Book Description

"In preparation for half a century, the Pentland Dictionary marks a milestone in the scientific study of one of the major language families of North America; Algonquian languages range from Powhatan or Delaware in the east to Arapaho, Blackfoot and Cheyenne in the West and including such major Canadian languages as Cree and Ojibwe. David Pentland, who died in 2022 before his magnum opus could be brought into print. In a life-long research program of admirable intellectual coherence, Pentland not only drew on the structural and geographic diversity of these languages and their remarkable time-depth and historical documentation but also made exemplary use of the analytic tools of synchronic linguistics, comparative reconstruction and ethnology. A towering figure in the field of Algonquian Studies, he was amongst a small number of experts equally at home in the analysis of the languages still spoken today and the rich documentary record that has been preserved in the archives over the past four centures. The more than 45,000 entries reconstructed for the postulated Proto-Algonquian, the ancestral language from which all the modern languages are descended, are supported by the earliest documentary records for the various Algonquian languages. In addition, this publication also includes an English index, constructed under the general direction of Will Oxford by Laurel-Anne Hasler, one of the most accomplished and experienced scholars in this field. The comparative and historical dictionary of the Algonquian languages is a monu-mental achievement unmatched for any other language family of the New World."--