This is the first volume in the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDF). The first four volumes in the Series were largely completed while Prof. Mary Ritchie Key PhD, University of California, Irvine, was the General Editor.
At the outset, it is appropriate to assure scholars that the Series was properly transferred to the Department of Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute in 2001. The Volume Editor of the 2d volume in the Series, with the Austronesian languages, attempted to steal the Series for himself. That theft was detected just in time. Professor Darrell Tryon, of Australian National University, attempted to usurp the Series. The crime is documented in the public record of the litigation. The attempted usurpation by one of the Volume Editors broke the heart of the General Editor. She died prematurely and without a known cause in September 2003, shortly after transferring the Series to the Max Planck.
The integrity, vision, and content of the Series itself remains alive. Additional Volumes in the Series are already being published, with exciting "spin-off" projects as well. The IDS remains under the care of Professor Doctor Bernard Comrie, Director, Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara.
Home page: http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/staff/comrie.php
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
Germany
tel. +49 341 35 50 315
fax +49 341 35 50 333

See also, Department of Linguistics
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3100
USA
fax +1 805 893 7769

The South American Indian Languages (Volume I of the IDS Series) was printed in 1997, in separately provided Parts. The Series orthography and methodology is introduced and applied. The data is entirely computerized and available on digital media. Each language is linguistically described. The word lists are presented in the 23 groups first introduced by Carl Darling Buck (1949), with some modifications. "Between 400 and 500 languages are still spoken in South America today." [3] Many remain unclassified, but linguists have established there are over a dozen language families. Revenant word lists from some extinct languages are also included. A simple continental map is provided for quick reference [41], and each language is mapped in the Parts.
The included 80 languages are listed, north to south -- from the bridge languages to the southern cone [42-44]. The names are drawn from over 5,000 names of Indian languages in the literature, with an alphabetical cross-reference for many of them. The Editors adopted the general principle of naming languages by their respective speakers' label for them. [45]. ( )