Variational Semantics in Tibeto-Burman

This is a STEDT Facsimile Edition of James A. Matisoff's pioneering 1978 book Variational Semantics in Tibeto-Burman: The "organic" approach to linguistic comparison. This volume explores strategies for sub-grouping Tibeto-Burman (TB) languages, addressing phonological, morphological, and morphophonemic criteria for determining genetic relations. Matisoff here defines many of the key concepts underlying his influential linguistic theories and findings, including "semantic fields", "semantic systems", and "multi-dimensional semantic space", looking in particular at TB body-part terms, and charting the complex semantic relations among TB internal organs.