Books

Aspirational and expanding, this book examines contemporary Chinese language and discourse across a spectrum of linguistic layers and genres in diverse social contexts. Addressing issues ranging from the usual focus on language per se, or language use in reaction to the immediate settings, to the connections between properties of texts and social practices (ideologies, stancetaking, power relations, etc.), the updated and exemplary research projects presented in the volume demonstrates a developing trajectory of research in Chinese language and discourse. With its empirical focus and stress on the role of language and discourse in social practice, this important new book discusses various language features as well as gender, stancetaking, and identity in Chinese discourse. This is a vital discussion for anyone interested in contemporary Chinese language and discourse studies.

In examination of different layers of language (i.e. from lexical items and sentence structures to discourse features and discursive practices) across different genres of texts, the research projects have drawn on a variety of linguistic approaches and methodologies, including functional linguistics, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and various approaches to discourse analysis.

Researchers and students of Chinese linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse studies, translation studies, and China studies in general will find this volume an indispensable reference and an enjoyable read.

The discursive construction of identity is often under the control of the dominant forces in society and frequently results in forms of manipulation and abuse. This awareness led to the celebration of the First International Conference on CDA (València 2004), where over three-hundred academics working in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis became actively engaged in this important issue.



The seven studies included in this volume have been selected as representative of those areas of human experience that have been given most intellectual attention and considered to be in fact in need for critical unravelling. Ethnic categorization in multicultural classrooms, patriotic discourse construction in Chinese readers, the denial of Palestinian identity in schoolbooks, the diverse constructions of European identities, Arabs constructing themselves on the worldwide web, identity construction in sexual assault trials, the representations of a dangerous ‘other’ in cases of PLWHAs, are the contextual perspectives embraced in this book to account for forms of power abuse in the discursive construction of identities.

The publication in 1816 of Bopp’s Über das Conjugationssystem can be considered the beginning of a systematic comparison of Indo-European languages, and thus as having led too the development of the study of language as a science, distinct from philology. The Analytical Comparison (1820) represents not merely a translation into English, as has been claimed in the literature, but a significant advance in theoretical clarity and methodological soundness.

This reprint is accompanied by a bio-bibliographical account of Bopp by J. D. Guigniaut, an introduction to Analytical Comparison by Friedrich Techmer, and a letter to Bopp by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Furthermore, the editor, E. F. K. Koerner, has added a Foreword, select bibliography, and index.

Intuitively, it is clear why languages have anaphoric relations: anaphora reduces redundancy, thereby shortening (and hence simplifying) sentences. In order for this simplification to be possible, however, it is necessary that the speaker of a language be able to identify correctly the elements participating in an anaphoric relation and to determine correctly the meaning of the anaphor on the basis of meaning of the antecedent. If a grammar is to reflect the linguistic competence of a native speaker of a language, it must include mechanisms of associating anaphor and antecedent. In this volume the following questions will be considered: What sorts of mechanisms are best suited for representing anaphora in a grammar? What are the conditions on the rule(s) associating anaphors with antecedents? Do the various cases of anaphora form a linguistically significant class of phenomena, and, if so, how can the grammar capture this fact? And what do these answers entail for linguistic theory?

This volume contains a careful selection of papers concerned with actual research questions on anaphoric reference, a subject of current interest with various linguistic subdisciplines. This is reflected in this book as it methodically covers broadly invested approaches from cognitive, neurolinguistic, formal and computational perspectives, each contribution representing the respective ‘state of the art’ on a high theoretical and empirical level. The volume contains three thematic parts: Anaphors in Cognitive, Text- and Discourse Linguistics; The Syntax and Semantics of Anaphors; and Neurolinguistic Studies on the reception of anaphoric reference. The contributions investigate several Indo-European languages.

The continuing debate over the existence or non-existence of formal verbal aspect in Gothic triggered the author to write this monograph whose aim is to provide a completely new foundation for a theory of aspect and related features. Gothic, with its limited corpus, representing a translation of the Greek, and showing interesting parallels with Slavic verbal constructions, serves and an illustrative model for the theory. In Part I the author argues that a unified theory of aspect, actional types, and verbal velocity presented there possesses an internal logic and is not at variance with observed facts in various Indo-European languages. In Part II an analysis is presented of the Gothic verb system which seeks to explain the much-disputed function of ga- and to solve the problem of Gothic aspect and actional types which does no violence either to the Gothic text or the Greek original.

The advent of Franz Boas on the North American scene irrevocably redirected the course of Americanist anthropology. This volume documents the revolutionary character of the theoretical and methodological standpoint introduced by Boas and his first generation of students, among whom linguist Edward Sapir was among the most distinguished. Virtually all of the classic Boasians were at least part-time linguists alongside their ethnological work. During the crucial transitional period beginning with the founding of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879, there were as many continuities as discontinuities between the work of Boas and that of John Wesley Powell and his Bureau. Boas shared with Powell a commitment to the study of aboriginal languages, to a symbolic definition of culture, to ethnography based on texts, to historical reconstruction on linguistic grounds, and to mapping the linguistic and cultural diversity of native North America. The obstacle to Boas’s vision of anthropology was not the Bureau but the archaeological and museum establishment centred in Washington, D.C. and in Boston. Moreover, the “scientific revolution” was concluded not when Boas began to teach at Columbia University in New York in 1897 but around 1920 when first generation Boasians cominated the discipline in institutional as well as theoretical terms. The impact of Boas is explored in terms of theoretical positions, interactional networks of scholars, and institutions within which anthropological work was carried out. The volume shows how collaboration of universities and museums gradually gave way to an academic centre for anthropology in North America, in line with the professionalization of American science along German lines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The author is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Research and Teaching of Canadian Native Languages at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Wie die hier vorgelegten Untersuchung zeigen möchte, bietet die Arithmetik aus Euklids Elementen besonders gute Chancen für einen Erfolg bei der Suche nach Spuren, die das Wissen der Völker des Alten Orients in der griechischen Mathematik hinterlassen hat. Dazu kommt, daß uns eine Reihe von Tontafeln aus dem Alten Orient eine erste Einsicht in gewisse Rechen- und Begründungsmethoden bieten, die man dort spätestens seit dem 3. vorchristlichen Jahrtausend anzuwenden wußte. Zu der Vorstufe der Keilschrift, in der diese Texte abgefaßt sind, gehören nämlich Ziffern und metrologische Zeichen, die erkennen lassen, daß ihre Schreiber beim Lösen von arithmetischen Aufgaben Rechensteine zu benutzen pflegten. Dieser operative Umgang mit Rechensteinen, der in, den Schreiberschulen immer neuen 'Schülergenerationen' vermittelt worden ist, führte bereits im Alten Mesopotamien zur Entdeckung und Begründung einer Reihe von Einsichten, die methodisch und inhaltlich zu den Anfängen der griechischen Arithmetik gehören, doch das wird erst im Rahmen der nachfolgend zur Diskussion gestellten Untersuchungen deutlich werden.

This comprehensive study of Anglicisms in the context of accelerated neological activity in Contemporary Metropolitan French not only provides detailed documentation and description of a fascinating topic, but opens up new vistas on issues of general linguistic interest: the effects of technology on language, the analyticity-syntheticity controversy, the lexical contribution to language vitality, the study of compound word formation, the interplay between cultural and linguistic affectivity. By investigating the dynamics of borrowing within the larger framework of general neological productivity and by bringing to bear cognitive and pragmatic considerations, a much-needed fresh approach to the entire question of Anglicisms takes shape. All pertinent phenomena regarding Anglicisms in French — a topic which continues to command the attention of language commentators and defenders in France and elsewhere — are explored: integral borrowings, semantic calques, structural calques, the generation of pseudo-Anglicisms and hybrids, graphological and phonological phenomena. In each case, the phenomenon is investigated in the proper context of its interaction with other pertinent neological, phonological and sociocultural developments. These include general changes in French compound word formation, modified derivational dynamics, the microsystem of pseudo-Classical morphology, historic phonological instabilities, the pressure for more synthetic types of lexical production in relation to the needs of technology and society. Rather than adhering rigidly to any single theoretical model, there is an attempt to set up a dialog between differing models in order to arrive at a multidimensional view of the phenomena investigated.

Aristoteles’ De Anima ist einer der zentralen Texte der Philosophiegeschichte. Seine grundlegende Leistung liegt in der alle Lebewesen umfassenden ontologisch-ontischen Bestimmung der Seele und ihrer Vermögen, einschließlich der Lehre vom Geist (nous), deren nähere Explikation seit der Antike Anlaß zu vielfältigen Diskussionen gab. Die vorliegende Studie ermittelt unter Rückgriff auf die traditionellen Schulen des Alexandrismus, Neuplatonismus, Averroismus und Thomismus diejenigen mannigfaltigen philosophischen und theologischen Konstellationen des 16. und 17. Jh.s, die von innerkatholischen wie interkonfessionellen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Katholiken, Lutheranern und Calvinisten geprägt waren. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt werden die entsprechenden Werke der Reformatoren Luther und Melanchthon, der Renaissance-Aristoteliker Portio, Toletus, Zabarella und die Conimbrincenser sowie die hier erstmals berücksichtigten Schriften der lutherischen und calvinistischen Schulphilosophen des 17. Jh.s. interpretiert.





Aristotle’s On the soul is one of the most important books in the history of philosophy. Its fundamental achievement is based on the ontological-ontical definition of the soul and its virtues, which embrace all living beings, including the doctrine of the mind (nous), and whose further explication has been interpreted controversially since antiquity. With respect to the traditional schools of Alexandrism, Neoplatonism, Averroism and Thomism the present study studies the various philosophical and theological constellations of the 16th and 17th century, which were determined by the intracatholical as well as by the interdenominational controversies between the Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists. From this point of view the works of Luther and Melanchthon, of the Renaissance-Aristotelians Portio, Toletus, Zabarella, and the Conimbricenses as well as the works of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Philosophers of the 17th century are interpreted, these last ones being taken into consideration here for the first time.

Then follow interpretations of some of the main philosophical concepts of Aristotle’s De Anima in the 16th and 17th century, namely the Protestant Aristotelianism of Luther (1483–1546) and Melanchthon (1497–1560), the ‘Second Scholastic’ of the Jesuits Toletus (1532–1596) and Emmanul de Goes, the Natural Philosophy of Portio (1496–1554) and Zabarella (1533–1589) and at least the New Protestant Aristotelianism of Martini (1570-1649), Evenius (1585/9–1639), Scheibler (1589–1653), Leuschner (1589–1641) and Dannhauer (1603–1666) at the Lutheran Universities in Germany in the early 17th century.