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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics
This book provides crucial reading for students and researchers
of world Englishes. It is an insightful and provocative study of
the forms and functions of English in Asia, its acculturation and
nativization, and the innovative dimensions of Asian
creativity.
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.
Mini-set E: Sociology & Anthropology re-issues 10 volumes
originally published between 1931 and 1995 and covers topics such
as japanese whaling, marriage in japan, and the japanese health
care system. For institutional purchases for e-book sets please
contact [email protected] (customers in the UK, Europe and
Rest of World)
Mini-set D: Politics re-issues works originally published between
1920 & 1987 and examines the government, political system and
foreign policy of Japan during the twentieth century.
This book introduces generative grammar as an area of study and
asks what it tells us about the human mind. Wolfram Hinzen lays the
foundation for the unification of modern generative linguistics
with the philosophies of mind and language. He introduces Chomsky's
program of a "minimalist"
syntax as a novel explanatory vision of the human mind. He explains
how the Minimalist Program originated in work in cognitive science,
biology, linguistics, and philosophy, and examines its implications
for work in these fields. He considers the way the human mind is
designed when seen as an
arrangement of structural patterns in nature, and argues that its
design is the product not so much of adaptive evolutionary history
as of principles and processes that are ahistorical and internalist
in character. Linguistic meaning, he suggests, arises in the mind
as a consequence of structures
emerging on formal rather than functional grounds. From this he
substantiates an unexpected and deeply unfashionable notion of
human nature.
Clearly written in nontechnical language and assuming a limited
knowledge of the fields it examines and links, Minimal Mind Design
will appeal to a wide range of scholars in linguistics, philosophy,
and cognitive science. It also provides an exceptionally clear
insight into the nature and aims of
Chomsky's Minimalist Program.
Semantic alignment refers to a type of language that has two means
of morphosyntactically encoding the arguments of intransitive
predicates, typically treating these as an agent or as a patient of
a transitive predicate, or else by a means of a treatment that
varies according to lexical aspect. This collection of new
typological and case studies is the first book-length investigation
of semantically aligned languages for three decades. Leading
international typologists explore the differences and commonalities
of languages with semantic alignment systems and compare the
structure of these languages to languages without them. They look
at how such systems arise or disappear and provide areal overviews
of Eurasia, the Americas, and the south-west Pacific, the areas
where semantically aligned languages are concentrated. This book
will interest typological and historical linguists at graduate
level and above.
This is an introduction to the history of languages, from the
distant past to a glimpse at what languages may be like in the
distant future. It looks at how languages arise, change, and
ultimately vanish, and what lies behind their different destinies.
What happens to languages, he argues, has to do with what happens
to the people who use them, and what happens to people,
individually and collectively, is affected by the languages they
speak.
The book opens by examining what the languages are the
hunter-gatherers might have spoken and the changes to language that
took place when agriculture made settled communities possible. It
then looks at the effects of the invention of writing, the
formation of empires, the spread of religions, and the recent
dominance of world powers, and shows how these relate to great
changes in the use of languages. Tore Janson discusses the
appearance of new languages, the reasons why some languages spread
and others die, considers whether similar cyclical processes are
found at different times and places, and examines the causes of
internal changes in languages and dialects.
The book ranges widely among the world's languages and mixes
thematic chapters on general processes of change with accounts of
specific languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Latin, Greek, and
English.
Oxford Cognitive Science Series General Editors: Martin Davies,
Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK, James
Higginbotham , Professor of General Linguistics, University of
Oxford, UK, John O'Keefe, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience,
University College, London, UK, Christopher Peacocke, Waynflete
Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK, and
Kim Plunkett, University Lecturer in Psychology, University of
Oxford, UK The Oxford Cognitive Science series is a forum for the
best contemporary work in this flourishing field, where various
disciplines-cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics,
cognitive neuroscience, and computational theory-join forces in the
investigation of thought, awareness, understanding, and associated
workings of the mind. Each book will represent an original
contribution to its subject, but will be accessible beyond the
ranks of specialists, so as to reach a broad interdisciplinary
readership. The series will be carefully shaped and steered by the
general editors, with the aim of representing the most important
developments in the field and bringing together its constituent
disciplines. About this book The renowned philosopher Jerry Fodor,
who has been a leading figure in the study of the mind for more
than twenty years, presents a strikingly original theory of the
basic constituents of thought. He suggests that the heart of a
cognitive science is its theory of concepts, and that cognitive
scientists have gone badly wrong in many areas because their
assumptions about concepts have been seriously mistaken. Fodor
argues compellingly for an atomistic theory of concepts, deals out
witty and pugnacious demolitions of the rival theories that have
prevailed in recent years, and suggests that future work on human
cognition should build upon new foundations. This lively,
conversational, accessible book is the first volume in the Oxford
Cognitive Science Series, where the best original work in this
field will be presented to a broad readership. Concepts will
fascinate anyone interested in contemporary work on mind and
language. Cognitive science will never be the same again.
This volume looks at the legacy of British history in the way we
talk and the things we say. It takes us from the departure of the
Romans from Britain up to and including the Middle Ages.
This volume looks at the impact of evergreen activities - sports,
games and gambling - upon the way we talk and the things we say.
Peter Ryding takes us from cricket to roulette via some very tricky
and diverting tangents.
Dictionary of the language spoken in Tunisia -French-Arabic-,
designed for the benefit of beginners and more experienced
learners, the fruit of years of research. The vocabulary is in
Arabic, and the transliteration helps with the pronunciation.
References to literary Arabic make interesting comparisons
possible. Dictionnaire de la langue parlA (c)e en Tunisie
-franAais-arabe-, destinA (c) aux dA (c)butant et aux plus
chevronnA (c)s, fruit da annA (c)es de recherches. Le vocabulaire
est rA (c)digA (c) en arabe et la translitA (c)ration en facilite
la comprA (c)hension. Les rA (c)fA (c)rences A la langue littA
(c)raire permettent des comparaisons intA (c)ressantes.
The author presents a humorous journey through the English
language, exploring the fascinating facts and phrases that make
English so rich and exciting.
With enormous enthusiasm for the language of ordinary northerners,
this scenic portrait of coastal peoples combines history,
etymology, and recollections to record a folk culture that strives
to survive against current worldwide trends of uniformity. The
examination delves deep into the boat and fishing traditions that
shape this small angler community, including smuggling, the
scenery, and the surrounding wildlife. The increasing threat that
globalization poses to these sea populations makes this an
important preservation--as well as an excellent source of factual
information and reference material about those who live on the
North Sea.
One of the twentieth century's most influential books, this classic
work of anthropology offers a groundbreaking exploration of what
culture is With The Interpretation of Cultures, the distinguished
anthropologist Clifford Geertz developed the concept of thick
description, and in so doing, he virtually rewrote the rules of his
field. Culture, Geertz argues, does not drive human behavior.
Rather, it is a web of symbols that can help us better understand
what that behavior means. A thick description explains not only the
behavior, but the context in which it occurs, and to describe
something thickly, Geertz argues, is the fundamental role of the
anthropologist. Named one of the 100 most important books published
since World War II by the Times Literary Supplement, The
Interpretation of Cultures transformed how we think about others'
cultures and our own. This definitive edition, with a foreword by
Robert Darnton, remains an essential book for anthropologists,
historians, and anyone else seeking to better understand human
cultures.
Lesers wat nie ’n annerlike kontrei se taal kan slat nie, hoef nie
daaroor kop te vreet nie. Hierdie omvattende woordeboek plaas die
gewoonlike Afrikaans uit die kontreie op skrif vir inkommers en vir
ingesetenes wat wil klont oor kontreitaal. Die eienaardig mooie
woordeboek ontgin annerlike Afrikaans op so ’n manier dat geen
leser meer uitgesluit hoef te wees van diegene wat eenspaaierig
handel nie want alles wat hierin opgeteken is, is koek van een
deeg. Dit kouboe die taal vir oueres wat daarmee vertroud is en vir
jongeres is dit brandhout om vir die oudag bymekaar te maak.
The vocabulary of past times, no longer used in English, is always
fascinating, especially when we see how it was pilloried by the
satirists of the day. Here we have Victorian high and low society,
with its fashionable and unfashionable slang, its class awareness
and the jargon of steam engines, motor cars and other products of
the Industrial Revolution. Then as now, people had strong feelings
about the flood of new words entering English. Swearing, new street
names and the many borrowings from French provoked continual
irritation and mockery, as did the Americanisms increasingly
encountered in the British press. In this intriguing collection,
David Crystal has pored through the pages of the satirical
magazine, Punch, between its first issue in 1841 and the death of
Queen Victoria in 1901, and extracted the articles and cartoons
that poked fun at the jargon of the day, adding a commentary on the
context of the times and informative glossaries. In doing so he
reveals how many present-day feelings about words have their
origins over a century ago.
So this English professor comes into class and starts talking about
the textual organization of jokes, the taxonomy of puns, the
relations between the linguistic form and the content of humorous
texts, and other past and current topics in language-based research
into humor. At the end he stuffs all
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