Comprehensive reference work cataloging all of the world's known living languages. Languages are listed alphabetically by primary name under the country of the main population. Information includes alternate names, dialects, number of speakers, multilingualism, and other demographic and sociolinguistic information, if known.
The Encyclopedia encompasses a range of topics in linguistics, including such areas as historical, comparative, formal, mathematical, functional, philosophical, and sociolinguistics. Special attention is given to interrelations within these branches of the field and to relations of linguistics with other disciplines. This interdisciplinary focus makes the encyclopedia a resource relevant not only to linguistics but also to scholars working in the fields of computer science, mathematics, philosophy, the social and behavioral sciences, and literary studies.
The second edition of IEL contains 957 articles and about half as many more headwords and subheadwords, given an increase in blind entries (place-holder entries that point to others for their content). All the articles from the first edition are updated in some way, with most ranging from 40 percent revision to complete rewriting. About 15 percent of the articles are new and about 3 percent of the first-edition entries were eliminated from the second. The extensive updating of a ten-year-old reference work slated to endure at least another decade led to the addition of some theories and subfields, the elimination of others, expanded treatment of some existing concepts because of their rising importance, and reduced treatment of others because of their increasingly limited role in the field.
Abstracts and indexes the international literature in linguistics and related disciplines in the language sciences.
The database covers all aspects of the study of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Documents indexed include journal articles, book reviews, books, book chapters, dissertations and working papers.
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