Origins of Language: A Slim Guide offers a concise and accessible overview of what is known about the evolution of the human capacity for language. Non-human animals communicate in simple ways: they may be able to form simple concepts, to feel some limited empathy for others, to cooperate to some extent, and to engage in mind-reading. Human language, however, is characterized by its ability to efficiently express a wide range of subtle and complex meanings. After the first simple beginnings, human language underwent an explosion of complexity, leading to the very complicated systems of grammar and pronunciation found in modern languages. Jim Hurford looks at the very varied aspects of this evolution, covering human prehistory; the relation between instinct and learning; biology and culture; trust, altruism, and cooperation; animal thought; human and non-human vocal anatomy; the meanings and forms of the first words; and the growth of complex systems of grammar and pronunciation. Written by an internationally recognized expert in the field, it draws on a number of disciplines besides linguistics, including philosophy, neuroscience, genetics, and animal behaviour, and will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in language origins and evolution.

This volume is the first comprehensive archaeological catalogue of all the extant inscriptions written in the un-deciphered syllabary of Late Bronze Age Cyprus (1500-1200 BC): the so-called Cypro-Minoan script. In conjunction with Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions Volume 1: Analysis, this volume focuses on the physical reality of the inscribed objects containing Cypro-Minoan and the archaeological contexts in which they were found. Offering a detailed, systematic, and rigorous examination of both the objects and their functions in the material record, it proposes a new way of examining the inscriptions. This comprehensive standpoint therefore considers not only the inscriptions themselves, but more importantly the contexts and functions of the inscribed objects, which are significant for the documentary evidence they bear and the part they play as physical entities manufactured, shaped, and used by past peoples for a defined purpose. Organized in a catalogue format, each object is analysed, illustrated, and accompanied by a detailed commentary on the context of recovery and typological characteristics with full bibliographical references. While a standalone reference work, it aims to showcase the inscribed objects discussed in Volume 1: Analysis, fully illustrating them in a series of photographs, including 50 colour plates, and drawings.

This book introduces a new system for describing non-biblical ancient Jewish literature. It arises from a fresh empirical investigation into the literary structures of many anonymous and pseudepigraphic sources, including Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha of the Old Testament, the larger Dead Sea Scrolls, Midrash, and the Talmuds. A comprehensive framework of several hundred literary features, based on modern literary studies and text linguistics, allows describing the variety of important text types which characterize ancient Judaism without recourse to vague and superficial genre terms. The features proposed cover all aspects of the ancient Jewish texts, including the self-presentation, perspective, and knowledge horizon assumed by the text; any poetic constitution, narration, thematic discourse, or commentary format; common small forms and small-scale relationships governing neighbouring parts; compilations; dominant subject matter; and similarities to the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible. By treating works of diverse genres and periods by the same conceptual grid, the new framework breaks down artificial barriers to interdisciplinary research and prepares the ground for new large-scale comparative studies. The book introduces and presents the new framework, explains and illustrates every descriptive category with reference to specific ancient Jewish texts, and provides sample profiles of Jubilees, the Temple Scroll, Mishnah, and Genesis Rabbah. The books publication is accompanied by a public online Database of hundreds of further Profiles (literarydatabase.humanities.manchester.ac.uk). This project was made possible through the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

This monograph offers a novel investigation of the Edwardian picture postcard as an innovative form of multimodal communication, revealing much about the creativity, concerns and lives of those who used postcards as an almost instantaneous form of communication. In the early twentieth century, the picture postcard was a revolutionary way of combining short messages with an image, making use of technologies in a way impossible in the decades since, until the advent of the digital revolution. This book offers original insights into the historical and social context in which the Edwardian picture postcard emerged and became a craze. It also expands the field of Literacy Studies by illustrating the combined use of posthuman, multimodal, historic and linguistic methodologies to conduct an in-depth analysis of the communicative, sociolinguistic and relational functions of the postcard. Particular attention is paid to how study of the picture postcard can reveal details of the lives and literacy practices of often overlooked sectors of the population, such as working-class women. The Edwardian era in the United Kingdom was one of extreme inequalities and rapid social change, and picture postcards embodied the dynamism of the times. Grounded in an analysis of a unique, open access, digitized collection of 3,000 picture postcards, this monograph will be of interest to researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of Literacy Studies, sociolinguistics, history of communications and UK social history.

Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Graeme Trousdale develop an approach to language change based on construction grammar. Construction grammar is a theory of signs construed at the level of the phrase, clause, and complex sentence. Until now it has been mainly synchronic. The authors use it to reconceptualize grammaticalization (the process by which verbs like to have lose semantic content and gain grammatical functions, or word order moves from discourse-prominent to syntax-prominent), and lexicalization (in which idioms become fixed and complex words simplified). Basing their argument on the notions that language is made up of language-specific form-meaning pairings and that there is a gradient between lexical and grammatical constructions, Professor Traugott and Dr Trousdale suggest that language change proceeds by micro-steps that involve closely related changes in syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse functions. They illustrate their exposition with numerous English examples drawn from Anglo-Saxon times to the present, many of which they discuss in depth. The book is organized in six chapters. The first outlines the approach and the questions to be addressed. The second reviews usage-based models of language change. The third considers the relation between grammatical constructionalization and grammaticalization. Chapters 4 and 5 focus respectively on lexical constructionalization and the role of context. The final chapter draws the authors' arguments together and outlines prospects for further research. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes propounds and demonstrates a new and productive approach to historical linguistics.

This book investigates how semivowels were realized in Indo-European and in early Greek. More specifically, it examines the extent to which Indo-European *i and *y were independent phonemes, in what respects their alternation was predictable, and how this situation changed as Indo-European developed into Greek. The comprehensive and chronologically sensitive nature of this study, together with its careful assessment of what is inherited and what is innovative, enables substantive conclusions to be drawn regarding the behaviour of semivowels at various stages in the history of Greek and in Indo-European itself.

Diagnosis is an essential part of scientific research. It refers to the process of identifying a phenomenon, property, or condition on the basis of certain signs and by the use of various diagnostic procedures. This book is the first ever to consider the use of diagnostics in syntactic research and focuses on the five core domains of natural language syntax - ellipsis, agreement, anaphora, phrasal movement, and head movement. Each empirical domain is considered in turn from the perspectives of syntax, syntax at the interfaces, neuropsycholinguistics, and language diversity. Drawing on the expertise of 20 leading scholars and their empirically rich data, the book presents current thoughts on, and practical answers to, the question: What are the diagnostic signs, techniques and procedures that can be used to analyse natural language syntax? It will interest linguists, including formalists, typologists, psycholinguists and neurolinguists.

This book applies a psycholinguistic perspective to instructed second language acquisition, seeking to bridge the gap between second language acquisition research and language teaching practices. It challenges the traditional divide between conscious and unconscious processes, or explicit and implicit learning, and re-envisions this as a continuum of the varying levels of consciousness which can be applied by learners to different language behaviors in the second language classroom. It applies this model to learner development and the classroom context, discussing pedagogical applications for instructors at all levels. This book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in second language acquisition, psycholinguistics and language pedagogy. The accessible discussion of research findings, pedagogical approaches and classroom tasks and activities make this book particularly relevant for language teachers, providing the tools needed to apply second language acquisition research in their classroom.

This book considers how language users express and understand literal and metaphorical spatial meaning not only in language but also through gesture and pointing. Researchers explore the ways in which theoretical developments in language and cognition, new empirical techniques, and new computational facilities have led to a greater understanding of the relationship between physical space and mental space as expressed in human communication.

The Contributions to the Sociology of Language series features publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It addresses the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches - theoretical and empirical - supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of scholars interested in language in society from a broad range of disciplines - anthropology, education, history, linguistics, political science, and sociology. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Natalie Fecher.

In this book leading scholars from every relevant field report on all aspects of compositionality, the notion that the meaning of an expression can be derived from its parts. Understanding how compositionality works is a central element of syntactic and semantic analysis and a challenge for models of cognition. It is a key concept in linguistics and philosophy and in the cognitive sciences more generally, and is without question one of the most exciting fields in the study of language and mind. The authors of this book report critically on lines of research in different disciplines, revealing the connections between them and highlighting current problems and opportunities. The force and justification of compositionality have long been contentious. First proposed by Frege as the notion that the meaning of an expression is generally determined by the meaning and syntax of its components, it has since been deployed as a constraint on the relation between theories of syntax and semantics, as a means of analysis, and more recently as underlying the structures of representational systems, such as computer programs and neural architectures. The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality explores these and many other dimensions of this challenging field. It will appeal to researchers and advanced students in linguistics and philosophy and to everyone concerned with the study of language and cognition including those working in neuroscience, computational science, and bio-informatics.

In the field of second language (L2) acquisition, the number of studies focusing on L2 pronunciation instruction and perceptual/production training has increased as new classroom methodologies have been proposed and new goals for L2 pronunciation have been set. This book brings together different approaches to L2 pronunciation research in the classroom or in the language laboratory. 13 chapters, written by well-known researchers focusing on a variety of first and target languages, are divided into four parts: Pronunciation development and intelligibility: implications for teaching and training studies; L2 pronunciation teaching; L2 pronunciation training: implications for the classroom; and Pronunciation in the laboratory: High Variability Phonetic Training. Intended for researchers in the fields of second language acquisition, phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, speech therapies, speech technology, as well as second language teaching, this book not only summarizes the current research questions on L2 pronunciation teaching and training, but also predicts future scenarios for both researchers and practitioners in the field.

This book documents an understudied phenomenon in Austronesian languages, namely the existence of recurrent submorphemic sound-meaning associations of the general form -CVC. It fills a critical gap in scholarship on these languages by bringing together a large body of data in one place, and by discussing some of the theoretical issues that arise in analyzing this data. Following an introduction which presents the topic, it includes a critical review of the relevant literature over the past century, and discussions of the following: 1. problems in finding the root (the "needle in the haystack" problem), 2. root ambiguity, 3. controls on chance as an interfering factor, 4. unrecognized morphology as a possible factor in duplicating evidence, 5. the shape/structure of the root, 6. referents of roots, 7. the origin of roots, 8. the problem of distinguishing false cognates produced by convergence in root-bearing morphemes from legitimate comparisons resulting from divergent descent, and 9. the problem of explaining how submorphemes are transmitted across generations of speakers independently of the morphemes that host them. The remainder of the book consists of a list of sources for the 197 languages from which data is drawn, followed by the roots with supporting evidence, a short appendix, and references.

Split constructions are widespread in natural languages. The separation of the semantic restriction of a quantifier from that quantifier is a typical example of such a construction. This study addresses the problem that such discontinuous strings exhibit--namely, a number of locality constraints, including intervention effects. These are shown to follow from the interaction of a minimalist syntax with a semantics that directly assigns a model-theoretic interpretation to syntactic logical forms. The approach is shown to have wide empirical coverage and a conceptual simplicity. The book will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of syntax and semantics.

Variation in Datives collects new research on the nature of syntactic micro-variation in datives. The papers in this volume examine different aspects of internal variation in dative marking, such as agreement and case alternations, distribution of adpositional structures and dative case-marking, the different structural positions of dative arguments and their semantic contribution, and patterns of syncretism in the clitic and/or agreement system. Interest in these topics has grown significantly in the past 20 years. Variation in Datives makes a significant contribution to our understanding of language variation, as it adds the micro-comparative perspective to the general discussion and includes 10 new articles on a wide range of European languages, including Greek, Basque, Icelandic, and Serbo-Croatian.
Variation in Datives will appeal to scholars and advanced students of syntax, linguistic variation, and especially syntactic micro-variation.

This book offers a new perspective on selected discourses and texts bearing on the evolution of a distinctively American tradition of free speech. The author's approach privileges fallacy theory, especially the fallacy of ad socordiam, in a key Congressional debate in 1789 and other forms of verbal manipulation in newspaper editorials during the War of 1812. He argues that in order to understand James Madison's role in the evolution of a broad conception of freedom of speech, it is imperative to examine the nature of the verbal attacks targeted at him. These attacks are documented, analyzed with the concept of aggravated impoliteness, and used to demonstrate that it was Madison's toleration of criticism, even in wartime, that provided a foundation for a broad conception of freedom of speech. This book will be of interest to both scholars and lay readers with an interest in the application of discourse analysis and historical pragmatics to political debates, argumentation theory and fallacy theory, and the evolution of the concept of freedom of speech in the early years of the United States.

In this volume, Ray Jackendoff and Jenny Audring embark on a major reconceptualization of linguistic theory as seen through the lens of morphology. Their approach, Relational Morphology, extends the Parallel Architecture developed by Jackendoff in Foundations of Language (2002), Simpler Syntax (2005), and Meaning and the Lexicon (2010). The framework integrates morphology into the overall architecture of language, enabling it to interact insightfully with phonology, syntax, semantics, and above all, the lexicon. The first part of the book situates morphology in the language faculty, and introduces a novel formalism that unifies the treatment of all morphological patterns, inflectional or derivational, systematic or marginal. Central to the theory is the lexicon, which both incorporates the rules of grammar and explicitly encodes relationships among words and among grammatical patterns. Part II puts the theory to the test, applying it to a wide range of familiar and less familiar morphological phenomena. Part III connects Relational Morphology with issues of language processing and language acquisition, and shows how its formal tools can be extended to a variety of linguistic and nonlinguistic phenomena outside morphology. The value of Relational Morphology thus lies not only in the fact that it can account for a range of morphological phenomena, but also in how it integrates linguistic theory, psycholinguistics, and human cognition.

This book focuses on some of the most important issues in historical syntax. In a series of close examinations of languages from old Egyptian to modern Afrikaans, leading scholars present new work on Afro-Asiatic, Latin and Romance, Germanic, Albanian, Celtic, Indo-Iranian, and Japanese. The book revolves around the linked themes of parametric theory and the dynamics of language change. The former is a key element in the search for explanatory adequacy in historical syntax: if the notion of imperfect learning, for example, explains a large element of grammatical change, it is vital to understand how parameters are set in language acquisition and how they might have been set differently in previous generations. The authors test particular hypotheses against data from different times and places with the aim of understanding the relationship between language variation and the dynamics of change. Is it possible, for example, to reconcile the unidirectionality of change predominantly expressed in the phenomenon of "grammaticalization," with the multidirectionality predicted by generativist approaches? In terms of the richness of the data it examines, the broad range of languages it discusses, and the use it makes of linguistic theory this is an outstanding book, not least in the contribution it makes to the understanding of language change.

A WORKBOOK to Help You Learn the Essentials of Biblical Greek So You Can Study the New Testament More Deeply The Greek for the Rest of Us Workbook is a companion to Greek for the Rest of Us, Third Edition (sold separately) by William D. Mounce. This workbook provides exercises to help readers practice and review, so they learn the essentials of biblical Greek more effectively and can study the New Testament more deeply. Greek for the Rest of Us, Third Edition is crash-course on "Greek for the rest of us" that acquaints the reader with the essentials of the language so they can study the New Testament more deeply. Readers will gain a sound knowledge of the fundamentals of Greek and learn how to use tools that will add muscle to their Bible studies. Readers using the Greek for the Rest of Us Workbook in conjunction with Greek for the Rest of Us, Third Edition will learn to: Read and pronounce Greek words Learn the fundamentals of the Greek noun and verb system Conduct effective Greek word studies Learn the basics of Greek exegesis for biblical interpretation Understand why translations are different Read better commentaries Be comfortable using reverse and traditional interlinears Understand the information displayed by biblical software The Greek for the Rest Us Workbook will enhance your learning experience with exercises to help you practice and reinforce the concepts you are learning in Greek for the Rest of Us, Third Edition.

Oxford Textual Perspectives is a new series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works.
Living through Conquest is the first ever investigation of the political clout of English from the reign of Cnut to the earliest decades of the thirteenth century. It focuses on why and how the English language was used by kings and their courts and by leading churchmen and monastic institutions at key moments from 1020 to 1220. English became the language of choice of a usurper king; the language of collective endeavour for preachers and prelates; and the language of resistance and negotiation in the post-Conquest period. Analysing texts that are not widely known, such as Cnut's two Letters to the English of 1020 and 1027, Worcester's Confraternity Agreement, and the Eadwine Psalter, alongside canonical writers like AElfric and Wulfstan, Elaine Treharne demonstrates the ideological significance of the native vernacular and its social and cultural relevance alongside Latin, and later, French.
While many scholars to date have seen the period from 1060 to 1220 as a literary lacuna as far as English is concerned, this book demonstrates unequivocally that the hundreds of vernacular works surviving from this period attest to a lively and rich textual tradition. Living Through Conquest addresses the political concerns of English writers and their constructed audiences, and investigates the agenda of manuscript producers, from those whose books were very much in the vein of earlier English codices to those innovators who employed English precisely to demonstrate its contemporaneity in a multitude of contexts and for a variety of different audiences.

Oxford Textual Perspectives is a new series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works.
Living through Conquest is the first ever investigation of the political clout of English from the reign of Cnut to the earliest decades of the thirteenth century. It focuses on why and how the English language was used by kings and their courts and by leading churchmen and monastic institutions at key moments from 1020 to 1220. English became the language of choice of a usurper king; the language of collective endeavour for preachers and prelates; and the language of resistance and negotiation in the post-Conquest period. Analysing texts that are not widely known, such as Cnut's two Letters to the English of 1020 and 1027, Worcester's Confraternity Agreement, and the Eadwine Psalter, alongside canonical writers like AElfric and Wulfstan, Elaine Treharne demonstrates the ideological significance of the native vernacular and its social and cultural relevance alongside Latin, and later, French.
While many scholars to date have seen the period from 1060 to 1220 as a literary lacuna as far as English is concerned, this book demonstrates unequivocally that the hundreds of vernacular works surviving from this period attest to a lively and rich textual tradition. Living Through Conquest addresses the political concerns of English writers and their constructed audiences, and investigates the agenda of manuscript producers, from those whose books were very much in the vein of earlier English codices to those innovators who employed English precisely to demonstrate its contemporaneity in a multitude of contexts and for a variety of different audiences.

This book is the first comparative study of English, German, French, Russian and Hungarian anti-proverbs based on well-known proverbs. Proverbs are by no means fossilized texts but are adaptable to different times and changed values. While anti-proverbs can be considered as variants of older proverbs, they can also become new proverbs reflecting a more modern worldview. Anti-proverbs are therefore a lingo-cultural phenomenon that deserves the attention of cultural and literary historians, folklorists, linguists, and general readers interested in language and wordplay.