Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-424) and index.

pt. I. Overview -- 1. Languages and their status -- "Primitive" languages -- Speech, writing, and nonliterate societies -- Population and language diversity -- Language vitality -- Language and government policy -- Literacy and language maintenance -- pt. II. Languages and structures -- 2. Languages and structures -- Sound systems -- Grammatical systems -- Possession (Acoma) -- Gender (Plains Cree) -- Number (Shasta) -- Person reference Aztec and Shoshoni) -- Classifying verbs (Apachean languages) -- Evidentials (Andes) -- Sound symbolism in California languages -- Fundamentals of language expression -- Common grammatical features -- Tense and aspect marking -- Case marking -- Inclusive-exclusive distinction -- Number -- Reduplication -- Suppletion -- Location-direction affixation -- Instrumental prefixes -- Noun-object incorporation -- pt. III. Languages and cultural domains -- 3. Languages and cultural domains -- Cultural domain and plant taxonomy (Kashaya Pomo) -- Cultural domain and geographic orientation -- Guarijío directionals -- Other directional systems -- Chumash placenames -- Other placenames -- Languages and social space (Shoshoni Deixis) -- Language and counting systems -- The Aztec vigesimal system -- Other counting systems -- California counting systems -- Counting systems in the Americas -- Classificatory systems and world view -- Numerical classifiers in Northwest California languages -- Worldview and the Hopi -- Worldview, classificatory systems and Navajo -- The cultural uses of taxonomies : (The Slave classification of Ice) -- Language, cognition, and culture.

pt. IV. Languages and social domains -- 4. Languages and social organization -- Language communities in the Great Basin -- Social groupings -- Linguistic enculturation -- Fashions of speaking and cultural focus -- Fashions of speaking and social category -- Multilingualism and multidialectalism -- Linguistic awareness and attitudes -- Language communities in the Pueblos -- Social groupings -- Linguistic enculturation -- Fashions of speaking and cultural focus -- Fashions of speaking and social category -- Multilingualism and multidialectalism -- Linguistic awareness and attitudes -- Language communities of the Creek Confederacy -- Bilingualism -- Fashions of speaking -- Linguistic awareness and attitudes -- Language communities of the Aztec Empire -- Social groupings -- Education and the verbal arts -- Fashions speaking and the verbal arts -- Oratory and moral instruction -- Poetry -- Historical chronicles -- Doublets and metaphors -- The place of writing -- The place of Nahuatl in Mesoamerica -- Markets, traders, and artisans -- Speech community, the social group, and culture -- Society, language boundaries, and linguistic diversity -- Culture, belief systems, and language -- Limiting factors -- American Indian speech communities today -- 5. Performers and performances -- California storytellers and storytelling -- A conversation with a California storyteller -- Bungling host. Benevolent host : a Chinook narrative -- An old lady's lament : a Havasupai song -- Male shooting chant evil-chasing : a Navajo prayer -- The language of three Kuna performance types -- Performances and cross-cultural comparison -- Prose, poetry, and playwriting -- 6. Fashions of speaking -- Speech and social category : respect speech among the Aztec and Guarijío -- Aztec reverential -- guarijío for two 00 Respect speech -- Speech and social category : men's and women's speech in Yana -- Baby talk in Cocopa -- Expressive speech : swearing, speech play, and word taboo -- Diminutive, augmentative, and expressive speech in the Northwest Coast -- Form and function -- 7. Nonverbal communication -- Silence : the Western Apache -- Kickapoo and Mazatec whistle speech -- Plains sign language -- The system -- Origin, use, and function -- Direct-signaling systems and their communicative purposes -- Long distance systems -- Picture "writing" -- Wampum -- Totem carvings -- Quipus -- 8. The written word -- Mesoamerican writing -- The Mayan hieroglyphic system -- Aztec writing -- The use of writing in Mesoamerica -- The Cherokee syllabary -- The Cree syllabary -- Other post-Columbian writing traditions -- Writing and its uses.

pt. V. Languages in contact -- 9. Multilingualism -- The Vaupés -- California -- Marriage -- Ritual alliances -- Trade -- The Inca Empire -- Paraguay -- Navajo Code Talkers -- 10. Lingua francas -- Pidgins and Creoles -- Chinook jargon -- Other American Indian pidgins -- Mobilian -- The Vaupés : lingua francas -- 11. Language contact -- Loanwords in Huasteca Nahuatl -- Lake Miwok : a case of borrowing and structural change -- Lexical acculturation in a colonial setting -- Mountain Pima -- Comanche -- Semantic extension in Western Apache -- A shift to the colonial languages -- Mitchif : a special case -- Changes in the Americas' colonial languages -- American English -- Mexican Spanish -- Andean Spanish -- Language contact and bilingualism -- pt. VI. Languages in time and space -- 12. Languages and shared histories -- The Cree dialects -- The Uto-Aztecan family -- Cognates and regular sound correspondences -- Loanwords -- Internal classification -- Time depth, dating, and glottochronology -- The possession of "pet" : an areal trait in the Southwest -- A linguistic area : Mesoamerica -- Sound symbolism : a diffusional trait of the Pacific Coast -- California : language families and diffusional area -- Genetic units -- Hokan -- Penutian -- Other genetic units -- Diffusion of linguistic traits -- Front and back [t], a diffused phonetic trait -- Other diffused phonetic traits -- Number systems -- discovering remote relationships -- Algic -- Macro-Siouan -- History of classification -- 13. The use of language as a tool for prehistory -- Navajo etymologies, and reconstructed vocabulary -- The Algonquian homeland -- The Numic homeland -- Early Spanish and Aztec loans in Northwest Mexico -- Nonlinguistic information gleaned from linguistic evidence -- Establishing the direction of borrowing -- California revisited -- Distribution and diversity -- "The case of the broken bottle" -- 14. Spread and distribution of language families -- Eastern North America -- Western North America -- Middle America -- South America -- The highlands -- The lowlands -- The Souther cone -- Appendix 1. Phonetic symbols and their meaning -- Consonants -- Voicing -- Place of articulation -- Other consonantal distinction : glottalization, aspiration and length -- Vowels -- Appendix 2. A list of language families of North America.