Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us

Prologue.

A Note on the Presentation of Linguistic Material.

Part I: The Library of Babel.

1. Warramurrungunji’s Children.

2. Four Millennia to Tune In.

Part II: A Great Feast of Languages.

3. A Galapagos of Tongues.

4. Your Mind in Mine: Social Cognition in Grammar.

Part III: Faint Tracks in an Ancient Wordscape: Languages and Deep World History.

5. Sprung from Some Common Source.

6. Travels in the Logosphere: Hooking Ancient Words onto Ancient Worlds.

7. Keys to Decipherment: How Living Languages Can Unlock Forgotten Scripts.

Part IV: Ratchetting Each Other Up: The Coevolution of Language, Culture, and Thought.

8. Trellises of the Mind: How Language Trains Thought.

9. What Verse and Verbal Art Can Weave.

Part V: Listening While We Can.

10. Renewing the Word.

Epilogue: Sitting in the Dust, Standing in the Sky.

Notes.

References.

Index of Language Names.

General Index.