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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics > General
Imaginative representations of different cultures are one of the major stumbling blocks to understanding, deepening the gap between people as they are passed from one text to another, especially in periods of historical transition. These transfers are sometimes innocent, while at other times they serve political agendas. The sample of images and estimations of others becomes a priority and, frequently for this reason, stereotypical. This is the subject of investigation for the majority of the authors in this collection. This book with articles presented here is an attempt to understand the core of confirmed or standardized social norms. The book contains articles in English and in Russian language.
Communicating with Asia brings together an international team of leading researchers to discuss South, South-East, East and Central Asia, and explore Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi-Urdu, Malay, and Russian as major languages. The volume locates English inside a number of national, regional or lingua franca contexts and illustrates the way it develops in such contact situations. Local dynamics affecting languages in contact and cultural links of languages are dealt with, such as educational-political issues and tensions between conflicting norms. In today's global world, where the continent is an increasing area of focus, it is vital to explore what it means to 'understand' Asian cultures through English and other languages. This important new study will be of interest to students and researchers working in the fields of regional studies, English as a global language, Asian languages and cultural studies.
This volume, first published in 1960 to commemorate the one hundredth birthday of Jespersen, collects together as many of his writings as possible in order to allow students of the English language, or indeed of language in general, to read those shorter papers which have hitherto escaped their notice. The layout of the book largely follows the nature of the subjects dealt with: English grammar, phonetics, history of English, language teaching, language in general, international language and miscellaneous papers.
Inspired by Frank Palmer's work, this book addresses a set of specific topics pertaining to the description of modality in English and places them in a broader context. A number of more general theoretical and typological matters are also raised, which bear upon the theory of syntax, semantics and pragmatics and their interfaces. The methodology adopted is mostly functional-typological, though some reference is made to various theoretical frameworks, ranging from cognitive linguistics to parametric variation. Modal meanings are seen to extend beyond particular lexical and grammatical exponents, through sentential semantics and into actual contexts of use. At the same time, the study of modality seems to challenge commonly held views on the relationship between different levels of linguistic analysis. Other languages discussed include Brazilian Portuguese, Classical and Modern Greek and Spanish.
"Language ideologies" are cultural representations, whether
explicit or implicit, of the intersection of language and human
beings in a social world. Mediating between social structures and
forms of talk, such ideologies are not only about language. Rather,
they link language to identity, power, aesthetics, morality and
epistemology. Through such linkages, language ideologies underpin
not only linguistic form and use, but also significant social
institutions and fundamental nottions of person and community.
This book deals with two different pragmatic approaches to textual communication: (i) the mainstream approach followed by the 'Ash'ari s, Hanafi s and Mu'tazili s, (ii) the salafite approach followed mainly by the Hanbali s, defended and elaborated by Ibn Taymiyyah. One of the primary aims of the book is to explore and formulate several Muslim legal theorists' pragmatic theories, communicative principles and linguistic views, construct them in the form of models and set them within a general uniform framework. Another aim is to reveal a corpus of information and data which, though highly relevant to modern pragmatics, is still unknown. This study, which can be seen as an extensive introduction to 'medieval Islamic pragmatics', is the first attempt to examine the approaches followed by the Salafi s or the mainstream from a pragmatic viewpoint. There has been no attempt to explain the principles and the strategies utilised by the medieval Sunni Muslim legal theorists in their account of how communication works and how successful interpretation is achieved. Of course, a lot of work has been done on different Islamic sects and their different positions over the interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah, but these studies fall short of delving into the underlying communicative principles that motivate their differences over interpretation. The author's formulation of the Muslim legal theorists' views is enhanced by setting up a reliable theoretical foundation and by delving into their underlying philosophical principles. This involves relating the legal theorists' insights into interpretation and communication to their relevant ontological, epistemological and theological outlooks, and comparing these insights with their modern pragmatic counterparts.
Shortlisted for the 2008 Katharine Briggs Award. For centuries the witch has been a powerful figure in the European imagination; but the creation of this figure has been hidden from our view. Charles Zika s groundbreaking study investigates how the visual image of the witch was created in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. He charts the development of the witch as a new visual subject, showing how the traditional imagery of magic and sorcery of medieval Europe was transformed into the sensationalist depictions of witches in the pamphlets and prints of the sixteenth century. This book shows how artists and printers across the period developed key visual codes for witchcraft, such as the cauldron and the riding of animals. It demonstrates how influential these were in creating a new iconography for representing witchcraft, incorporating themes such as the power of female sexuality, male fantasy, moral reform, divine providence and punishment, the superstitions of non-Christian peoples and the cannibalism of the New World. Lavishly illustrated and encompassing in its approach, The Appearance of Witchcraft is the first systematic study of the visual representation of witchcraft in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It will give the reader a unique insight into how the image of the witch evolved in the early modern world.
Versatility in Versification grew out of an international conference organized by the University of Iceland and the Nordic Society for Metrical Studies and held at Reykholt, Iceland, the thirteenth-century home of Snorri Sturluson. Although medieval Icelandic poetic culture was highlighted at the conference, the range of subjects remained diverse and discussion became dynamic. Similarly, this volume brings together the work of a broad range of scholars who embark on a discourse across disciplines, addressing aspects of poetry and poetics within the Germanic language family in particular. The subjects range from runic metrical inscriptions to literature and poetics of the modern day, the medieval period becoming a nexus of attention through which the various subjects in this historical scope are interwoven and united. Approaches range from theoretical linguistics and generative metrics to cognitive theory and folk-loristics. The discourse initiated at the conference has both continued and expanded during this volume's evolution, and it has significantly enriched the development of the individual chapters, which variously treat meters, their relationships to language, and poetics in application. These diverse subjects and approaches form remarkable constellations of complementary relationships and continue to engage in a discourse to the immense benefit of the reader.
In the last three decades, metadiscourse has caught the attention of numerous scholars from various research disciplines. This book adds to the discussion by looking at the phenomenon from a historical angle. Text analyses with a corpus of sermons and religious treatises from the 13th to the 18th century provide new insights into the way authors guide their audience through their texts and persuade them of their points of view. The focus on the Middle and Early Modern English periods, which witnessed the disintegration of the Catholic Church in England, the Reformation, the decline of Scholasticism and the advent of Renaissance Humanism, makes evident the influence of socio-cultural factors, text-type conventions, and a changing author-addressee relationship on the development of metadiscourse.
Through a critical analysis of ancient African texts that predate Greco-Roman treatises Cecil Blake revisits the roots of rhetorical theory and challenges what is often advanced as the "darkness metaphor" -- the rhetorical construction of Africa and Africans. Blake offers a thorough examination of Ptah-hotep and core African ethical principles (Maat) and engages rhetorical scholarship within the wider discourse of African development. In so doing, he establishes a direct relationship between rhetoric and development studies in non-western societies and highlights the prospect for applying such principles to ameliorating the development malaise of the continent.
La Romanistica, una disciplina sometida a un constante proceso de autorreflexion, manifiesta la vitalidad y la variedad de su investigacion linguistica a traves de los trabajos recogidos en este homenaje a Carmen Pensado. Un grupo de sus colegas y amigos repartidos por Europa y America le ofrecen el testimonio de su amistad y admiracion con ocasion de su jubilacion. En los articulos se tratan problemas que ilustran la amplitud tematica de la Romanistica y que coinciden en buena medida con los puntos centrales de la investigacion llevada a cabo por Carmen Pensado acerca de los motivos y el funcionamiento del cambio fonetico y los procesos de gramaticalizacion. La amplitud de los contactos intelectuales de la homenajeada se refleja en la presencia de trabajos de fonetica experimental, historia del lexico iberorromance, teoria de la morfologia, formacion de palabras de varias lenguas romances, teoria sintactica y cambio sintactico. Junto a articulos que discuten problemas del rumano, italiano, frances o gallego, predominan los dedicados al espanol o a las lenguas romanicas en su conjunto.
"The Handbook of Speech Perception" is a collection of
forward-looking articles that offer a summary of the technical and
theoretical accomplishments in this vital area of research on
language.
An important new volume based on the results of research in language typology, and motivated by the need for a theory to explain them. Professor Croft puts forward a new approach to syntactic representation and a new model of how language and languages work. He covers a wide range of syntactic phenomena, illustrating these with examples that show the varied grammatical structures of the world's languages.
Why is political rhetoric broken - and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire returns to the origins of rhetoric to recover the central place of eloquence in political thought. Eloquence, for the orators of classical antiquity, emerged from rhetorical relationships that exposed both speaker and audience to risk. Through close readings of Cicero - and his predecessors, rivals, and successors - political theorist and former speechwriter Rob Goodman tracks the development of this ideal, in which speech is both spontaneous and stylized, and in which the pursuit of eloquence mitigates political inequalities. He goes on to trace the fierce disputes over Ciceronian speech in the modern world through the work of such figures as Burke, Macaulay, Tocqueville, and Schmitt, explaining how rhetorical risk-sharing has broken down. Words on Fire offers a powerful critique of today's political language - and shows how the struggle over the meaning of eloquence has shaped our world.
Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. The first comprehensive study of early Celtic cursing, this work analyses both medieval and ancient expressions of Celtic imprecation: from the binding tablets of ancient Britain and Gaul to the saintly maledictions of the early medieval period, and other traces of Celtic stipulation and binding only speculated on in earlier scholarship. It provides the first full overview and analyses of the ancient Celtic use of binding curses (as attested in Old Celticand Latin inscriptions) and examines their mooted influence in later medieval expressions. Ancient finds (among them long Gaulish curse texts, Celtic Latin Curse tablets found from the Alpine regions to Britain, and fragments of Old Brittonic tablets excavated from Roman Bath) are subjected to rigorous new interpretations, and medieval reflections of the earlier tradition are also considered. BERNARD MEES gained his PhD from the University of Melbourne.
How do people with brain damage communicate? How does the partial or total loss of the ability to speak and use language fluently manifest itself in actual conversation? How are people with brain damage able to expand their cognitive ability through interaction with others - and how do these discursive activities in turn influence cognition? This groundbreaking collection of new articles by a wide range of international scholars examines how aphasia and other neurological deficits lead to language impairments that shape the production, reception and processing of language.
Questo volume, frutto di un lavoro di dottorato che si colloca a metà strada tra la sociolinguistica e la dialettologia, prende in esame delle varietà , quelle presenti in Costiera Amalfitana, che non sono mai state oggetto di specifici studi dialettologici. Ne risulta un quadro estremamente dinamico ed interessante dal punto di vista linguistico. Lo studio è stato condotto tentando di mettere in evidenza le peculiarità della varietà amalfitana e di rintracciare le ragioni di uno sviluppo autonomo di tale varietà , nella particolare storia di Amalfi medioevale. É stato inoltre dato particolare risalto alle dinamiche linguistiche derivanti da un fenomeno più recente, quello del contatto tra la varietà amalfitana e le varietà che giungono dall'esterno, soprattutto la napoletana.
An exhaustive cross-referencing tool for interpreting Scripture with Scripture. The Bible is its own best commentary. To truly understand what the Bible teaches about a subject, we must consult all of what the Bible itself says about it. The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge allows you to do just that, providing a selection of other verses which shed light upon, clarify, or explain the verse you are consulting. Unlike a concordance, which is an alphabetical index to the words of the Bible, the cross-references given in the New Treasury are not merely to the same word, but to the same or a related thought, theme, doctrine, subject, concept, or literary motif, even when expressed in entirely different words. Special Features: Indicates degree of clarity, significance, or relationship between references Can be used with any translation or edition of the Bible Is arranged like the Bible (divided into the same books, chapters, and verses) for ease of use Provides a far more complete selection of cross-references than can be found in any other source Contains dozens of special study aids to help you develop powerful lessons or sermons--straight from the Bible itself Contains multiple indexes (subjects, figures of speech, etc.) Uses Strong's numbering system Uses a new font that makes it easier to read than previous versions No combination of other Bible study tools quite duplicates the carefully-research and indexed content in The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. When used effectively, this invaluable resource will change your life.
The development from a synthetic to an analytic language is one of the most important topics in English historical syntax. This development is reflected in the gradual decrease of case-forms and the replacement of their functions with equivalent prepositional constructions. Focussing on the Old English period, when case-forms and prepositional constructions overlapped in various functions, this book aims to answer an unresolved question: was there a significant change in the use of case-forms and, alternatively, in the use of prepositions plus case-forms in contexts where both types were possible? The author makes a statistical comparison between prose texts written in the early Old English period and texts of the later Old English period; she also takes into account stylistic features of individual texts. Thus, this book addresses this Old English syntactic issue both from a historical and a stylistic perspective and shows the stages of development during the Old English period.
This is the third volume in the Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science Series. It is based on a conference that was held in 1990, which was sponsored by the Cognitive Science Program and Linguistics Department of Simon Fraser University. Over the last decade, there has emerged a paradigm of cognitive modeling that has been hailed by many researchers as a radically new and promising approach to cognitive science. This new paradigm has come to be known by a number of names, including "connectionism", "neural networks", and "parallel distributed processing", (or PDP). This method of computation attempts to model the neural processes that are thought to underlie cognitive functions in human beings. Unlike the digital computation methods used by AI researchers, connectionist models claim to approximate the kind of spontaneous, creative and somewhat unpredicatable behavior of human agents. However, over the last few years, a heated controversy has arisen over the extent to which connectionist models are able to provide successful explanations for higher cognitive processes. A central theme of this book reviews the adequacy of recent attempts to implement higher cognitive processes in connectionist networks.
This completely revised and updated second edition provides a comprehensive introduction to using play to communicate with troubled or traumatized children and their families, and to heal emotional damage. The book gives examples of good practice in different settings and situations. Drawing on psychodynamic, systemic and attachment theory, the book provides an integrated theory base for using play in therapeutic work with children. It emphasizes non-directive approaches to therapeutic play and play therapy, based on supporting the child s developing self within the safe boundaries provided by the setting and the worker s emotional holding and containment. Areas explored include:
The Handbook of Play Therapy and Therapeutic Play is an invaluable resource for all of those using play therapy with children and will appeal not only to play therapists but also to professionals working in the broader field of therapeutic play. It will be useful whether the readers are at the beginning of their training or are well-established and experienced practitioners and managers.
This volume covers state-of-the-art research in the field of crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language. The forty chapters cover a wide range of topics that represent the many research interests of a pioneer, Dan Isaac Slobin, who has been a major intellectual and creative force in the field of child language development, linguistics, and psycholinguistics for the past four decades. Slobin has insisted on a rigorous, crosslinguistic approach in his attempt to identify universal developmental patterns in language learning, to explore the effects of particular types of languages on psycholinguistic processes, to determine the extent to which universals of language and language behavior are determined by modality (vocal/auditory vs. manual/visual) and, finally, to investigate the relation between linguistic and cognitive processes. In this volume, researchers take up the challenge of the differences between languages to forward research in four major areas with which Slobin has been concerned throughout his career: language learning in crosslinguistic perspective (spoken and sign languages); the integration of language specific factors in narrative skill; theoretical issues in typology, language development and language change; and the relationship between language and cognition. All chapters are written by leading researchers currently working in these fields, who are Slobin's colleagues, collaborators or former students in linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and cognitive science. Each section starts with an introductory chapter that connects the themes of the chapters and reviews Slobin's contribution in the context of past research trends and future directions. The whole volume focuses squarely on the central argument: universals of human language and of its development are embodied and revealed in its diverse manifestations and utilization. Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Study of Language is a key resource for those interested in the range of differences between languages and how this impacts on learning, cognition and language change, and a tribute to Dan Slobin's momentous contribution to the field.
Historical Research on Spoken Language: Corpus Perspectives uses historical sources to discuss continuity and change in spoken language. Based on two corpora compiled using data from sociological and anthropological studies of Victorian London and 1930s Bolton, the author shows how historical spoken corpora can illuminate the nature of spoken language as well as the attitudes, values and behaviour of the specific community represented in a corpus. This book: demonstrates how spoken language can be examined using material collected before the advent of sophisticated recording equipment and large-scale computerised corpora; shows how other written sources such as diaries, letters and existing historical corpora can be used to analyse informal language use as far back as the fifteenth century; provides insight into the longevity and resilience of many spoken language features which are often regarded as vernacular or non-standard; comes with a companion website which gives full access to the Bolton Worktown Corpus. Historical Research on Spoken Language is key reading for researchers and students working in relevant areas.
This book examines the language studies of Western missionaries in China and beyond. The goal of this study is to examine the purpose, methods, context, and influence of missionary language studies. The book reveals new insights into the hitherto less well-known and unstudied origins of language thinking. These publically unknown sources virtually form our «hidden history of language. Some key 17th century and pre-17th century descriptions of language not only pass on our Greco-Latin «grammatical heritage internationally for about two millennia. They also reveal grammar, speaking, and language as an esoteric knowledge. Our modern life has been formed and influenced through both esoteric and common connotations in language. It is precisely the techniques, allusions, and intentions of language making revealed in rare, coded texts which have influenced our modern identities. These extraordinary and highly controversial interpretations of both language and Christianity reveal that our modern identities have been largely shaped in the absence of public knowledge and discussion.
The aim of this volume is to present a state-of-the-art view on corpus studies. This collection of papers, presented at the XII Susanne Hubner Seminar in November 2003 at the University of Zaragoza, comprises both quantitative and qualitative analyses and studies on both written and oral corpora. Structured in seven sections, the book covers a wide range of approaches and methodologies and reflects current linguistic research. The papers have been written by scholars from a large number of universities, mainly from Europe, but also from the USA and Asia. The volume offers contributions on diachronic studies, pragmatic analyses and cognitive linguistics, as well as on translation and English for Specific Purposes. The book includes several papers on corpus design and reports on research on oral corpora. At a more specific level, the papers analyse aspects such as politeness issues, dialectology, comparable corpora, discourse markers, the expression of evidentiality and writer stance, metaphor and metonymy, conditional sentences, evaluative adjectives, delexicalised verbs and nominalization. |
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