. It covers several prominent topics about predication in the languages, including locative predication, expressions of tense, aspect, and mood in relation to verbal complexes and verb serialisation, verb semantics, and nominalization of predicates. The chapters take inspiration from Felix Ameka's approach to the study of language according to which the main task of a linguist is to collaborate with language users to understand communicative practices in different contexts and to uncover how these practices impact grammatical and semantic aspects of the language. Accordingly, the descriptions and analyses in this book serve to understand language variation in different ecologies, rather than to impose pre-established descriptive frames on less described languages. Together, the chapters in the book represent a bird's eye view of predication strategies in various African languages and can therefore serve as readings for both introductory and advanced level courses on predication from a typological or comparative perspective.

Studies in Vietnamese Historical Linguistics: Southeast and East Asian Contexts by Trang Phan (Editor); Tuan-Cuong Nguyen (Editor); Masaaki Shimizu (Editor) This book facilitates constructive interdisciplinary dialogue among linguistics and philology specialists concerning various languages in Vietnam, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. The book's principal objective is to investigate the interdisciplinary nature of language change, with a particular focus on analyzing the structural and socio-cultural components of the evolution of specific linguistic phenomena over time. The book concentrates on the five primary language families in the East and Southeast Asian linguistic arena, namely Austroasiatic, Tai-Kadai, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, and Hmong-Mien. In doing so, it develops understanding of the extent to which language change is the result of language-internal mechanisms, prolonged contact with other languages within the same linguistic area, and the surrounding socio-cultural milieu. Given that Vietnam presents a linguistic microcosm of the East and Southeast Asia region, the book is divided into two sections. The first centers on historical linguistics relating to major languages based in Vietnam, including Vietnamese and its significant neighbors, Tay and Nung. The subsequent section examines the transformations observable in other languages prevalent across East and Southeast Asia that are historically, typologically, and geographically related to languages from Vietnam, including Chinese, Formosan, and Philippine languages, as well as Hmongic languages. A product of a workshop sponsored by the Harvard Yenching Institute held at the Institute of Sino-Nom Studies, this book encompasses a significant contribution to the field of Vietnamese historical linguistics, which has been notably underexplored in academic research. It is relevant to linguists, philologists, historians, anthropologists, and cultural scholars interested in Vietnam in particular, and the Southeast and East Asian cultural and linguistic landscape at large.

Studies on Indigenous Signed and Spoken Languages in Africa by Emmanuel Asonye and Mary Edward (Eds.) This volume is an important exploration of Africa's rich linguistic diversity. The chapters delve into the complexities of linguistic research, preservation, and cultural understanding, with a regional focus covering indigenous African languages. It honours often-overlooked sign languages, making it a trailblazing work in its combination of signed and spoken languages within the African environment. This book is a must-have for anybody interested in African languages, providing new perspectives on language preservation, cultural identity, and the lasting spirit of linguistic diversity. The individual chapters present an invitation to discover, appreciate, and preserve Africa's indigenous languages. This volume, intended for linguists, policy makers, and graduate and undergraduate students, presents a practical approach to deciphering the complexity of indigenous African languages, both signed and spoken.

The Timucua Language by George Aaron Broadwell The Timucua Language is a comprehensive reference grammar of Timucua, the Native language of much of northern Florida during the Spanish colonial period. Though the Timucua language is no longer spoken, written Timucua was extensively used as a medium of Franciscan evangelism in the seventeenth century; indeed, the Timucua catechisms from 1612 are the earliest written records in any Native language of the land that is now the United States. Two secular letters in the language also survive from that period. As a whole, the Timucua written corpus gives us incomparable insight into the Indigenous culture and history of early Florida. This grammar is based on a thorough study of the extant printed and handwritten documents and on careful philological and comparative analysis of the corpus. Because the content of printed Timucua material often varies considerably from the Spanish text printed in parallel with it, careful study of Timucua grammar enables linguists, anthropologists, and historians to begin to read these critical texts in Florida and southeastern U.S. history.

Tone Evolution: The Uni- and Multi-Phonational Tone Systems on the Jianghan Plain by Caiyu Wang This book provides a start of defining the uni- and multi-phonational tone systems of geographically connected dialects under a phonation-pitch tonal model. It also demonstrates an interpretation of the contemporary ongoing tonal variations and varieties from the perspective of language evolution. Acoustic data are collected from five adjacent counties on the Jianghan Plain in China, where two varieties of Southwestern Mandarin and one variety of Gan Dialect are spoken. Falsetto and breathy phonations are applied in this area for phonological distinction, and thus the modal-only dialects co-occur with the di-phonational (falsetto and modal) and tri-phonational (falsetto, modal, and breathy) ones. The acoustic and perceptual analyses are conducted to define tones under the Multi-Register Four-Level Tonal Model, a frame considering both pitch and phonation for the definition of tones. The synchronic variations and varieties within and across speakers/dialects are interpreted in the dynamic interplay of tones mainly governed by phonetic and phonological reasons. The inner-system tonal differences of individual dialectal varieties together with the general distributive patterns of tones in this area are evaluated to determine the paths of tone evolution. Fresh for it exploring the definition and linguistic meaning of the dynamic modal- and non-modal tones, the book benefits researchers with data, research methods, and insight and helps the language teachers and learners understand and learn tones with what the lexical tones really are. The book is also written for the readers curious of tones and tone languages.