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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics > General
This volume offers several empirical, methodological, and theoretical approaches to the study of observable variation within individuals on various linguistic levels. With a focus on German varieties, the chapters provide answers on the following questions (inter alia): Which linguistic and extra-linguistic factors explain intra-individual variation? Is there observable intra-individual variation that cannot be explained by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors? Can group-level results be generalised to individual language usage and vice versa? Is intra-individual variation indicative of actual patterns of language change? How can intra-individual variation be examined in historical data? Consequently, the various theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches in this volume offer a better understanding of the meaning of intra-individual variation for patterns of language development, language variation and change. The inter- and transdisciplinary nature of the volume is an exciting new frontier, and the results of the studies in this book provide a wealth of new findings as well as challenges to some of the existing findings and assumptions regarding the nature of intra-individual variation.
A volume in Advances in Cultural PsychologySeries Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Clark University"This is a remarkable and highly original work on dialogism, dialogical theories and dialogue. With his erudite and broadly based scholarship PerLinell makes a path-breaking contribution to the study of the human mind, presenting a novel alternative to traditional monologism and exploring thedynamics of sense-making in different forms of interaction and communicative projects. Although Per Linell discusses complex dialogical concepts, the text is written with exceptional clarity, taking the reader through critique as well as appreciation of great intellectual traditions of our time."(Professor Ivana Markov, University of Stirling, U.K.)"Per Linells Rethinking Language, Mind And World Dialogically represents a landmark in the development ofa transdisciplinary dialogically basedparadigm for the human sciences. The author?'s lucid analysis and constructive rethinking ranges all the way from integrating explanations ofsignificant empirical contributions across the entire range of human sciences dealing with language, thought and communication to foundational, epistemological and ontological issues."(Professor Ragnar Rommetveit, University of Oslo, Norway)Per Linell took his degree in linguistics and is currently professor of language and culture, with a specialisation on communication and spokeninteraction, at the University of Link ping, Sweden. He has been instrumental in building up an internationally renowned interdisciplinary graduateschool in communication studies in Link ping. He has worked for many years on developing a dialogical alternative to mainstream theories inlinguistics, psychology and social sciences. His production comprises more than 100 articles on dialogue, talk-in-interaction and institutionaldiscourse. His more recent books include Approaching Dialogue (1998), The Written Language Bias in Linguistics (2005) and Dialogue in FocusGroups (2007, with I. Markov, M. Grossen and A. Salazar Orvig).
This book sets out a new reconstruction for the Semitic case system. It is based on a detailed analysis of the expression of grammatical roles and relations in the attested Semitic languages and, for the first time, brings typological methods to bear in the study of these features in Semitic languages and their reconstruction for proto-Semitic. Professor Hasselbach supports her argument with detailed analyses of a wide range of data and presents it in a way that will be accessible to both Semitists and typologists. The volume is divided into seven chapters: the first discusses basic methodologies used in Semitic linguistics and the limitations thereof. The second presents the evidence for morphological case-marking in the individual Semitic languages, the conventional reconstruction of Proto-Semitic, and the evidence which conflicts with it. The third introduces typological concepts and methods and their deployment in Semitic. Chapter 4 considers the case alignment of early Semitic. Chapter 5 presents a detailed study of marking structures and patterns and considers what these reveal about the nature of the original case system. Chapter 6 looks at the functions of case markers, considers the light they cast on the nominal system, and shows that the reconstruction of early Semitic as ergative is implausible. In the final chapter the author argues that early Semitic had a different nominal system from that of the later Semitic languages. She shows that the course of its development has parallels in other Afroasiatic languages, including Berber and Cushitic. Her book sheds important new light on the history of the Semitic languages and on the early development of the Afro-Asiatic language family as a whole.
Drawing on usage-based theory, neurocognition, and complex systems, Languaging Beyond Languages elaborates an elegant model accommodating accumulated insights into human language even as it frees linguistics from its two-thousand-year-old, ideological attachment to reified grammatical systems. Idiolects are redefined as continually emergent collections of context specific, probabilistic memories entrenched as a result of domain-general cognitive processes that create and consolidate linguistic experience. Also continually emergent, conventionalization and vernacularization operate across individuals producing the illusion of shared grammatical systems. Conventionalization results from the emergence of parallel expectations for the use of linguistic elements organized into syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships. In parallel, vernacularization indexes linguistic forms to sociocultural identities and stances. Evidence implying entrenchment and conventionalization is provided in asymmetrical frequency distributions.
In The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900) Christopher Joby offers the first book-length account of the knowledge and use of the Dutch language in Tokugawa and Meiji Japan. For most of this period, the Dutch were the only Europeans permitted to trade with Japan. Using the analytical tool of language process, this book explores the nature and consequences of contact between Dutch and Japanese and other language varieties. The processes analysed include language learning, contact and competition, code switching, translation, lexical, syntactic and graphic interference, and language shift. The picture that emerges is that the multifarious uses of Dutch, especially the translation of Dutch books, would have a profound effect on the language, society, culture and intellectual life of Japan.
This volume gathers nine contributions dealing with Aorists and Perfects. Drinka challenges the notion of Aoristic Drift in Romance languages. Walker considers two emergent uses of the Perfect in British English. Jara seeks to determine the constraints on tense choice within narrative discourse in Peruvian Spanish. Henderson argues for a theory based on Langacker's 'sequential scanning' in Chilean and Uruguayan Spanish. Delmas looks at 'Ua in Tahitian, a polysemic particle with a range of aspectual and modal meanings. Bourdin addresses the expression of anteriority with just in English. Yerastov examines the distribution of the transitive be Perfect in Canadian English. Fryd offers a panchronic study of have-less perfect constructions in English. Eide investigates counterfactual present perfects in Mainland Scandinavian dialects.
This dictionary provides a full and authoritative guide to the
meanings of the terms, concepts, and theories employed in
pragmatics, the study of language in use.
According to UNESCO, it is believed that at least half of the nearly 7,000 languages spoken around the world will cease to be used within the next 100 years. If this issue is neglected, people will lose not only their cultural heritage but also invaluable understandings about the history of all humankind. Endangered Languages of the Caucasus and Beyond includes the manuscripts of 19 papers that were presented at the 1st International CUA Conference on Endangered Languages, organized by the Caucasus University Association (CUA), at Ardahan, Turkey, on 13 to 16 October 2014. The articles address issues such as the state of the field of documentation, conservation and revitalization of endangered languages with special reference to the endangered languages in the Caucasus region and beyond.
Knowledge can be expressed in language using a plethora of grammatical means. Four major groups of meanings related to knowledge are Evidentiality: grammatical expression of information source; Egophoricity: grammatical expression of access to knowledge; Mirativity: grammatical expression of expectation of knowledge; and Epistemic modality: grammatical expression of attitude to knowledge. The four groups of categories interact. Some develop overtones of the others. Evidentials stand apart from other means in many ways, including their correlations with speech genres and social environment. This essay presents a framework which connects the expression of knowledge across the world's languages in a coherent way, showing their dependencies and complexities, and pathways of historical development in various scenarios, including language obsolescence.
As its title suggests, this book is a selection of papers that use English corpora to study language variation along three dimensions - time, place and genre. In broad terms, the book aims to bridge the gap between corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics and to increase our knowledge of the characteristics of English language. It includes eleven papers which address a variety of research questions but with the commonality of a corpus-based methodology. Some of the contributions deal with language variation in time, either by looking into historical corpora of English or by adopting the method known as diachronic comparable corpus linguistics, thus illustrating how corpora can be used to illuminate either historical or recent developments of English. Other studies investigate variation in space by comparing different varieties of English, including some of the "New Englishes" such as the South Asian varieties of English. Finally, some of the papers deal with variation in genre, by looking into the use of language for specific purposes through the inspection of medical articles, social reports and academic writing.
"Letter writing is a pivotal yet neglected medium of historical Chinese communication. The epistolary format is key to sinological research. As historical letters have a specific vocabulary and rhetorical structure it is difficult to read them without the supporting apparatus of specialised study. The aim of this compendium is to fill the gap in Chinese studies by providing a bilingual Chinese-English edition of a corpus of Chinese letters, prepared for advanced students of Classical Chinese as well as academics with an interest in historical Chinese epistolary art. The book has a broad and general introduction, systematically constructed vocabulary sections as well as detailed grammatical and philological explanations. It focuses on Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) letter writing, a high point of pre-1911 epistolary activity in Chinese, and will appeal to Chinese scholars and Sinologists at a broad range of academic levels."
Language, Cognition, and Human Nature collects together for the first time Steven Pinker's most influential scholarly work on language and cognition. Pinker is a highly eminent cognitive scientist, and his research emphasizes the importance of language and its connections to cognition, social relationships, child development, human evolution, and theories of human nature. The thirteen essays in this eclectic collection span Pinker's thirty-year career, ranging over topics such as language acquisitions, visual cognition, the meaning and syntax of verbs, regular and irregular phenomena in language and their implications for the mechanisms of cognition, and the social psychology of direct and indirect speech. Each outlines a major theory - such as evolution, or nature vs. nurture - or takes up an argument with other prominent scholars such as Stephen Jay Gould, Noam Chomsky, or Richard Dawkins. Featuring a new introduction by Pinker that discusses his books and scholarly work, this book represents a major contribution to the field of cognitive science, by one of the field's leading thinkers.
Despite its centrality in mainstream linguistics, cognitive semantics has only recently begun to establish a foothold in biblical studies, largely due to the challenges inherent in applying such a methodology to ancient languages. The Semantics of Glory addresses these challenges by offering a new, practical model for a cognitive semantic approach to Classical Hebrew, demonstrated through an exploration of the Hebrew semantic domain of glory. The concept of 'glory' is one of the most significant themes in the Hebrew Bible, lying at the heart of God's self-disclosure in biblical revelation. This study provides the most comprehensive examination of the domain to date, mapping out its intricacies and providing a framework for its exegesis.
This is the most comprehensive history of the Greek prepositional system ever published. It is set within a broad typological context and examines interrelated syntactic, morphological, and semantic change over three millennia. By including, for the first time, Medieval and Modern Greek, Dr Bortone is able to show how the changes in meaning of Greek prepositions follow a clear and recurring pattern of immense theoretical interest. The author opens the book by discussing the relevant background issues concerning the function, meaning, and genesis of adpositions and cases. He then traces the development of prepositions and case markers in ancient Greek (Homeric and classical, with insights from Linear B and reconstructed Indo-European); Hellenistic Greek, which he examines mainly on the basis of Biblical Greek; Medieval Greek, the least studied but most revealing phase; and Modern Greek, in which he also considers the influence of the learned tradition and neighbouring languages. Written in an accessible and non-specialist style, this book will interest classical philologists, as well as historical linguists and theoretical linguists.
Throughout our Cherokee history,"" writes Joyce Dugan, former principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, ""our ancient stories have been the essence of who we are."" These traditional stories embody the Cherokee concepts of Gadugi, working together for the good of all, and Duyvkta, walking the right path, and teach listeners how to understand and live in the world with reverence for all living things. In Eastern Cherokee Stories, Sandra Muse Isaacs uses the concepts of Gadugi and Duyvkta to explore the Eastern Cherokee oral tradition, and to explain how storytelling in this tradition - as both an ancient and a contemporary literary form - is instrumental in the perpetuation of Cherokee identity and culture. Muse Isaacs worked among the Eastern Cherokees of North Carolina, recording stories and documenting storytelling practices and examining the Eastern Cherokee oral tradition as both an ancient and contemporary literary form. For the descendants of those Cherokees who evaded forced removal by the U.S. government in the 1830s, storytelling has been a vital tool of survival and resistance - and as Muse Isaacs shows us, this remains true today, as storytelling plays a powerful role in motivating and educating tribal members and others about contemporary issues such as land reclamation, cultural regeneration, and language revitalization. The stories collected and analyzed in this volume range from tales of creation and origins that tell about the natural world around the homeland, to post-Removal stories that often employ Native humor to present the Cherokee side of history to Cherokee and non-Cherokee alike. The persistence of this living oral tradition as a means to promote nationhood and tribal sovereignty, to revitalize culture and language, and to present the Indigenous view of history and the land bears testimony to the tenacity and resilience of the Cherokee people, the Ani-Giduwah.
Spreading Change: Diffusional Change in the English System of Complementation examines the emergence and spread of three types of complements from the Middle English period to the present day. The three types of complements are subject-controlled gerund complements (1), for...to-infinitives (2), and subject-controlled participial compelements (3). (1) The cat loves being stroked, absolutely loves it! (2) We couldn't afford for it to go wrong. (3) The receptionist is busy filling a fifth box. In the first half of the book De Smet addresses the theoretical issues by summarizing a number of major approaches to the study of complementation, and by focusing on how and why a particular change spreads (a process that he calls "diffusion"). In the second half, which is descriptive and largely corpus-based, De Smet tests these mechanisms on the three complement types. His work demonstrates: a) how diffusion interacts with the grammatical system of complementation; b) how diffusion proceeds, step-by-step; and c) why diffusion is directional.
The papers in this volume study the relationship between language use and the concept of the "tourist gaze" through a range of communicative practices from different cultures and languages. From a pragmatic perspective, the authors investigate how language constantly adapts to contextual constraints which affect tourism discourse as a strategic meaning-making process that turns insignificant places into desirable tourist destinations. The case studies draw on both, in situ interactions with visitors, such as guided tours and counter information, old and new mediatized genres, i.e. guide books, travelogues, print advertising as well as TV-commercials, service web-sites and apps. Despite the diversity of data, one of the common findings in the volume is that staging the sensory 'lived' tourist experience is the lynchpin of all communicative practices. Hence, the use of tourism language reveals itself as the mirror of how 'people on the move' continuously enact as 'tourists' and 'places' are constructed as must-see 'sights'.
In Srinagar Burushaski: A Descriptive and Comparative Account with Analyzed Texts Sadaf Munshi offers the structural description of a lesser-known regional variety of Burushaski spoken in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian-administered state of Jammu & Kashmir. The description includes a comprehensive and comparative account of the structural features of Srinagar Burushaski in terms of phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax. The grammar is supported by an extensive digital corpus housed at the University of North Texas Digital Library. Using contemporary spoken language samples from Srinagar, Nagar, Hunza and Yasin varieties of Burushaski as well as data from the available literature, Munshi provides a thorough understanding of the historical development of Srinagar Burushaski, complementing the existing studies on Burushaski dialectology. |
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