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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Historical & comparative linguistics
The topic of the volume is the contrast between borrowable categories and those which resist transfer. Resistance is illustrated for the unattested emergence of grammatical gender, the negligible impact of English and Spanish on the number category in Patagonian Welsh, the reluctance of replicas to borrow English but. MAT-borrowing does not imply the copying of rules as the Spanish function-words in the Chamorro irrealis show. Chamorro and Tetun Dili look similar on account of their contact-induced parallels. The languages of the former USSR have borrowed largely identical sets of conjunctions from Russian, Arabic, and Persian to converge in the domain of clause linkage. Resistance against and susceptibility to transfer call for further investigations to the benefit of language-contact theory.
The Song of Songs, a lyric cycle of love scenes without a narrative plot, has often been considered as the Bible's most beautiful and enigmatic book. The present study questions the still dominant exegetical convention that merges all of the Song's voices into the dialogue of a single couple, its composite heroine Shulamit being a projection screen for norms of womanhood. An alternative socio-spatial reading, starting with the Hebrew text's strophic patterns and its references to historical realia, explores the poem's artful alternation between courtly, urban, rural, and pastoral scenes with their distinct characters. The literary construction of social difference juxtaposes class-specific patterns of consumption, mobility, emotion, power structures, and gender relations. This new image of the cycle as a detailed poetic frieze of ancient society eventually leads to a precise hypothesis concerning its literary and religious context in the Hellenistic age, as well as its geographical origins in the multiethnic borderland east of the Jordan. In a Jewish echo of anthropological skepticism, the poem emphasizes the plurality and relativity of the human condition while praising the communicative powers of pleasure, fantasy, and multifarious Eros.
This volume links theoretical and instructional approaches on how reading is motivated and assessed, and examines the interrelationship between reading motivation and achievement among boys and girls in culturally and geographically different settings. Much of the research on children's reading has focused on cognitive processes; however, reading is an activity that also requires interest and motivation. These attitudes are generally defined as readers' affect toward reading and their consequence is that children with more positive attitudes are more motivated to read. Taking into account the variability that exists within the notion of gender and age, this volume aims to examine and scrutinize previous research on the topic, as well as test theories on how the different dimensions of reading motivation vary with gender, in relation to cultural issues, motivational constructs, such as engagement and classroom climate, the role of emotions, interests and attitudes towards reading, among others. The book will be of interest to researchers, educators, graduate students, and other professionals working in the area of literacy, reading motivation, reading achievement and gender differences.
This book offers a unique window to the study of im/politeness by looking at a translation perspective, which offers a different set of data and allows further understanding of the phenomenon. In the arena of real-life translation practice, the workings of im/politeness are renegotiated in a different cultural context and thus pragmatically oriented cross-cultural differences become more concrete and tangible. The book focuses on the language pair English and Greek, a strategic choice with Greek as a less widely spoken language and English as a global language. The two languages also differ in their politeness orientation in certain genres, which allows for a fruitful comparison. The volume focuses on press translation first, then translation of academic texts and translation for the stage, and finally audiovisual translation (mainly subtitles). These genres highlight a public, an interactional, and a multimodal dimension in the workings of im/politeness.
This book analyzes and contextualizes Auerbach's life and mind in the wide ideological, philological, and historical context of his time, especially the rise of Aryan philology and its eventual triumph with the Nazi Revolution or the Hitler Revolution in Germany of 1933. It deals specifically with his struggle against the premises of Aryan philology, based on voelkisch mysticism and Nazi historiography, which eliminated the Old Testament from German Kultur and Volksgeist in particular, and Western culture and civilization in general. It examines in detail his apologia for, or defense and justification of, Western Judaeo-Christian humanist tradition at its gravest existential moment. It discusses Auerbach's ultimate goal, which was to counter the overt racist tendencies and voelkish ideology in Germany, or the belief in the Community of Blood and Fate of the German people, which sharply distinguished between Kultur and civilization and glorified voelkisch nationalism over European civilization. The volume includes an analysis of the entire twenty chapters of Auerbach's most celebrated book: Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1946.
This book systematically depicts the theory of textual patterns (chengshi) of the eight-part essays and logic in ancient Chinese texts. With the rare materials, it covers all the basic and important aspects of the whole process and values of chengshi, such as the transformation of different parts and the coherent expression of the doctrines, the planning of writing, and the application to the aesthetic and pedagogic fields. It also explores the similarities and disparities of logical patterns between ancient Chinese and Western texts. Though entirely fresh and tentative, the contrastive studies get new insights into the logic and philosophical concepts hidden in the writings for better understanding of the uniqueness and richness implied in Chinese culture.
A growing number of language varieties with diverse backgrounds and structural typologies have been identified as mixed. However, the debate on the status of many varieties and even on the existence of the category of "mixed languages" continues still today. This volume examines the current state of the theoretical and empirical debate on mixed languages and presents new advances from a diverse set of mixed language varieties. These cover well-known mixed languages, such as Media Lengua, Michif, Gurindji Kriol, and Kallawaya, and varieties whose classification is still debated, such as Reo Rapa, Kumzari, Jopara, and Wutun. The contributions deal with different aspects of mixed languages, including descriptive approaches to their current status and origins, theoretical discussions on the language contact processes in them, and analysis of different types of language mixing practices. This book contributes to the current debate on the existence of the mixed language category, shedding more light onto this fascinating group of languages and the contact processes that shape them.
A provoking new approach to how we understand metaphors thoroughly comparing and contrasting the claims made by relevance theorists and cognitive linguists. The resulting hybrid theory shows the complementarity of many positions as well as the need and possibility of achieving a broader and more realistic theory of our understanding.
In contrast to previous approaches to phonological typology, the typology of syllable and word languages relates the patterns of syllable structure, phoneme inventory, and phonological processes to the relevance of the prosodic domains of the syllable and the phonological word. This volume proves how useful this kind of typology is for the understanding of language variation and change. By providing a synchronic and diachronic account of the syllable and the phonological word in Central Catalan (Catalan dialect group) and Swabian (Alemannic dialect group), the author shows how the evolution of Old Catalan and Old Alemannic can be explained in terms of a typological drift toward an increased relevance of the phonological word. Further, the description of Central Catalan and Swabian allows to identify common strategies for profiling the phonological word and thus makes an important contribution to research on prosodic phonology.
This book investigates the historical evolution of figurative language within the framework of cognitive linguistics. It examines how and why metaphors evolve through the ages, and it discusses the role of culture, the patterns of metaphor evolution, and how many people use particular expressions.
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.
Business and culture are inextricably linked, each reflecting and reinforcing trends in the other. In Understanding American Business Jargon, W. Davis Folsom captures the essence of both by focusing on the terms and phrases that make up our business vocabulary. From "AAA" to "Zombie Bonds," Folsom takes us on a tour of over 2500 concepts that cover the spectrum of business-speak. In this fully revised, updated, and expanded edition, Folsom captures the spirit of business in the new millennium, with such colorful terms as "adhocracy," "Dilbert principle," "hyperlink," "traction," and "viral marketing." Each term is succinctly defined and described in context, and many are illustrated with quotations from the popular press. Including slang, acronyms, a bibliography, an introduction that discusses recent trends in business language, and cross-referenced throughout, Understanding American Business Jargon is not only a handy reference for any businessperson, student, or researcher, but an entertaining glimpse into our constantly evolving business culture.
Dialectology proper has traditionally focused on the geographic distribution of language variation as an end in itself and has remained relatively segregated from other branches of linguistic and extra-linguistic inquiry. Cross-fertilizing winds have been blowing through the field for more than a decade, but much work remains for adequate synthesis. This book seeks to further the interdisciplinary integration of the field by highlighting, and harnessing, the many dialectic tensions inherent in language variation research and dialect definition. Undertaking a broadscale experiment in applied dialectics, the book demonstrates multiple grounds for insisting on a more robust, integrational approach to dialectology while simultaneously demonstrating grounds for defining the Phula languages of China and Vietnam. The Phula languages belong to the Burmic sub-branch of the Tibeto-Burman family and are primarily spoken in southeastern Yunnan Province, China. With origins as early as the ninth century, these language varieties have been left undefined, and largely unresearched, for hundreds of years. Based on extensive original fieldwork, the book identifies 24 synchronic Phula languages descended from three distinct macro-clades diachronically. This is accomplished by blending typological-descriptive, historical-comparative and socio-cognitive perspectives. Diagnostics include both qualitative and quantitative measurements, and insights from history, geography, ethnology, language contact, sociolinguistics and more are called on for data interpretation. This dialogic approach incorporates complexity by asserting that dialectology itself best flourishes as an interdependent dialectic - a dynamic synthesis of competing perspectives.
The papers of the volume investigate how authoritative figures in the Second Temple Period and beyond contributed to forming the Scriptures of Judaism, as well as how these Scriptures shaped ideal figures as authoritative in Early Judaism. The topic of the volume thus reflects Ben Wright's research, who-especially with his work on Ben Sira, on the Letter of Aristeas, and on various problems of authority in Early Jewish texts-creatively contributed to the study of the formation of Scriptures, and to the understanding of the figures behind these texts.
The HittiteEtymological Dictionary is a comprehensive compendium of the vocabulary of Hittite, one of the great languages of the Ancient Near East, and of paramount importance for comparative Indo-European studies. Since the start of publication, as evidenced by frequency of reference and quotation, this work has become an important tool for study and research in Hittite, Ancient Anatolian, and Indo-European linguistics.
While variation within individual languages has traditionally been focused upon in sociolinguistics, its relevance for grammatical theory has only recently been acknowledged. On the methodological side, there is an ongoing competition between large-scale statistical analyses and investigations that rely more heavily on introspection and elicited grammaticality judgements. The aim of this volume is to bridge the 'cultural gap' between empirical-variationist and formal-theoretical approaches in linguistics. The volume offers case studies that seek to combine corpus-based and competence-based approaches to the description of variation. In doing so, it opens up new avenues for locating and analyzing variability, both at the level of the individual speaker and between speakers of different dialects and generations. The contributions document the plurality of current research into models of grammatical competence that live up to the challenge of variationist data. More specifically, parameter-based (e.g. Minimalist), constraint-based (e.g. Optimality Theoretic), and usage-based (e.g. Construction Grammar) approaches to variation are discussed. The volume therefore is of interest to a broad public within linguistics, including syntacticians of different theoretical persuasion, morphologists and sociolinguists. While a majority of contributions addresses facets of variation in English and German, the volume also includes variationist studies written by specialists of French, Dutch, Icelandic, and Uralic.
This book provides an in-depth study of translation and translators in nineteenth-century Ireland, using translation history to widen our understanding of cultural exchange in the period. It paints a new picture of a transnational Ireland in contact with Europe, offering fresh perspectives on the historical, political and cultural debates of the era. Employing contemporary translation theories and applying them to Ireland's socio-historical past, the author offers novel insights on a large range of disciplines relating to the country, such as religion, gender, authorship and nationalism. She maps out new ways of understanding the impact of translation in society and re-examines assumptions about the place of language and Europe in nineteenth-century Ireland. By focusing on a period of significant linguistic and societal change, she questions the creative, conflictual and hegemonic energies unleashed by translations. This book will therefore be of interest to those working in Translation Studies, Irish Studies, History, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies.
Top researchers in prosody and psycholinguistics present their research and their views on the role of prosody in processing speech and also its role in reading. The volume characterizes the state of the art in an important area of psycholinguistics. How are general constraints on prosody ('timing') and intonation ('melody') used to constrain the parsing and interpretation of spoken language? How are they used to assign a default prosody/intonation in silent reading, and more generally what is the role of phonology in reading? Prosody and intonation interact with phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics and thus are at the very core of language processes.
The volume provides the first systematic comparative approach to the history of forms of address in Portuguese and Spanish, in their European and American varieties. Both languages share a common history-e.g., the personal union of Philipp II of Spain and Philipp I of Portugal; the parallel colonization of the Americas by Portugal and Spain; the long-term transformation from a feudal to a democratic system-in which crucial moments in the diachrony of address took place. To give one example, empirical data show that the puzzling late spread of Sp. usted 'you (formal, polite)' and Pt. voce 'you' across America can be explained for both languages by the role of the political and military colonial administration. To explore these new insights, the volume relies on an innovative methodology, as it links traditional downstream diachrony with upstream diachronic reconstruction based on synchronic variation. Including theoretical reflections as well as fine-grained empirical studies, it brings together the most relevant authors in the field.
Our eye movements in response to visual stimuli reveal much about how we experience the world. Focusing on the latest developments in the multidisciplinary field of eye tracking research, this volume ranges across a wide spectrum of research applications, with four sections covering the plethora of practical uses to which our expanding knowledge can be put. They offer abundant evidence that eye tracking research and its methodologies offer new ways of collecting data, framing research questions, and thinking about how we view our world. As a result, we are discovering more about how the visual system works, as well as how it interacts with attention, cognition, and behaviour. "Current Trends in Eye Tracking Research" presents the work of more than 50 researchers and academics, showcasing groundbreaking studies and innovative ways of applying eye tracking technologies to interesting research problems. The book covers the current output of a number of pioneering research laboratories, detailing their work on eye tracking and the visual system, alignment and EEG data, marketing and social applications, and eye tracking in education. Featuring creative uses of existing technology as well as inventive implementation of new technology in a range of research contexts and disciplines, this new publication is compelling proof of the growing importance of this exciting and fast-moving area of scientific endeavor.
This book grew out of a concern we have had that very many theoretical and descriptive work on the Kwa languages were not accessible to the general linguistic community. As a result, these languages were only referred to in the context of very specific discussions such as serial verb constructions. But as the reader of this book will notice, syntactic topics discussed in the context of Kwa range from bare nouns, relative clauses, negation, discourse markers and the interaction with the clausal periphery, to argument structure. Many issues remain that need to be brought to the fore of the community and we hope that this book will trigger the curiosity of the reader to get to know more about these languages. Much of the work presented here could not have been possible without the help of many colleagues and the contri- tors whom we thank warmly for joining this enterprise. We are also grateful to the editors of the series, Marcel den Dikken, Joan Maling, Liliane Haegeman to have offered us this platform to initiate the debate about Kwa. We will also like to thank Helen van der Stelt and Jolanda Voogd from Springer for their kind collaboration and patience. We are also very grateful to Joscelyn Essegbey and Leston Buell for helping with editing the manuscript. Enoch, O. Aboh James Essegbey v Contents 1 The Phonology Syntax Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Enoch, O. Aboh and James Essegbey 2 The Morphosyntax of the Noun Phrase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Enoch, O.
This collection of essays grew out of the workshop 'Existence: Semantics and Syntax', which was held at the University of Nancy 2 in September 2002. The workshop, organized by Ileana Comorovski and Claire Gardent, was supported by a grant from the Reseau de Sciences Cognitives du Grand Est ('Cognitive Science Network of the Greater East'), which is gratefully acknowledged. The ?rst e- tor wishes to thank Claire Gardent, Fred Landman, and Georges Rebuschi for encouraging her to pursue the publication of a volume based on papers presented at the workshop. Among those who participated in the workshop was Klaus von Heusinger, who joined Ileana Comorovski in editing this volume. Besides papers that developed out of presentations at the workshop, the volume contains invited contributions. We are grateful to Wayles Browne, Fred Landman, Paul Portner, and Georges Rebuschi for their help with reviewing some of the papers. Our thanks go also to a Springer reviewer for the careful reading of the book manuscript. We wish to thank all the participants in the workshop, not only those whose contributions appear in this volume, for making the workshop an int- active and constructive event. Ileana Comorovski Klaus von Heusinger vii ILEANA COMOROVSKI AND KLAUS VON HEUSINGER INTRODUCTION The notion of 'existence', which we take to have solid intuitive grounding, plays a central role in the interpretation of at least three types of linguistic constructions: copular clauses, existential sentences, and (in)de?nite noun phrases."
This volume contains a selection of papers which have been revised and extended for publication from two working groups held at conferences at Galway (1992) and Goteborg (1993) which celebrated the quincentenary of Columbus' discovery of America in 1492. The pre-Columbian period of language contact is covered by articles on Old Norse in the Faroes, Scotland and Ireland, the Shetland dialect and Norn, and placenames in Iceland and Greenland. The articles on the post-Columbian period are wide-ranging and cover, in the Scandinavian context, the Scandinavian emigration, American Swedish, American Finnish, Swedish-Spanish and various aspects of Norwegian in America and also in Spitzbergen; in the British colonial context, English dialects in New England, Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia and Scots in North America (Maryland, the Appalachians and Virginia); in the context of the later continental mass emigration, American Dutch, Texas German, Croatian and Italian. Two papers deal with reverse emigration, that of Sicilian and Calabrian dialects, and the special case of Krio in Sierra Leone." |
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