"This book provides an authoritative survey of the several hundred languages indigenous to North America. These languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer abundant opportunities for expanding our understanding of the shapes that human language can take. Part I of the book provides an overview of structural features of particular interest, concentrating on those that are cross-linguistically unusual or unusually well developed. Part II catalogues the languages by family, detailing genetic relationships, the locations and numbers of speakers, major published literature, and structural highlights. Included are languages that have arisen in contact situations: pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages."--Jacket.