"The echo of the stone/ where I carved the [Buddha's] honorable footprints/ reaches the Heaven, [...]". This book presents the transcription, translation, and analysis of Chinese (753 AD) and Japanese inscriptions (end of the 8th century AD) found on two stones now in the possession of the Yakushiji temple in Nara. All these inscriptions praise the footprints of Buddha, and more exactly their carvings in the stone. The language of the Japanese inscription, which consists of twenty-one poems, reflects the contemporary dialect of Nara. Its writing system shows a quite unique trait, being practically monophonic. The book is richly illustrated by photos of the temple and of the inscriptions.

Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages is becoming increasingly frequent, thereby promoting a need to acquire successful methods in understanding language. Applied Psycholinguistics and Multilingual Cognition in Human Creativity is an essential reference source that discusses the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language, as well as its applications in human development, the social sciences, communication theories, and infant development. Featuring research on topics such as international business, language processing, and organizational research, this book is ideally designed for linguists, psychologists, humanities and social sciences researchers, managers, and graduate-level students seeking coverage on language acquisition and communication.

The concept of meaning, since Frege initiated the linguistic turn in 1884, has been the subject of numerous theories, hypotheses, methodologies and distinctions. One distinction of considerable strategic value relates to the location of meaning: some aspects of meaning can be found in language and are modelled with semantic values of various kinds; some aspects of meaning can be found in communicative processes and are modelled with pragmatic inferences of one sort or another. One hypothesis of great heuristic utility concerns the relationship that is assumed between the semantic and the pragmatic. This collection of especially commissioned papers examines current thinking on the plausible nature of the semantic, the possible character of the pragmatic and the mechanics of their intersection.

The volume brings together contributions by scholars working in different theoretical frameworks interested in systematic explanation of language change and the interrelation between current linguistic theories and modern analytical tools and methodology. he integrative basis of all work is the special focus on phenomena at the interface of semantics and syntax and the implications of corpus-based, quantitative analyses for researching diachrony.

This work does not aim to be an etymological dictionary of Qur'anic Arabic, nor does it attempt to suggest some new genetic classification of the Semitic languages. Rather, it offers insights into the internal lexical relationships attested in a number of Semitic varieties. The work is based on a quantitative analysis of a substantial corpus of the Arabic lexicon with a view to investigating lexical relationships within a number of Semitic languages. Qur'anic Arabic is the source of a lexical mass comparison exercise involving Akkadian, Ugaritic, Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, Phoenician, Epigraphic South Arabian and Ge'ez. Moreover, the lexical links identified in this study are in themselves linguistic indicators of the various degrees of cultural proximity characterising the various Semitic languages.

What role does language play in the formation and perpetuation of our ideas about nationality and other social categories? And what role does it play in the formation and perpetuation of nations themselves, and of other human groups? Language and Nationality considers these questions and examines the consequences of the notion that a language and a nationality are intrinsically connected. Pietro Bortone illustrates how our use of language reveals more about us than we think, is constantly judged, and marks group insiders and group outsiders. Casting doubt on several assumptions common among academics and non-academics alike, he highlights how languages significantly differ among themselves in structure, vocabulary, and social use, in ways that are often untranslatable and can imply a particular culture. Nevertheless, he argues, this does not warrant the way language has been used for promoting a national outlook and for teaching us to identify with a nation. Above all, the common belief that languages indicate nationalities reflects our intellectual and political history, and has had a tremendous social cost. Bortone elucidates how the development of standardized national languages - while having merits - has fostered an unrealistic image of nations and has created new social inequalities. He also shows how it has obscured the history of many languages, artificially altered their fundamental features, and distorted the public understanding of what a language is.

Spelling and Writing Words: Theoretical and Methodological Advances provides a set of contributions about how individuals write words. Understanding word production is of major importance as it allows understanding how words -the basic elements of written language- are stored in the writers' brain and how do writers select the spelling of a word. < The theoretical chapters address hot topics in the field such as the role of phonology in writing, bilingualism, language disorders, orthographic acquisition, and the influence of handwriting on reading. The methodological chapters address individual differences, how to measure handwriting performance in different handwriting styles, and neuroscientific approaches. The concluding chapters explore the future of written word production research.

Professor Gyoergy Kara, an outstanding member of academia, celebrated his 80th birthday recently. His students and colleagues commemorate this occasion with papers on a wide range of topics in Altaic Studies, with a focus on the literacy, culture and languages of the steppe civilizations.

Thanks to the digital revolution, even a traditional discipline like philology has been enjoying a renaissance within academia and beyond. Decades of work have been producing groundbreaking results, raising new research questions and creating innovative educational resources. This book describes the rapidly developing state of the art of digital philology with a focus on Ancient Greek and Latin, the classical languages of Western culture. Contributions cover a wide range of topics about the accessibility and analysis of Greek and Latin sources. The discussion is organized in five sections concerning open data of Greek and Latin texts; catalogs and citations of authors and works; data entry, collection and analysis for classical philology; critical editions and annotations of sources; and finally linguistic annotations and lexical databases. As a whole, the volume provides a comprehensive outline of an emergent research field for a new generation of scholars and students, explaining what is reachable and analyzable that was not before in terms of technology and accessibility.

The Politics of Speech in Later Twentieth-Century Poetry: Local Tongues in Heaney, Brooks, Harrison, and Clifton argues that local speech became a central facet of English-language poetry in the second half of the twentieth century. It is based on a key observation about four major poets from both sides of the Atlantic: Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Harrison, and Lucille Clifton all respond to societal crises by arranging, reproducing, and reconceiving their particular versions of local speech in poetic form. The book's overarching claim is that "local tongues" in poetry have the capacity to bridge aesthetic and sociopolitical realms because nonstandard local speech declares its distinction from the status quo and binds people who have been subordinated by hierarchical social conditions, while harnessing those versions of speech into poetic structures can actively counter the very hierarchies that would degrade those languages. The diverse local tongues of these four poets marshaled into the forms of poetry situate them at once in literary tradition, in local contexts, and in prevailing social constructs.

The volume explores the body part 'eye' as a source domain in conceptualization and a vehicle of embodied cognition. It includes in-depth case studies of languages situated in different cultural contexts in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania. It also provides insights into cross-linguistic comparison of conceptualization patterns and semantic extension of the term 'eye' on various target domains. The contributions in the volume present a range of cultural models associated with the visual organ which take into account socio-cultural factors and language usage practices. The book offers new material and novel analyses within the subject of polysemy of body part terms. It also adds to studies on metaphor, metonymy and cultural conceptualizations within a cognitive linguistic paradigm.