Ezekiel's Visionary Temple in Babylonian Context examines evidence from Babylonian sources to better understand Ezekiel's vision of the future temple as it appears in chapters 40-48. Tova Ganzel argues that Neo-Babylonian temples provide a meaningful backdrop against which many unique features of Ezekiel's vision can and should be interpreted. In pointing to the similarities between Neo-Babylonian temples and the description in the book of Ezekiel, Ganzel demonstrates how these temples served as a context for the prophet's visions and describes the extent to which these similarities provide a further basis for broader research of the connections between Babylonia and the Bible. Ultimately, she argues the extent to which the book of Ezekiel models its temple on those of the Babylonians. Thus, this book suggests a comprehensive picture of the book of Ezekiel's worldview and to contextualize its visionary temple by comparing its vision to the actual temples surrounding the Judeans in exile.

The first half of the book of Daniel contains world-famous stories like the Writing on the Wall. These stories have mostly been transmitted in Aramaic, not Hebrew, as has the influential apocalypse of Daniel 7. This Aramaic corpus shows clear signs of multiple authorship. Which different textual layers can we tease apart, and what do they tell us about the changing function of the Danielic material during the Second Temple Period? This monograph compares the Masoretic Text of Daniel to ancient manuscripts and translations preserving textual variants. By highlighting tensions in the reconstructed archetype underlying all these texts, it then probes the tales' prehistory even further, showing how Daniel underwent many transformations to yield the book we know today.

Ten Lectures on Cognitive Linguistics as an Empirical Science details the relationship between form and meaning in language, especially at the systematic level of morphology. The role of metaphor and metonymy in elaborating meaning are investigated, as well as the structuring of semantics in terms of prototypes and radial categories. Implications for cultural studies and pedagogical applications are explored. The bulk of examples and data are drawn from the Slavic languages.

The Cairo Genizah has preserved a vast number of medieval and post-medieval letters written in the Jewish variety of Arabic. The linguistic peculiarities of these letters provide an invaluable source for the understanding of the history of the Arabic language and the development of Arabic dialects. This work compares and contrasts various linguistic features of Judaeo-Arabic letters from different periods, and is one of the first studies to present a comprehensive linguistic investigation into non-literary Judaeo-Arabic. Its main focus is to provide an extensive diachronic linguistic description, while distinguishing between features of epistolary Arabic and vernacular phenomena. This study should be of interest to anyone working on the Arabic language, sociolinguistics, general historical linguistics and language typology. "...in the extant volume she [Wagner] has clearly demonstrated that Judeo-Arabic letters are to be viewed as primary source material, capturing important aspects of language understanding of Jews and Judaism in the medieval and early modern Islamic world, and therefore providing essential insights into the linguistic function of a substandard language or ethnolect like Judeo-Arabic." Wout van Bekkum, BiOr no. LXX 3/4

From the eighth to the tenth century A.D., Greek scientific and philosophical works were translated wholesale into Arabic. A Greek and Arabic Lexicon is the first systematic attempt to present in an analytical, rationalized way our knowledge of the vocabulary of these translations. It is an indispensable reference tool for the study and understanding of Arabic scientific and philosophical language and literature, and for the knowledge of the vocabulary of Classical and Middle Greek and the reception and reading of classical Greek works in late antiquity and pre-Photian Byzantine literature.

"Garr's classic study on dialect geography of the Levant was the first book-length attempt to follow in the steps of Zellig Harris, The Development of the Canaanite Dialects in 45 years. This Eisenbrauns' reprint makes the book (out of print for several years) available once again to students of the Canaanite languages. The book opens with an introduction that gives the methodology used, a survey of past studies, the corpus of texts used in the study, and Garr's goals. The next three chapters provide a comprehensive list of phonological, morphological, and syntactical features, which are then gathered into a comprehensive table and analyzed for their relevance to dialectical classification. Conclusions and a rich bibliography follow, as well as indexes of subject, texts cited, and words. "

Cognitive Approaches to Early Modern Spanish Literature is the first anthology exploring human cognition and literature in the context of early modern Spanish culture. It includes the leading voices in the field, along with the main themes and directions that this important area of study has been producing. The book begins with an overview of the cognitive literary studies research that has been taking place within early modern Spanish studies over the last fifteen years. Next, it traces the creation of self in the context of the novel, focusing on Cervantes's Don Quixote in relation to the notions of embodiment and autopoiesis as well as the faculties of memory and imagination as understood in early modernity. It continues to explore the concept of embodiment, showing its relevance to delve into the mechanics of the interaction between actors and audience both in the jongleuresque and the comedia traditions. It then centers on cognitive theories of perception, the psychology of immersion in fictional worlds, and early modern and modern-day notions of intentionality to discuss the role of perceiving and understanding others in performance, Don Quixote, and courtly conduct manuals. The last section focuses on the affective dimension of audience-performer interactions in the theatrical space of the Spanish corrales and how emotion and empathy can inform new approaches to presenting Las Casas's work in the literature classroom. The volume closes with an afterword offering strategies to design a course on mind and literature in early modernity.

"Paul Celan: Studies in His Early Poetry" scrutinizes the influences detectable in the poems written during 1938-48. Among German writers, Buchner, Goethe, Gottfried von Strassburg, Gryphius, Morike, the poet of the "Nibelungenlied," Novalis, Rilke, and Trakl all provided motifs that, often repeated, make for a dense network inviting attention to the self-referential and self-revealing patterns in Celan's early work. In addition, there are many poems that contain motifs gleaned from Greek mythology and/or biblical data. These references, on occasion quite clear, more often so obscure as to be hazy allusions, yield the view that during his first decade of poetic activities Celan becomes increasingly recondite. When these references or allusions stand side-by-side in a given poem, they acquire a surrealistic tint and threaten to withhold clear meaning. Ambiguities, deliberately cultivated in the earliest poems, begin to boomerang and read like so many preludes to the struggles with language evident in the poetry of Celan's maturity. It is a certainty that Celan reacted quickly, if not immediately, to the events befalling the scenes of his early years (Czernowitz and the forced-labor camp). This phenomenon mandates the view of his poems as so many pieces of autobiography. It thus is inevitable that as early as 1940 he wrote against the backdrop of war, and soon thereafter in the shadow of the Holocaust that was destined to brand his mind forever. This volume is meant for anyone interested in Celan, close reading of modern poetry in general, comparative literature, motif studies, poetic reactions to Holocaust events, or even in a Jew's concept regarding the role of the deity in the destruction of those for whom the poet speaks.

The ability to compare is fundamental to human cognition. Expressing various types of comparison is thus essential to any language. The present volume presents detailed grammatical descriptions of how comparison and gradation are expressed in ancient Indo-European languages. The detailed chapters devoted to the individual languages go far beyond standard handbook knowledge. Each chapter is structured the same way to facilitate cross-reference and (typological) comparison. The data are presented in a top-down fashion and in a format easily accessible to the linguistic community. The topics covered are similatives, equatives, comparatives, superlatives, elatives, and excessives. Each type of comparison is illustrated with glossed examples of all its attested grammatical realizations. The book is an indispensable tool for typologists, historical linguists, and students of the syntax and morphosyntax of comparison.

This volume examines relationships between native languages and Yiddish. It highlights the historical and sociolinguistic development of Turkic, Iranian, South Asian, Slavic, Greek, Balkan, Judezmo, Armenian, Georgian, and Basque languages. One of the main focuses is on the adopted post-medieval and pre-modern Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi homelands of Eastern Europe. The book emphasizes the role of ludic or playful modifications of a language's structures at the colloquial level as sources of linguistic change. And, it goes further to say that expressive language, linguistic iconicity, and etymological analysis can all complement and enrich each other.

This book examines the historical development of discourse and pragmatic markers across the Romance languages. These markers serve to indicate the organization of the discourse, the speaker's relationship with the interlocutor, and the speaker's stance with regard to the information expressed. Their relevance is in assisting interpretation, despite the fact that they have little or no propositional content. In this book, distinguished scholars from different theoretical backgrounds analyse the different classes of discourse and pragmatic markers found in Latin and the Romance languages and explore both their diachronic development and their synchronic properties. Following an introduction and overview of the development of these markers, the book is divided into two parts: the first part investigates pragmatic markers developed from verbs, such as Latin quaeso, Romanian ma rog, and Spanish o sea; the second looks at adverbs as discourse markers, such as French deja and Italian gia, Romanian atunci and Portuguese alias. Chapters address a variety of theoretical issues such as the cyclic nature of functional developments, the nature of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization, semantic change, and the emergence of new pragmatic values. The arguments presented also have consequences for any analysis of the interfaces between grammar, discourse, and interaction.

Written by an international team of leading scholars, this groundbreaking reference work explores the nature of language change and diffusion, and paves the way for future research in this rapidly expanding interdisciplinary field. * Features 35 newly-written essays from internationally acclaimed experts that reflect the growth and vitality of the burgeoning area of historical sociolinguistics * Examines how sociolinguistic theoretical models, methods, findings, and expertise can be used to reconstruct a language's past in order to explain linguistic changes and developments * Bridges the gap between the past and the present in linguistic studies * Structured thematically into sections exploring: origins and theoretical assumptions; methods for the sociolinguistic study of the history of languages; linguistic and extra-linguistic variables; historical dialectology, language contact and diffusion; and attitudes to language

Setting forth the state of the art, leading researchers present a survey on the fast-developing field of Connectionist Psycholinguistics: using connectionist or "neural" networks, which are inspired by brain architecture, to model empirical data on human language processing. Connectionist psycholinguistics has already had a substantial impact on the study of a wide range of aspects of language processing, ranging from inflectional morphology, to word recognition, to parsing and language production. Christiansen and Chater begin with an extended tutorial overview of Connectionist Psycholinguistics which is followed by the latest research by leading figures in each area of research. The book also focuses on the implications and prospects for connectionist models of language, not just for psycholinguistics, but also for computational and linguistic perspectives on natural language. The interdisciplinary approach will be relevant for, and accessible to psychologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, philosophers, and researchers in artificial intelligence.

The aim of this volume is to integrate the current literature about the psychological dimensions of bilingualism: that is, to analyze psychological, subjective, and internal perspectives on bilingualism. What is the internal world of bilinguals like? How do they perceive the world and how do they think? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being bilingual? How does bilingualism interact with personality? In what way does being bilingual impact the aging mind? Renowned and emerging scholars alike explore these questions in the collected chapters. The organization of the book features four main component parts: (1) the inner cognitive world of the bilingual mind (2) bilingual language representation, and (3) bilingualism across the lifespan, and 4) bilingual cognitive and personality dimensions. Taken collectively, the included chapters provide a multidimensional and up-to-date perspective on bilingual studies, specifically concentrating on the cognitive and emotional dimensions of the individual. Chapter topics include: Conceptual Metaphor Theory Bilingual Figurative Language Processing Aging in Bilinguals Psychopathology in Bilinguals Personality Traits in Bilinguals Addressing the growing demand for bilingual research, this collection provides a timely and much needed perspective on the bilingual as an individual, exploring his/her internal world and a range of phenomena, including emotional word processing, personality traits, language effects on the mind, and cognitive effects of bilingualism. As such, it will appeal to a wide range of readers across various intellectual and professional arenas, including cognitive psychologists, personality psychologists, psycholinguists, educational psychologists and second language teachers, among others.

A Linguistic History of Arabic presents a reconstruction of proto-Arabic by the methods of historical-comparative linguistics. It challenges the traditional conceptualization of an old, Classical language evolving into the contemporary Neo-Arabic dialects. Professor Owens combines established comparative linguistic methodology with a careful reading of the classical Arabic sources, such as the grammatical and exegetical traditions. He arrives at a richer and more complex picture of early Arabic language history than is current today and in doing so establishes the basis for a comprehensive, linguistically-based understanding of the history of Arabic. The arguments are set out in a concise, case by case basis, making it accessible to students and scholars of Arabic and Islamic culture, as well as to those studying Arabic and historical linguists.

As an intriguing but little understood language group within the Tibeto-Burman family, Qiangic languages are widely reported to have evidentiality, the grammatical means of expressing information source. How does this category function in this language group? Does it show any common features across these languages? And does it have any unique properties? Drawing on data from over a dozen languages and dialects, and cast within an informative typological framework, this study is the first attempt to answer these questions. It is found that evidentiality in Qiangic languages can be classified into three broad types. The study further demonstrates that modern systems cannot be inherited from Proto-Qiangic, and it also reveals certain features of the reported evidential that seem to be typologically rare.

Like its two predecessors, Aspects of Old Frisian Philology (1990) and Approaches to Old Frisian Philology (1998), Advances in Old Frisian Philology combines contributions by specialists of medieval Frisian studies with papers by international specialists from adjacent fields who have been invited for the occasion to bring their expertise to the discipline of Old Frisian. Together, the diverse approaches considerably advance our knowledge of and insight into various aspects of Old Frisian philology.

"In a language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, the language contains neither ideas nor sounds that pre-exist the linguistic system, but only conceptual differences and phonic differences issuing from this system." (From the posthumous Course in General Linguistics, 1916.)
No one becomes as famous as Saussure without both admirers and detractors reducing them to a paragraph's worth of ideas that can be readily quoted, debated, memorized, and examined. One can argue the ideas expressed above - that language is composed of a system of acoustic oppositions (the signifier) matched by social convention to a system of conceptual oppositions (the signified) - have in some sense become "Saussure," while the human being, in all his complexity, has disappeared. In the first comprehensive biography of Ferdinand de Saussure, John Joseph restores the full character and history of a man who is considered the founder of modern linguistics and whose ideas have influenced literary theory, philosophy, cultural studies, and virtually every other branch of humanities and the social sciences.
Through a far-reaching account of Saussure's life and the time in which he lived, we learn about the history of Geneva, of Genevese educational institutions, of linguistics, about Saussure's ancestry, about his childhood, his education, the fortunes of his relatives, and his personal life in Paris. John Joseph intersperses all these discussions with accounts of Saussure's research and the courses he taught highlighting the ways in which knowing about his friendships and family history can help us understand not only his thoughts and ideas but also his utter failure to publish any major work after the age of twenty-one.

This book investigates the changes that affected vowel length during the development of Latin into the Romance languages and dialects. In Latin, vowel length was contrastive (e.g. pila 'ball' vs. pila 'pile', like English bit vs. beat), but no modern Romance language has retained that same contrast. However, many non-standard Romance dialects (as well as French, up to the early 20th century) have developed novel vowel length contrasts, which are investigated in detail here. Unlike previous studies of this phenomenon, this book combines detailed historical evidence spanning three millennia (as attested by extant texts) with extensive data from present-day Romance varieties collected from first-hand fieldwork, which are subjected to both phonological and experimental phonetic analysis. Professor Loporcaro puts forward a detailed account of the loss of contrastive vowel length in late Latin, showing that this happened through the establishment of a process which lengthened all stressed vowels in open syllables, as in modern Italian casa ['ka:sa]. His analysis has implications for many of the most widely-debated issues relating to the origin of novel vowel length contrasts in Romance, which are also shown to have been preserved to different degrees in different areas. The detailed investigation of the rise and fall of vowel length in dozens of lesser-known (non-standard) varieties is crucial in understanding the development of this aspect of Romance historical phonology, and will be of interest not only to researchers and students in comparative Romance linguistics, but also, more generally, to phonologists and those interested in historical linguistics beyond the Latin-Romance language family.