Studies in Burmese Linguistics' is a unique collection of articles dedicated to the linguistics of Burmese, a major language of South East Asia with perhaps forty million speakers, more than any other language in the diverse Tibeto-Burman language family. The articles cover various sub-disciplines within linguistics which will be of general interest to a broad constituency of linguists, including the phonology and the phonetics of constituent focus, a synchronic and diachronic treatment of reflexives, a discussion of optionality in morphosyntax, an analysis of the grammaticalisation of the verb 'give' as a causativiser, three complementary articles on the verbal tense-mode-aspect system and two on Old Burmese, the language of 11-13th Century inscriptions. There is also a report of a major German-Burmese lexicography project. The contributors have been invited to write on research topics of their own choosing, making the volume a representative of current research on Burmese rather than a systematic linguistic survey of the language. While not all the articles are theory-neutral, the book has been edited to ensure accessibility to a broad readership, as well as consistent transcription, transliteration and linguistic glossing across all the articles.

This study, based on extensive and pioneering fieldwork done by the author between 1999 and 2002, provides a first account of Yinchia, a hitherto undescribed language in the southern Shan State of Myanmar (Burma). Using data collected from native Yinchia speakers in the Nam-San community, the author presents a comprehensive analysis of Yinchia phonetics and phonology (including tonology) in a framework that is essentially structuralist. Chapters on morphology and syntax remain more sketchy and tentative but discuss important issues such as the tense and aspect system of Yinchia as well as questions of word structure and the identification of phonological words, using mainly Integrational Linguistics as a theoretical background. Moreover, the author develops an orthography for Yinchia which so far has no writing system.

An original new perspective on the shared history of Burmese, Chinese, and Tibetan, with a particular focus on their phonological development.

This dictionary is a comprehensive list and account of grammatical forms, providing a much needed supplement to the standard Burmese-English dictionaries, where the grammatical forms receive scant attention.

The third volume in a four-part language course, this textbook enables students to become competent in reading and writing Burmese script. Most students find it helpful to begin learning the script at the same time they start on the spoken language, but this volume can be used independently if preferred. In addition to lists of words for reading and writing practice, presented in a series of short graduated lessons, Okell includes sample texts from Burmese materials such as product labels, newspaper headlines, and maps. Appendices on handwriting and cursive forms, display fonts, the Burmese names of the characters, Burmese alphabetical order, and common abbreviations round out the book. One of the challenges of learning a non-Roman script language from traditional course books is that the use of the Rroman alphabet to describe sounds is not as effective as hearing the sounds. The extensive audio files that accompany this volume allow the learner to hear and produce the sounds corresponding to the symbols. Language professors and their students, or those learning Burmese on their own, will appreciate the accessible approach and the manageable size of the lessons of the very practical textbooks in this series.