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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics > General
Viking Mediologies is a study of pre-modern multimedia rooted in the embodied poetic practice of Viking Age skalds. Prior study of the skaldic tradition has focused on authorship-distinctions of poetic style, historical contexts, and attention to the oeuvres of the skalds whose names are preserved in the written tradition. Kate Heslop reconsiders these not as texts but as pieces in a pre-modern media landscape, focusing on poetry's medial capacity to embody memory, visuality, and sound. Mobile, hybrid, diasporic social formations-bands of raiders and traders, petty kingdoms, colonial expeditions-achieved new prominence in the Viking Age. Skalds offered the leaders of these groups something uniquely valuable. With their complicated poetry, they claimed to be able to capture shared contingent meanings and re-mediate them in named, memorable, reproducible works. The commemorative poetry in kviduhattr remembers histories of ruin and loss. Skaldic ekphrasis discloses and reproduces the presence of the gods. Drottkvaett encomium evokes for the leader's retinue the soundscape of battle. As writing arrived in Scandinavia in the wake of Christianization, the media landscape shifted. In the poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, skalds adjusted to the demands of a literate audience, while the historical and poetological texts of the Icelandic High Middle Ages opened a dialogue between Latin Christian ideas of mediation and local traditions. In the Second Grammatical Treatise, for example, the literate technology of the grid is used to analyze the complex resonances of drottkvaett as the output of a syllable-spewing hurdy-gurdy-a poetry machine. Offering both new readings of both canonical works such as Ynglingatal, Ragnarsdrapa, and Hattatal, and examinations of lesser-known texts like Glymdrapa, Liknarbraut, and Sturla THordarson's Hakonarkvida, Viking Mediologies explores the powers and limits of poetic mediation.
'When, why, and how did language evolve?' 'Why do only humans have
language?' This book looks at these and other questions about the
origins and evolution of language. It does so via a rich diversity
of perspectives, including social, cultural, archaeological,
palaeoanthropological, musicological, anatomical, neurobiological,
primatological, and linguistic. Among the subjects it considers
are: how far sociality is a prerequisite for language; the
evolutionary links between language and music; the relation between
natural selection and niche construction; the origins of the
lexicon; the role of social play in language development; the use
of signs by great apes; the evolution of syntax; the evolutionary
biology of language; the insights offered by Chomsky's
biolinguistic approach to mind and language; the emergence of
recursive language; the selectional advantages of the human vocal
tract; and why women speak better than men.
Thirty-three million people in the United States speak some variety of Spanish, making it the second most used language in the country. Some of these people are recent immigrants from many different countries who have brought with them the linguistic traits of their homelands, while others come from families who have lived in this country for hundreds of years. John M. Lipski traces the importance of the Spanish language in the United States and presents an overview of the major varieties of Spanish that are spoken there. "Varieties of Spanish in the United States" provides - in a single volume - useful descriptions of the distinguishing characteristics of the major varieties, from Cuban and Puerto Rican, through Mexican and various Central American strains, to the traditional varieties dating back to the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries found in New Mexico and Louisiana.Each profile includes a concise sketch of the historical background of each Spanish-speaking group; current demographic information; its sociolinguistic configurations; and, information about the phonetics, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and each group's interactions with English and other varieties of Spanish. Lipski also outlines the scholarship that documents the variation and richness of these varieties, and he probes the phenomenon popularly known as 'Spanglish'. The distillation of an entire academic career spent investigating and promoting the Spanish language in the United States, this valuable reference for teachers, scholars, students, and interested bystanders serves as a testimony to the vitality and legitimacy of the Spanish language in the United States. It is recommended for courses on Spanish in the United States, Spanish dialectology and sociolinguistics, and teaching Spanish to heritage speakers.
Produit de la conference Translatio et Histoire des idees, troisieme du cycle Translatio, ce livre reunit des contributions refletant l'actualisation des recherches sur la Translatio et son role dans la marche des idees. Nous y voyons diverses conceptualisations de l'image de l'Autre et de son univers, dues aux determinants ideologiques et politiques du processus du transfert langagier. L'objectif des investigations est de mesurer les inflechissements induits par la Translatio, ce passage d'une culture a l'autre. Les auteurs abordent aussi bien des cas qui autorisent a identifier motifs et elements recurrents accompagnant le processus de la Translatio. La recurrence de ces aspects permet des formuler certaines regles concernant le transfert langagier. This book, a product of the "Translatio and the History of Ideas" conference and the third volume in the Translatio cycle, brings together contributions reflecting the advances in research on the Translatio and its role in the march of ideas. We see various conceptualizations of the image of the Other and his universe, due to the ideological and political determinants of the language transfer process. The objective of the investigations is to measure the inflections induced by the Translatio, this passage from one culture to another. The authors approach the cases that allow to identify certain patterns and recurring elements accompanying the process of the Translatio. The recurrence of these aspects makes it possible to formulate certain rules and principles concerning language transfer.
Produit de la conference " Translatio et Histoire des idees ", troisieme du cycle Translatio, ce livre reunit des contributions refletant l'actualisation des recherches sur la Translatio et son role dans la marche des idees. Nous y voyons diverses conceptualisations de l'image de l'Autre et de son univers, dues aux determinants ideologiques et politiques du processus du transfert langagier. L'objectif des investigations est de mesurer les inflechissements induits par la Translatio, ce passage d'une culture a l'autre. Les auteurs abordent aussi bien des cas qui autorisent a identifier certains motifs et elements recurrents accompagnant le processus de la translatio. La recurrence de ces aspects permet de formuler certains principes et regles, concernant le transfert langagier. This book, a product of the "Translatio and the History of Ideas" conference and the third volume in the Translatio cycle, brings together contributions reflecting the advances in research on the Translatio and its role in the march of ideas. We see various conceptualizations of the image of the Other and his universe, due to the ideological and political determinants of the language transfer process. The objective of the investigations is to measure the inflections induced by the Translatio, the passage from one culture to another. The authors approach the cases that allow identification of certain patterns and recurring elements accompanying the process of the Translatio. The recurrence of these aspects makes it possible to formulate certain rules and principles concerning language transfer.
Winner of the Tianjin Social Science Outstanding Achievement Award. This book reports on the contrastive-semantic investigation of sadness expressions between English and Chinese, based on two monolingual general corpora and a parallel corpus. The exploration adopts a unique theoretical approach which integrates corpus-linguistic theories on meaning (as a social construct, usage and paraphrase) with a corpus-linguistic lexical model. It employs a new complex but workable methodology which combines computational tools with manual examination to tease meaning out of corpus evidence, to compare and contrast lexical items that do not match up neatly between languages. It looks at sadness expressions both within and across languages in terms of three corpus-linguistic structural categories, i.e. colligation, collocation and semantic association/preference, and paraphrase (both explicit and implicit) to capture their subtle nuances of meaning, disclose the culture-specific conceptualisations encoded in them, and highlight their respective cultural distinctiveness of emotion. By presenting multidisciplinary original work, Sadness Expressions in English and Chinese will be of interest to researchers in corpus linguistics, contrastive lexical semantics, psychology, bilingual lexicography and language pedagogy.
The book suggests a new perspective on the essence of human language. This enormous achievement of our species is best characterized as a communication technology - not unlike the social media on the Net today - that was collectively invented by ancient humans for a very particular communicative function: the instruction of imagination. All other systems of communication in the biological world target the interlocutors' senses; language allows speakers to systematically instruct their interlocutors in the process of imagining the intended meaning - instead of directly experiencing it. This revolutionary function has changed human life forever, and in the book it operates as a unifying concept around which a new general theory of language gradually emerges. Dor identifies a set of fundamental problems in the linguistic sciences - the nature of words, the complexities of syntax, the interface between semantics and pragmatics, the causal relationship between language and thought, language processing, the dialectics of universality and variability, the intricacies of language and power, knowledge of language and its acquisition, the fragility of linguistic communication and the origins and evolution of language - and shows with respect to all of them how the theory provides fresh answers to the problems, resolves persistent difficulties in existing accounts, enhances the significance of empirical and theoretical achievements in the field, and identifies new directions for empirical research. The theory thus opens a new way towards the unification of the linguistic sciences, on both sides of the cognitive-social divide.
This comprehensive yet user-friendly primer to the Septuagint (LXX) acquaints readers with the Greek versions of the Old Testament. It is accessible to students, assuming no prior knowledge about the Septuagint, yet is also informative for seasoned scholars. The authors, both prominent Septuagint scholars, explore the history of the LXX, the various versions of it available, and its importance for biblical studies. This new edition has been substantially revised, expanded, and updated to reflect major advances in Septuagint studies. Appendixes offer helpful reference resources for further study.
Humorous, fascinating and informative, O Muirithe deploys a wide range of sources - both written and oral - to uncover words and phrases from the polyglot stockpot that is the English language. These refreshing and exploratory pieces range in place and time through Ireland, England and Scotland, ransacking dialects and etymologies derived from Old Norse, Old Irish, Old English, Middle Dutch, Norman French, High German, Medieval Latin, Ulster-Scots and Sanscrit. With his unerring ear, O Muirithe uncovers layers of social history, sexual practices, sporting habits and dietary needs gleaned from street, field and paper. Without our knowledge, we speak in tongues inherited from slang, folklore and the midden of the obsolete, underpinning and contributing to everyday experiences. The Way of Words contains multitudes in its pocket-histories. It will delight and enlighten all who care about language and communication.
This study analyses left dislocation, prepositions, and the progressive aspect in Ugandan English. It uses spoken data of English speakers with the three indigenous Ugandan languages. The results show high frequency use of left dislocation in Ugandan English. This suggests possible substrate influence from these first languages since left dislocation construction is used in these languages. The use of prepositions is overwhelmingly like in Standard English with just very few cases indicating variation from Standard English, although the three indigenous languages have very few prepositions in comparison to the English language. The use of the progressive illustrates variation among English speakers with the three first languages indicating that Ugandan English is not homogenous.
The future has exercised students of Modern Greek language developments for many years, and no satisfactory set of arguments for the development of the modern form from the ancient usages has ever been produced. Theodore Markopoulos elucidates the stages that led up to the appearance of the modern future in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He does so by focussing on the three main modes of future referencing ('mello', 'echo', and 'thelo'). He discusses these patterns in the classical and Hellenistic-Roman periods, the early medieval period (fifth to tenth centuries), and the late medieval period (eleventh to fifteenth centuries). The argument is supported by reference to a large and representative corpus of texts (all translated into English) from which the author draws many examples. In his conclusion Dr Markopoulos considers the implications of his findings and methodology for syntactic and semantic history of Greek.
When does a continuum become a divide? This book investigates the genetic relationship between Linear A and Linear B, two Bronze Age scripts attested on Crete and Mainland Greece and understood to have developed one out of the other. By using an interdisciplinary methodology, this research integrates linguistic, epigraphic, palaeographic and archaeological evidence, and places the writing practice in its sociohistorical setting. By challenging traditional views, this work calls into question widespread assumptions and interpretative schemes on the relationship between these two scripts, and opens up new perspectives on the ideology associated with the retention, adaptation and transmission of a script, and how identity was negotiated at a moment of closer societal interaction between Cretans and Greek-speaking Mainlanders in the Late Bronze Age. By delving deeper into the structure and inner workings of these two writing systems, this book will make us rethink the relationship between Linear A and B.
This volume outlines some of the developments in practical and theoretical research into speechreading lipreading that have taken place since the publication of the original "Hearing by Eye". It comprises 15 chapters by international researchers in psychology, psycholinguistics, experimental and clinical speech science, and computer engineering. It answers theoretical questions what are the mechanisms by which heard and seen speech combine? and practical ones what makes a good speechreader? Can machines be programmed to recognize seen and seen-and-heard speech?. The book is written in a non-technical way and starts to articulate a behaviourally-based but cross-disciplinary programme of research in understanding how natural language can be delivered by different modalities.
Concepts lie at the heart of our mental life, supporting a myriad of cognitive functions - including thinking and reasoning, object recognition, memory, and language comprehension and production. The nature of concepts and their representation in the mind and brain has been studied from many different perspectives and so provides valuable opportunities for integrative, interdisciplinary discussions. This special issue on conceptual representation contains invited papers from leading researchers across the range of cognitive science disciplines, addressing the nature of semantic and conceptual representation in the mind and brain. Contributions include both empirical reports and theoretical reviews, from the fields of cognitive and developmental psychology, neuropsychology, philosophy and linguistics.
Nach der internationalen Tagung, die an der Universitat zu Creteil am 10. Marz 2017 zu Ehren Jean-Marie Zembs abgehalten wurde, ist diesem nun der vorliegende Band ausgewahlter Beitrage gewidmet. Die ForscherInnen aus unterschiedlichen Landern heben Jean-Marie Zembs wichtigen Beitrag zur Sprachwissenschaft und Didaktik des Deutschen und Franzoesischen sowie dessen Modernitat hervor. Jean-Marie Zemb (1928-2007) hatte am College de France den fur ihn eingerichteten Lehrstuhl "Grammaire et pensee allemandes" inne (1986-1998). Danach wurde er zum Mitglied der "Academie des sciences morales et politiques", Abteilung Philosophie. Als geburtiger Elsasser hat er sich sein Leben lang fur das Deutsche und Franzoesische engagiert. Apres la journee d'etude internationale du 10 mars 2017, a l'UPEC, en l'honneur de Jean-Marie Zemb, voici un volume de contributions choisies dedie a Jean-Marie Zemb. Les chercheuses et chercheurs de divers pays ont mis en lumiere les apports linguistiques et didactiques de la pensee de Jean-Marie Zemb (1928-2007). Il s'agit, par cette publication, de faire apparaitre la richesse et la modernite de cet eminent linguiste et philosophe, entre le francais et l'allemand, pour qui fut creee en 1986 au College de France la Chaire " Grammaire et pensee allemandes ", (1986-1998) et qui fut ensuite elu a l'Academie des sciences morales et politiques, dans la section philosophie.
Introducing Linguistics brings together the work of scholars working at the cutting-edge of the field of linguistics, creating an accessible and wide-ranging introductory level textbook for newcomers to this area of study. The textbook: * Provides broad coverage of the field, comprising five key areas: language structures, mind and society, applications, methods, and issues; * Presents the latest research in an accessible way; * Incorporates examples from a wide variety of languages - from isiZulu to Washo - throughout; * Treats sign language in numerous chapters as yet another language, rather than a 'special case' confined to its own chapter; * Includes recommended readings and resource materials, and is supplemented by a companion website. This textbook goes beyond description and theory, giving weight to application and methodology. It is authored by a team of leading scholars from the world-renowned Lancaster University department, who have drawn on both their research and extensive classroom experience. Aimed at undergraduate students of linguistics, Introducing Linguistics is the ideal textbook to introduce students to the field of linguistics.
* The debate about the effects of bilingualism on executive control is one of the most controversial and contentious issues in the field of bilingualism, so the topic is timely. * Includes coverage of the methodologies used in this area of investigation. * Offers a critical review of the research literature to balance the record about bilingual advantage.
This volume is a collection of papers read at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 2017, in two sessions organized by the Institute of English Studies at the University of London and four sessions organized by the Society of Historical English Language and Linguistics. Contributions consist of poetry, prose, interlinear glosses, syntax, semantics, lexicology, and medievalism. The contributors employ a wealth of different approaches. The general theme of the IMC 2017 was 'otherness', and some papers fit this theme very well. Even when two researchers deal with a similar topic and arrive at different conclusions, the editors do not try to harmonize them but present them as they are for further discussion.
Formulaicity is pervasive in both spoken and written language. Speakers use a huge amount of prefabricated language including collocations, idioms, fixed and semi-fixed expressions, and verbal creativity often involves combining established word sequences rather than inventing wholly new ones. In literature, formulaicity was long disparaged as the opposite of creativity, and a hallmark of 'genre fiction' of questionable aesthetic value, but a more recent approach sees all writing as intertextual - a tissue of citations and creative reworkings of other texts. The chapters in this book elucidate the nature of semi-fixed formulaic sequences; how the meaning of formulaic expressions can change over time; how readers interpret formulaic expressions in first and second languages; how modern and postmodern authors use traditional genres and tales to challenging effect; and how formulaic patterns involving particular words can underlie the texture and meanings of entire novels. Together, the contributions to this collection provide a convincing reassessment of the potential creativity of the formulaic in a variety of linguistic and literary contexts. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of English Studies.
This illuminating book critically examines multicultural language politics and policymaking in the Andean-Amazonian countries of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, demonstrating how issues of language and power throw light on the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. Based on the author's research in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia over several decades, Howard draws comparisons over time and space. With due attention to history, the book's focus is situated in the years following the turn of the millennium, a period in which ideological shifts have affected continuity in official policy delivery even as processes of language shift from Indigenous languages such as Aymara and Quechua, to Spanish, have accelerated. The book combines in-depth description and analysis of state-level activity with ethnographic description of responses to policy on the ground. The author works with concepts of technologies of power and language regimentation to draw out the hegemonic workings of power as exercised through language policy creation at multiple scales. This book will be key reading for students and scholars of critical sociolinguistic ethnography, the history, society and politics of the Andean region, and linguistic anthropology, language policy and planning, and Latin American studies more broadly.
An underdeveloped area in the study of Chinese dialects An comprehensive description of the grammar of the Jin dialect in the Northern Shaanxi Compares different dialects and today's dialect and ancient Chinese The Chinese version of the book has sold 5,000 copies since its publication in 2006
Most German-speaking researchers in the area of infant development are familiar with the research conducted in English. However, most English-speaking researchers are relatively unaware of the work currently being done in German. This volume is designed to remedy this imbalance and to promote international collaboration. The book's contributors -- an exciting and innovative group of German-speaking scholars -- provide up-to-date summaries of theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives on development. They review evidence and present points of view of great interest to all people who are committed to furthering our collective understanding of development in infancy.
This book consists of scientific chapters devoted to innovative approaches to examination of anthropocentrism. It depicts human beings as physical, spiritual, social and cultural creatures perceived through the lingual and literary lens. The publication has an intercultural foundation, as it examines Slovak, Russian, German, English and Romanian languages. The authors of the book discuss issues which transcend the boundaries of philological research. They apply knowledge from various fields, such as psychology, communication theory, aesthetics, mass media and other social sciences in order to obtain relevant scientific results. The authors present critical analyses and interpretations of contemporary theoretical and practical problems occurring in the selected areas of expertise, and outline the perspective research possibilities.
The German comparative philologist Friedrich Max Muller (1823-1900) was one of the most influential scholars in Victorian Britain. Muller travelled to Britain in 1846 in order to prepare a translation of the Rig Veda. This research visit would turn into a lifelong stay after Muller was appointed as Taylor Professor of Modern Languages at Oxford in 1854. Muller's activities in this position would exert a profound influence on British intellectual life during the second half of the nineteenth-century: his book-length essay on Comparative Mythology (1856) inspired evolutionist thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor and made philology into one of the master sciences at mid-century; his debates with Charles Darwin and his followers on the origin of language constituted a significant component of religiously informed reactions to Darwin's ideas about human descent; his arguments concerning the interdependence of language and thought influenced fields such as psychology, neurology, paediatrics and education until the end of the nineteenth century; his theories concerning an 'Aryan' language that purportedly predated Sanskrit and ancient Greek led to controversial debates on the relations between language, religion and race in the Indian subcontinent and beyond; and his monumental 50-volume edition of the Sacred Books of the East helped to lay the foundations for the study of comparative religion. Muller's interlocutors and readers included people as various as Alexander von Humboldt, Darwin, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ferdinand de Saussure, Ernst Cassirer, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jarwaharlal Nehru. This volume offers the most comprehensive and interdisciplinary assessment of Muller's career to date. Arising from a conference held at the German Historical Institute in London in 2015, it brings together papers by an international group of experts in German studies, German and British history, linguistics, philosophy, English literary studies, and religious studies in order to examine the many facets of Muller's scholarship. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Publications of the English Goethe Society.
Bess of Hardwick's Letters is the first book-length study of the c. 250 letters to and from the remarkable Elizabethan dynast, matriarch and builder of houses Bess of Hardwick (c. 1527-1608). By surveying the complete correspondence, author Alison Wiggins uncovers the wide range of uses to which Bess put letters: they were vital to her engagement in the overlapping realms of politics, patronage, business, legal negotiation, news-gathering and domestic life. Much more than a case study of Bess's letters, the discussions of language, handwriting and materiality found here have fundamental implications for the way we approach and read Renaissance letters. Wiggins offers readings which show how Renaissance letters communicated meaning through the interweaving linguistic, palaeographic and material forms, according to socio-historical context and function. The study goes beyond the letters themselves and incorporates a range of historical sources to situate circumstances of production and reception, which include Account Books, inventories, needlework and textile art and architecture. The study is therefore essential reading for scholars in historical linguistics, historical pragmatics, palaeography and manuscript studies, material culture, English literature and social history. |
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