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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics > Dialectology

The Singlish Controversy - Language, Culture and Identity in a Globalizing World (Hardcover): Lionel Wee The Singlish Controversy - Language, Culture and Identity in a Globalizing World (Hardcover)
Lionel Wee
R2,921 Discovery Miles 29 210 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Singlish is the colloquial variety of English spoken in Singapore. It has sparked much public debate, but so far the complex question of what Singlish really is and what it means to its speakers has remained obscured. This important work explores some of the socio-political controversies surrounding Singlish, such as the political ideologies inherent in Singlish discourse, the implications of being restricted to Singlish for those speakers without access to standard English, the complex relationship between Singlish and migration, and the question of whether Singlish is an asset or a liability to Singaporeans. These questions surrounding Singlish illustrate many current issues in language, culture and identity in an age of rapid change. The book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of World Englishes and sociolinguistics. Its detailed analysis of the Singlish controversy will illuminate broader questions about language, identity and globalization.

Change, Chance, and Optimality (Hardcover): April McMahon Change, Chance, and Optimality (Hardcover)
April McMahon
R1,909 Discovery Miles 19 090 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This book is about how languages change. It is also a devastating critique of Optimality Theory-the dominant theory in contemporary phonology and increasingly influential throughout linguistics.The author sets out its basis principles and shows it to be incapable of explaining either language change or variation. OT relies on the innateness of certain human language faculties and therefore needs to explain the origins of allegedly genetically-specified features. Professor McMahon considers the nature and evolution of the human language capacity, and reveals a profound mismatch between the predictions of evolutionary biology and the claims for innateness made in OT. She argues further that any convincing theory of linguistic change must take account of the roles of history and chance.

Change, Chance, and Optimality (Paperback): April McMahon Change, Chance, and Optimality (Paperback)
April McMahon
R1,247 Discovery Miles 12 470 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book is about how languages change. It is also a devastating critique of Optimality Theory-the dominant theory in contemporary phonology and increasingly influential throughout linguistics. The author sets out its basis principles and shows it to be incapable of explaining either language change or variation. OT relies on the innateness of certain human language faculties and therefore needs to explain the origins of allegedly genetically-specified features. Professor McMahon considers the nature and evolution of the human language capacity, and reveals a profound mismatch between the predictions of evolutionary biology and the claims for innateness made in OT. She argues further that any convincing theory of linguistic change must take account of the roles of history and chance.

Tone Sandhi - Patterns across Chinese Dialects (Hardcover): Matthew Y Chen Tone Sandhi - Patterns across Chinese Dialects (Hardcover)
Matthew Y Chen
R3,936 Discovery Miles 39 360 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Matthew Chen's landmark study offers the most comprehensive analysis to date of the rich and complex patterns of tone used in Chinese languages. Chinese has a wide repertoire of tones that undergo often surprising changes when they are connected in speech flow. This tonal alternation is known as tone sandhi. Chen examines tone sandhi phenomena across a variety of Chinese dialects. His book is the culmination of a ten-year research project and explores a range of important theoretical issues against a wealth of empirical data not previously accessible to linguists.

The Higher Functional Field - Evidence from Northern Italian Dialects (Paperback): Celia Poletto The Higher Functional Field - Evidence from Northern Italian Dialects (Paperback)
Celia Poletto
R1,857 Discovery Miles 18 570 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This work investigates the syntax of the higher portion of the functional structure of the clause using comparative data from hundreds of Northern Italian dialects. The area contains dialects that are different in most ways yet homogenous syntactically, making it an ideal ground for analyzing micro-variations in syntax. The book sheds new light on debated problems such as subject-clitic inversion, verb movement and subject positions, and the structure of the higher functional phrases.

Creolization of Language and Culture (Paperback): Robert Chaudenson Creolization of Language and Culture (Paperback)
Robert Chaudenson
R1,541 Discovery Miles 15 410 Ships in 10 - 15 working days


Creolization of Language and Culture is the first English edition of Robert Chaudenson's landmark text Des îles, des hommes, des langues, which has also been fully revised.
. With reference to the main varieties of creole French, Chaudenson argues against the traditional account of creole genesis for a more sophisticated paradigm which takes full account of the peculiar linguistic and social factors at play in colonial societies.
This is an accessible book which makes an important contribution to the study of pidgin and creole language varieties, as well as to the development of contemporary European languages outside Europe. Key features include:
Analysis of current debates on the development of creoles
Discussion of many aspects of human culture including music, medicine, cooking, magic and folklore
Translation of all French sources from which Chaudenson quotes extensively

The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish (Hardcover): Dov-Ber Kerler The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish (Hardcover)
Dov-Ber Kerler
R3,067 Discovery Miles 30 670 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This is the first systematic attempt to trace the beginnings of modern literary Yiddish, an issue of great significance in the linguistic, literary, and social history of the Yiddish language. The eighteenth century marked the turning point in the history of literary Yiddish, a period of rapid linguistic assimilation to German and Dutch in the West and, by sharp contrast, the increasing cultural autonomy of Eastern European Jewry. Books printed in the West reflected the impact of New High German and contemporary Western Yiddish. Books published in Eastern Europe, the new centre for Yiddish printing, used Eastern Yiddish both for new works and for new editions of old Yiddish works. Dr Kerler examines hitherto neglected Yiddish books from the period in order to analyse the linguistic changes manifest in both the transition and shift from old to nascent Modern Literary Yiddish within the broader context of genre and literary traditions and in the framework of Yiddish dialectology, grammar, and sociolinguistics. Many of the grammatical norms of nineteenth and early twentieth-century literary Yiddish are shown to have their origins in the eighteenth century. A major work of linguistic scholarship, The Origins of Modern Literary Yiddish is an important contribution to the study of the crystallization process of literary languages, highlighting in the case of Yiddish the dynamics of emergence in the absence of the usual governmental support.

Linguistic Diversity (Hardcover): Daniel Nettle Linguistic Diversity (Hardcover)
Daniel Nettle
R2,091 Discovery Miles 20 910 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

There are some 6,500 different languages in the world, belonging to around 250 distinct families, and conforming to numerous grammatical types. This text investigates and seeks to explain that diversity. Daniel Nettle examines why diversity evolved at all, given that the biological mechanisms underlying language are the same in all normal human beings. He then considers whether the distribution of diversity may be linked with the major patterns of human geography and prehistory. Human languages and language families are not distributed evenly: there are few in Eurasia compared to the thousands in Australasia, the Pacific, and the Americas. There is also a marked correlation between bio- and linguistic diversity. The author explains how and why this diversity arose. To do so he returns to the earliest origins of language, reconstructing the processes of linguistic change and diffusion that occurred when humans first filled the continents and, thousands of years later, turned to agriculture. He concludes by examining the causes of linguistic mortality, and why the number of the world's languages may halve before 2100. The text draws on work in anthropology, linguistics, geography, ar

A Language of Our Own - The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Metis (Paperback, REV): Peter... A Language of Our Own - The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Metis (Paperback, REV)
Peter Bakker
R2,768 Discovery Miles 27 680 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The Michif language -- spoken by descendants of French Canadian fur traders and Cree Indians in western Canada -- is considered an "impossible language" since it uses French for nouns and Cree for verbs, and comprises two different sets of grammatical rules. Bakker uses historical research and fieldwork data to present the first detailed analysis of this language and how it came into being.

Urban Voices - Accent Studies In The British Isles (Paperback): Paul Foulkes, Gerard Docherty Urban Voices - Accent Studies In The British Isles (Paperback)
Paul Foulkes, Gerard Docherty
R1,247 Discovery Miles 12 470 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

British urban accents are undergoing rapid and extensive changes, perhaps more so now than ever before. This volume surveys the modern state of accents in Britain, looking in detail at some 15 accents from around Britain and introducing issues at the forefront of ongoing work in theoretical sociolinguistics and descriptive dialectology. Work indicates that many of these ongoing changes span wide geographical areas. A full overview of theoretical and methodological issues at the forefront of sociolinguistics is provided and, at the same time, a detailed comparative survey of variation and change in the phonology and phonetics of English is offered. Individual chapters, written by researchers carrying out key studies of major accents, focus on a single urban area and a principal academic theme.

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English (Hardcover, 2nd edition): Tom Dalzell The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English (Hardcover, 2nd edition)
Tom Dalzell
R7,169 Discovery Miles 71 690 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang offers the ultimate record of modern, post WW2 American Slang. The 25,000 entries are accompanied by citations that authenticate the words as well as offer examples of usage from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, television shows, musical lyrics, and Internet user groups. Etymology, cultural context, country of origin and the date the word was first used are also provided. In terms of content, the cultural transformations since 1945 are astounding. Television, computers, drugs, music, unpopular wars, youth movements, changing racial sensitivities and attitudes towards sex and sexuality are all substantial factors that have shaped culture and language. This new edition includes over 500 new headwords collected with citations from the last five years, a period of immense change in the English language, as well as revised existing entries with new dating and citations. No term is excluded on the grounds that it might be considered offensive as a racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or any kind of slur. This dictionary contains many entries and citations that will, and should, offend. Rich, scholarly and informative, The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English is an indispensable resource for language researchers, lexicographers and translators.

Belfast English and Standard English - Dialect Variation and Parameter Setting (Paperback): Alison Henry Belfast English and Standard English - Dialect Variation and Parameter Setting (Paperback)
Alison Henry
R2,989 Discovery Miles 29 890 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The study of comparative syntax in closely related languages has yielded valuable insights into syntactic phenomena--for example in the study of the Romance languages--yet little comparative work has been done on English dialects. This is the first comparison of the syntax of Belfast English and Standard English, using Chomsky's "Principles and Parameters"/Minimalist framework. Alison Henry analyzes various Belfast English constructions and their Standard English counterparts to gain insight into both English syntax and syntactic theory in general. In the process, she makes valuable data on Belfast English readily available for the first time.

American Dialects - A Manual for Actors, Directors, and Writers (Paperback, Revised): Lewis Herman, Marguerite Shalett Herman American Dialects - A Manual for Actors, Directors, and Writers (Paperback, Revised)
Lewis Herman, Marguerite Shalett Herman
R1,112 R990 Discovery Miles 9 900 Save R122 (11%) Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This standard text, now in paperback for the first time-- the companion volume to Foreign Dialects-- American Dialects offers representative dialects of every major section of the United States. In each case, a general description and history of the dialect is given, followed by an analysis of vowel and consonant peculiarities, of its individual lilt and rhythm, and of its grammar variations. There are also lists of the idioms and idiomatic expressions that distinguish each dialect and exercises using them. American Dialects also includes musical inflection charts and diagrams showing the placement of lips, tongue, and breath.

The City in Slang - New York Life and Popular Speech (Paperback, New Ed): Irving Lewis Allen The City in Slang - New York Life and Popular Speech (Paperback, New Ed)
Irving Lewis Allen
R575 Discovery Miles 5 750 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Irving Lewis Allen provides an insightful history of the rise of New York as a metropolis and the accompanying slang that surrounded it. Anecdotal and at times analytical, this book is both a lexicon of slang and a history of recent casual language.

Quantity Adjustment - Vowel Lengthening and Shortening in Early Middle English (Hardcover, New): Nikolaus Ritt Quantity Adjustment - Vowel Lengthening and Shortening in Early Middle English (Hardcover, New)
Nikolaus Ritt
R2,007 Discovery Miles 20 070 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is a unified account of all quantity changes affecting English stressed vowels during the early Middle English period. Dr Ritt discusses homorganic lengthening, open syllable lengthening, trisyllabic shortening, and shortening before consonant clusters. The study is based on a statistical analysis of Modern English reflexes of the changes. The complete corpus of analysed data is made available to the reader in the appendices. All of the changes discussed are shown to derive from basically the same set of quasi-universal tendencies, while apparent idiosyncrasies are shown to follow from factors that are independent of the underlying tendencies themselves. The role of tendencies, i.e. probabilistic laws in the description of language change, is given thorough theoretical treatment. In his aim to account for the changes as well as trace their chronology, Dr Ritt applies principles of natural phonology, and examines the conflict between phonological and morphological 'necessities'.

Dialects Converging - Rural Speech in Urban Norway (Hardcover, New): Paul Kerswill Dialects Converging - Rural Speech in Urban Norway (Hardcover, New)
Paul Kerswill
R2,367 Discovery Miles 23 670 Ships in 18 - 22 working days

Recent models of dialect contact, notably in the work of Trudgill, Chambers, James Milroy, and Labov have stressed the importance of the notions of salience, simplification, linguistic complexity, and the speech community in accounting for the patterns that arise. In this case-study of the speech of rural migrants in the Norwegian city of Bergen, Paul Kerswill critically examines the usefulness of these concepts, and puts recent models of dialect contact to the test for the first time against a case of such contact as it is actually happening. Dialect contact often, it is said, leads to Koineization - the emergence of new, mixed varieties of a language resulting from the intermingling of speakers of different varieties of that language. Kerswill investigates the extent to which processes of change typically ascribed to Koineization are already prefigured in the speech of the first-generation adult migrants of this study. While the author's approach is broadly quantitative he also demonstrates the importance of ethnographic and social-psychological explanations in accounting for the wide differences between individuals in the study. He argues for a sociolinguistic methodology founded on a richer and more comprehensive view of the social factors influencing, langague use.

Folklinguistics and Social Meaning in Australian English (Hardcover): Cara Penry Williams Folklinguistics and Social Meaning in Australian English (Hardcover)
Cara Penry Williams
R4,204 Discovery Miles 42 040 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Folklinguistics and Social Meaning in Australian English presents an original study of Australian English and, via this, insights into Australian society. Utilising folklinguistic accounts, it uncovers everyday understandings of contemporary Australian English through variations across linguistic systems (sounds, words, discourse and grammar). Focusing on one variation at time, it explores young speakers' language use and their evaluations of the same forms. The analysis of talk about talk uncovers ethnic, regional and social Others in social types and prevailing ideologies around Australian English essential for understanding Australian identity-making processes, as well as providing insights and methods relevant beyond this context. These discussions demonstrate that while the linguistic variations may occur in other varieties of English, they are understood through local conceptualisations, and often as uniquely Australian. This book harnesses the value and richness of discourse in explorations of the sociocultural life of language. The findings show that analysis attending to language ideologies and identities can help discover the micro-macro links needed in understanding social meanings. The volume explores a wide range of language features but also provides a deep contemplation of Australian English.

Linguistic Consequences of Language Contact and Restriction - The Case of French in Ontario, Canada (Hardcover, New): Raymond... Linguistic Consequences of Language Contact and Restriction - The Case of French in Ontario, Canada (Hardcover, New)
Raymond Mougeon, Edouard Beniak
R1,553 Discovery Miles 15 530 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The description of minority or threatened languages with a view to documenting the linguistic consequences of language contact and restriction has now emerged as a distinct area of investigation within sociolinguistics. In this book, Raymond Mougeon and Edouard Beniak present a series of analyses of the impact that contact with English on the one hand, and language-use restriction on the other, have had on the evolution of the French dialect spoken in the predominantly English-speaking province of Ontario, Canada. As a background to the analyses, the authors provide sociohistorical and sociolinguistic information on the Franco-Ontarian community, and make comparisons with other varieties of French both within and outside North America. They address fundamental theoretical issues such as the interplay between linguistic and extralinguistic causes of structural change and the mechanisms of linguistic change in bilingual as opposed to unilingual speech communities.

The Pluricentricity Debate - On Austrian German and other Germanic Standard Varieties (Hardcover): Stefan Dollinger The Pluricentricity Debate - On Austrian German and other Germanic Standard Varieties (Hardcover)
Stefan Dollinger
R1,721 Discovery Miles 17 210 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book unpacks a 30-year debate about the pluricentricity of German. It examines the concept of pluricentricity, an idea implicit to the study of World Englishes, which expressly allows for national standard varieties, and the notion of "pluri-areality," which seeks to challenge the former. Looking at the debate from three angles - methodological, theoretical, and epistemological - the volume draws on data from German and English, with additional perspectives from Dutch, Luxembourgish, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, to establish if and to what degree "pluri-areality" and pluricentricity model various sociolinguistic situations adequately. Dollinger argues that "pluri-areality" is synonymous with "geographical variation" and, as such, no match for pluricentricity. Instead, "pluri-areality" presupposes an atheoretical, supposedly "neutral", data-driven linguistics that violates basic science-theoretical principles. Three fail-safes are suggested - the uniformitarian hypothesis, Popper's theory of falsification and speaker attitudes - to avoid philological incompatibilities and terminological clutter. This book is of particular interest to scholars in sociolinguistics, World Englishes, Germanic languages and linguists more generally.

Slang Across Societies - Motivations and Construction (Hardcover): Jim Davie Slang Across Societies - Motivations and Construction (Hardcover)
Jim Davie
R4,236 Discovery Miles 42 360 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Slang Across Societies is an introductory reference work and textbook which aims to acquaint readers with key themes in the study of youth, criminal and colloquial language practices. Focusing on key questions such as speaker identity and motivations, perceptions of use and users, language variation, and attendant linguistic manipulations, the book identifies and discusses more than 20 in-group and colloquial varieties from no fewer than 16 different societies worldwide. Suitable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students working in areas of slang, lexicology, lexicography, sociolinguistics and youth studies, Slang Across Societies brings together extensive research on youth, criminal and colloquial language from different parts of the world.

The Historical Evolution of Earlier African American English - An Empirical Comparison of Early Sources (Hardcover, Reprint... The Historical Evolution of Earlier African American English - An Empirical Comparison of Early Sources (Hardcover, Reprint 2012)
Alexander Kautzsch
R3,355 Discovery Miles 33 550 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Based on a 500,000 word corpus of early sources collected from ex-slave narratives, ex-slave recordings, and interviews with hoodoo priests, this book reconstructs the English spoken by African Americans between 1830 and 1920. By means of detailed quantitative analyses, three linguistic features (negation patterns, copula usage, and relative marker choice) are interpreted along the lines of temporal change, regional diversity, and variation across gender. Additionally, some 300 non-standard letters written by African Americans in the 19th century are compared to the main corpus in order to identify differences between speech and writing.

Creole-English/English-Creole (Caribbean) Concise Dictionary (Paperback): Stephanie Ovide Creole-English/English-Creole (Caribbean) Concise Dictionary (Paperback)
Stephanie Ovide
R310 R281 Discovery Miles 2 810 Save R29 (9%) Ships in 18 - 22 working days

This dictionary contains commonsense phonetic pronunciations for Creole and English, modern up-to-date entries, and a section on Creole proverbs.

OK (Paperback): Michelle McSweeney OK (Paperback)
Michelle McSweeney
R285 R259 Discovery Miles 2 590 Save R26 (9%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. "OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good), provides conversational momentum, or even agrees (or disagrees). OK as an object, however, tells a story of how technology writes itself into language, permanently altering communication. OK is a young word, less than 200 years old. It began as an acronym for "all correct" when the steam-powered printing press pushed newspapers into the mainstream. Today it is spoken and written by nearly everyone in the world. Drawing on linguistics, history, and new media studies, Michelle McSweeney traces OK from its birth in the Penny Presses through telephone lines, grammar books, and television signals into the digital age. Nearly ubiquitous and often overlooked, OK illustrates the never-ending dance between language, technology, and culture, and offers lessons for our own techno-historical moment. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Kongish - Translanguaging and the Commodification of an Urban Dialect (Paperback): Tong-King Lee Kongish - Translanguaging and the Commodification of an Urban Dialect (Paperback)
Tong-King Lee
R585 Discovery Miles 5 850 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This Element introduces Kongish as a translingual and multimodal urban dialect emerging in Hong Kong in recent years and still in the making. Through the lens of translanguaging and linguistic commodification, and using the popular Facebook page Kongish Daily as a case in point, the study outlines the semiotic profile of Kongish. It examines how Kongish communications draw on a full range of performative resources, thriving on social media affordances and a creative-critical ethos. The study then turns to look at how Kongish is commoditized in a marketing context in the form of playful epithets emplaced on locally designed products, demonstrating how the urban dialect is not merely a niche medium of communication on social media, but has become integral to commercial, profit-driven practices. The Element concludes by challenging the proposition that Kongish must be considered a 'variety' of English, arguing instead that it is an innominate term embodying translanguaging-in-action.

Identity and Dialect Performance - A Study of Communities and Dialects (Hardcover): Reem Bassiouney Identity and Dialect Performance - A Study of Communities and Dialects (Hardcover)
Reem Bassiouney
R5,353 Discovery Miles 53 530 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Identity and Dialect Performance discusses the relationship between identity and dialects. It starts from the assumption that the use of dialect is not just a product of social and demographic factors, but can also be an intentional performance of identity. Dialect performance is related to identity construction and in a highly globalised world, the linguistic repertoire has increased rapidly, thereby changing our conventional assumptions about dialects and their usage. The key outstanding feature of this particular book is that it spans an extensive range of communities and dialects; Italy, Hong Kong, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Japan, Germany, The Sudan, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Spain, US, UK, French Guiana, Colombia,and Libya.

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