Nau Nicole. A short grammar of Latgalian

München: Lincom, 2011. — 119 p. — (Languages of the World - Materials 482). — ISBN: 9783862880553.Latgalian is a regional language of Latvla in Central Europe, regularty used by an estimated number of 150,000 speakers. Genetically it belongs to the Baltic branch of lndo-European. While its close relationship to Latvian is apparent in basic vocabulary and inflectional morphemes, there are also significant differences in the phonology, morphology and syntax of two languages, due to divergent development during the 17th - 19th c., when Latgalia was politically and culhnlly separated from other Latvian lterritories. Furthermore, contact with Slavic languages (Polish, Belarusian, Russian) has played an important role in the historyof latgalian. Typologically salient features of Latgalian include rnorphophonological harmony with an opposition of bacj vs. front vowels and soft (palatalized or alveolar) vs. hard consonants, a large invenlory of non-ftnite verb forms, genitive vs. accusative marking of direct object, dative marking of primary core arguments in a variety of constructions, the use of non-finite predicats in represented speech, and the existence of a distinct logophoric pronoun referring to the speaker of a reported discourse.