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[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory]
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (CILT) is a theory-oriented series which welcomes contributions from scholars who have significant proposals that advance our understanding of language, its structure, its function and especially its historical development. CILT offers an outlet for meaningful contributions to current linguistic debate.
Visit the CILT series page on benjamins.com for editorial information and how to submit a book proposal.
101 - 150 of 364 results
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Grammatical Analyses in Basque and Romance Linguistics
Editor(s): Jon A. Franco, Alazne Landa and Juan MartínPublication Date September 1999More LessThis volume contains fifteen articles on current theoretical issues in Basque and Romance linguistics. Even though Basque and Romance languages are typologically different and have different genetic origins, one thousand years of coexistence have shown certain parallelisms in their respective grammars. It is Mario Saltarelli that first offered a formal linguistic account of phonological and syntactic phenomena that occur in these two language groups. Thus, this compilation of articles in both Basque and Romance linguistics not only pays tribute to Saltarelli‘s work by acknowledging his formalization of this relational insight, but also comprises state of the art research on languages with strong geographical and historical kinship.Fifteen reviewed articles written by sixteen top scholars in the field provide fresh analyses of long standing challenging phenomena in Romance and Basque linguistics such as geminates, the evolution of Basque plosives, clitic doubling, clitic clustering, directionality of clitization, the role of agreement, focus, the interaction of voice and aspect, unaccusativity, semantic interpretation and syntactic structure of Determiner Phrases, obviation, control, and anaphoric and pronominal binding. This variety of topics however is unified by limiting the contributions to the four major formal areas of linguistics, and to one single framework, Generative Grammar, although in some of its many incarnations such as Minimalism, Optimality Theory, and Relational Grammar. All this, along with the number of languages covered by the authors (Aragonese, Basque, Catalan, French, Galician, Gascon, Italian and many of its dialects (Ligurian, Piedmontese, Tuscan...), Classical and Late Latin, Occitan, Brazilian and European Portuguese, Romanian, Old and Modern Spanish among others), makes the book of great value to any linguist working in Romance or Basque linguistics.
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Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages
Editor(s): Vit Bubenik, John Hewson and Sarah RosePublication Date July 2009More LessThe product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics, this book is focused on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.
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Grammatical Metaphor
Editor(s): Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, Miriam Taverniers and Louise J. RavelliPublication Date November 2003More LessSince the 1980s, metaphor has received much attention in linguistics in general. Within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) the area of 'grammatical metaphor' has become increasingly more important. This volume aims to raise and debate problematic issues in the study of lexico-grammatical metaphor, and to foreground the potential of further study in the field. There is a need to highlight the SFL perspective on metaphor; other traditions focus on lexical aspects, and from cognitive perspectives, while SFL focuses on the grammatical dimension, and socio-functional aspects in the explanation of this phenomenon.
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Grammatical Number in English Nouns
Author(s): Mark A. WickensPublication Date March 1992More LessApart from the coverage given to it in the grammars, number in English nouns has received relatively little attention, especially in the area of theoretical considerations. Guided by the principles of psychomechanics, Hirtle (1982a) put forth a fairly elaborate theory of number in English nouns. The aim of this work is to provide evidence to validate parts of Hirtle's theory, to verify some of his analyses, and to investigate several problems, some of which are mentioned in his work as subjects for further research. Specific areas treated are ailment nouns, liquid names, ending in -ings, binary objects, abstract -s, and external singulars.
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Grammatical Relations in Romani
Editor(s): Viktor Elšík and Yaron MatrasPublication Date November 2000More LessThis is the first typologically-oriented collection on Romani that is devoted to a particular thematic domain — that of noun phrase grammar. The approach taken is unique in that it places this typologically hybrid language in the centre of a general linguistic, universal discussion of the relevant noun phrase phenomena. The book is also the first assembly of articles to deal with Romani as a whole on the basis of cross-dialectal samples, offering areal-typological, dialectological, and historicalinterpretations. The individual contributions discuss morphological and syntactic aspects of nominal and pronominal inflection, definite articles, demonstratives, genitive compounding, external possession, pronominal object doubling and morphosyntactic alignment. Contributors include leading experts in the fields of noun phrase grammar, Romani dialectologists, typologists and historical linguists.
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Grammatical Theory and Metascience
Author(s): Esa ItkonenPublication Date January 1978More LessIn this book, the author analyses the nature of the science of grammar. After presenting some methodological and historical background, he sets forth a theory of language and of grammar, showing that the science of grammar is not an empirical, but a normative science, comparable to logic and philosophy, characterized by the use of the method of explication.
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Grammatical Theory and Romance Languages
Editor(s): Karen ZagonaPublication Date March 1996More LessThis volume presents recent theoretical research on Romance languages, selected from papers presented at the 25th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. It includes studies of individual Romance languages as well as comparative studies — both within the Romance family and with non-Romance languages (Basque, Bulgarian, Germanic and Quechua). Papers in phonetics and phonology treat stress, syllable structure, s-weakening, and the declination effect. Morphological topics include class-marker suppression and gender agreement and suppletion. Topics in syntactic theory include clitics, participial and adjectival agreement, the syntax of tense, mood, negation, adjectival predication, Tough-constructions, quantification and null objects.
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Grammaticalization
Author(s): Jurgen KlausenburgerPublication Date March 2000More LessIn this monograph, various aspects of the morphosyntactic evolution of the Romance languages are shown to interact in a theory of grammaticalization. The study argues for the incorporation and subordination of inflectional morphology within a grammaticalization continuum, constituting but a portion of the latter. Parameters of natural morphology are seen as principles of grammaticalization, but the reverse is also true, rendering grammaticalization and natural morphology indistinguishable. In the context of this theoretical framework, Chapter 2 deals with Latin, French, and Italian verbal inflection, focusing on universal and system-dependent parameters of natural morphology. In Chapter 3, a theory of grammaticalization is built on divergent elements, including not only grammaticalization studies proper, but also the perception/production line of inquiry, and typology and branching issues, permitting the phasing out of the traditional synthesis/analyis cycle. Chapter 4 touches on nominal inflection, in particular that of Old French and Rumanian, the most revealing histories in the Romance domain. Chapter 5, finally, thoroughly discusses extant theoretical questions in grammaticalization, prominently featuring the relevance of ‘invisible hand’ explanations and the crucial role played by unidirectionality. This study will be of interest to specialists in Romance and historical linguistics, as well as morphological theory.
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Greek and Indo-European Etymology in Action
Author(s): Raimo AnttilaPublication Date August 2000More LessThis study resurrects the genre of Wortstudien contributions or lexilogus treatments, the core of historical lexical semantics. Such studies used to be quite popular, and interest in lexical matters is again rising. The word family around the Indo-European root *aǵ- ‘drive’ is placed against its Germanic replacement drive as a typological parallel. Many long-standing problems can now be solved, and new hypotheses emerge. Starting with the still important sports and games aspect of social life, new morphology is resurrected (agṓn ‘games’ as an original plural; §2), and a strongly social meaning for ‘good’ (agathós; §3). Aganós finds its solution that combines the ‘mild’ and plant readings in a natural way (§4). Hunting-and-gathering considerations establish new possibilities or certainties for some ‘wealth’ words (§6), and all around religion is involved (§7). Comparable Baltic Finnic evidence is drawn in (§8), and such evidence is used to discuss cases on both sides. This way explanations for the Indo-European material are strengthened, or even made possible in the first place, and scores of Baltic Finnic words find attractive (driving) loan hypotheses as their etymologies.
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Headhood, Elements, Specification and Contrastivity
Editor(s): Philip Carr, Jacques Durand and Colin J. EwenPublication Date March 2005More LessThe papers in this volume focus on notions which are central to the work of John M. Anderson – the founder of Dependency Phonology – and to phonological theory: the idea of structural analogy between phonology and syntax; the head/dependent relation; the idea that phonological representations are best conceived of in terms of a set of privative elements (rather than as binary-valued features); and the related notions of contrastivity and specification (and non-specification). An important issue dealt with is the relationship between specification and derivationality, and the question whether derivations are necessary in phonological theory. Many of the contributions provide sound empirical support for the appeal to elements and to headhood at all levels of phonological analysis. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in current issues in phonological theory.
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Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area
Author(s): Vit BubenikPublication Date January 1989More LessThis study concentrates on the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the history of Greek language. It focuses on the gradual contamination of classical dialects by the Hellenistic Koine, their disappearance, the range of intraregional variation, and the process of Koinization from the angle of interregional adjustments. The author draws on recent sociolinguistic methods dealing with lexical and social diffusion of linguistic change, statistical analysis, and research into bilingualism and diglossia.
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Historical and Comparative Linguistics
Author(s): Raimo AnttilaPublication Date January 1989More LessIn any course of historical and comparative linguistics there will be students of different language backgrounds, different levels of linguistic training, and different theoretical orientation. This textbook attempts to mitigate the problems raised by this heterogeneity in a number of ways. Since it is impossible to treat the language or language family of special interest to every student, the focus of this book is on English in particular and Indo-European languages in general, with Finnish and its closely related languages for contrast. The tenets of different schools of linguistics, and the controversies among them, are treated eclectically and objectively; the examination of language itself plays the leading role in our efforts to ascertain the comparative value of competing theories. This revised edition (1989) of a standard work for comparative linguists offers an added introduction dealing mainly with a semiotic basis of change, a final chapter on aspects of explanation, particularly in historical and human disciplines, and added sections on comparative syntax and on the semiotic status of the comparative method.
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Historical Linguistics 1987
Editor(s): Henning Andersen and E.F.K. KoernerPublication Date January 1990More LessThe volume contains 37 papers originally presented at the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Lille, France. The papers bring historical data to bear on issues in theoretical linguistics, both descriptive and diachronic or deal with specific questions in the history of individual languages. The theoretical issues range from phonology over morphology and syntax to the lexicon, as well as questions of historical dialectology, language contact, the theory of linguistic change, and problems of comparative reconstruction. The languages discussed are Finno-Ugric and Indo-European, most of the papers dealing with Germanic and Romance languages (especially English and French), but some being devoted to Greek, Celtic, Slavic, and Hittite.
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Historical Linguistics 1989
Editor(s): Henk Aertsen and Robert J. JeffersPublication Date August 1993More LessThe present volume contains revised versions of selected papers from the general sessions of ICHL 9. The 34 papers cover topics from the full range of contemporary historical linguistic scholarship. The papers address issues of language change in a large variety of languages and language families, both Indo-European and non-Indo-European: students of Germanic linguistics will likely find the volume to be of particular interest, as more than a dozen contributions deal with developments in Afrikaans, Dutch, English, German and Icelandic. The volume includes an index of names and languages.
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Historical Linguistics 1991
Editor(s): Jaap van MarlePublication Date August 1993More LessThis volume contains 22 of the 95 papers presented during ICHL 10. The articles included here clearly reflect the on-going interest in the general mechanisms of language change, the close relationship between present-day historical linguistics and linguistic theory, and the renewed interest in language contact. The papers deal with more general issues as well as with specific problems in diverse languages and language groups. The volume contains three indexes: of names, of languages, and of subjects.
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Historical Linguistics 1993
Editor(s): Henning AndersenPublication Date May 1995More LessThis volume contains a selection of 34 of the 96 papers presented at ICHL 1993, including several of the contributions to the workshop on Parameters and Typology organized jointly by Henning Andersen and David W. Lightfoot. Major topics represented are grammaticalization and functional renewal (illustrated with changes in romance, French, Pennsylvania German, Afrikaans, English, Finnish), changes in syntax (Indo-European, Indo-Aryan, Ancient Greek, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese, Dutch, English) and discourse structure (Old Russian, Old French), morphology (German, Turkic), phonology (Romance, Italian, French, German, Old English, English). Several papers include sociolinguistic, areal, and typological perspectives on change; a few are specifically concerned with reconstruction or with the principles of reconstruction, and several demonstrate the continued importance of the philological methods in the study of texts.
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Historical Linguistics 1995
Editor(s): John Charles Smith and Delia BentleyPublication Date March 2000More LessThis volume contains papers on general issues of language change, as well as specific studies of non-Germanic languages, including Romance, Slavonic, Japanese, Australian languages, and early Indo-European. A second volume, edited by Richard M. Hogg and Linda van Bergen, contains papers on Germanic.
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Historical Linguistics 1995
Editor(s): Richard M. Hogg and Linda van BergenPublication Date September 1998More LessThe Twelfth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, which is the major forum for the presentation of work in progress in the field of diachronic linguistics, took place at the University of Manchester in August 1995. The quality and breadth of the abstracts submitted for the general programme was such that four parallel sessions were needed throughout the conference. The present volume contains selected papers which deal with the Germanic languages. A companion volume, edited by J.C. Smith and Delia Bentley, contains papers on general problems in historical linguistics and studies of non-Germanic languages. The conference reflected the current health of diachronic linguistics. There were more papers and more participants than at past conferences, and the discussion covered a broader range of languages than hitherto.
Sometimes it has been possible to isolate a particular preoccupation which has dominated much of the conference; but the overall impression to be gained from the Manchester meeting was one of stimulating diversity — the discipline appears to be moving forward on many fronts simultaneously, yet without losing focus. This stimulating diversity is well reflected in this important collection.
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Historical Linguistics 1997
Editor(s): Monika S. Schmid, Jennifer R. Austin and Dieter SteinPublication Date October 1998More LessThis volume presents a selection from the papers given at the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. It offers a window on the current state of the art in historical linguistics: the papers cover a wide range of different languages, different language families, and different approaches to the study of linguistic change, ranging from optimality theory, theories of grammaticalization and the invisible hand, treatments of language contact and creolization to the linguistic consequences of political correctness. Among the languages under discussion are Akkadian, Catalan, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, Sranan, Western Malayo-Polynesian, Yiddish, and a variety of Romance and Native American languages.
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Historical Linguistics 1999
Editor(s): Laurel J. BrintonPublication Date August 2001More LessThis is a selection of papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics held August 9-13, 1999, at the University of British Columbia. From the rich program and the many papers given during this conference, the present twenty-three papers were carefully selected to display the state of current research in the field of historical linguistics.
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Historical Linguistics 2001
Editor(s): Barry J. Blake and Kate BurridgePublication Date July 2003More LessThis is a selection of papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics held in Melbourne 13-17 August 2001, hosted by the Linguistics Program at La Trobe University. The papers range from the general theoretical to the study of particular languages and embrace most areas of linguistics, particularly morpho-syntax.
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Historical Linguistics 2003
Editor(s): Michael Fortescue, Eva Skafte Jensen, Jens Erik Mogensen and Lene SchøslerPublication Date January 2005More LessThis volume consists of 19 papers presented at the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, which was held in August 2003 in Copenhagen and drew the largest number of participants and the widest array of languages that this important biannual conference has ever had. As with previous volumes, the papers selected cover a wide range of subjects besides the core areas of historical linguistics, and this time include studies on ethnolinguistics, grammaticalisation, language contact, sociolinguistics, and typology. The individual languages treated include Brazilian Portuguese, Chukchi, Korean, Danish, English, German, Greek, Japanese, Kok-Papónk, Latin, Newar, Old Norse, Romanian, Seneca, Spanish, and Swedish. The volume reflects the state of the art both empirical and theoretical — in Historical Linguistics today, and shows the discipline to be as flourishing and capable of new advances as ever.
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Historical Linguistics 2005
Editor(s): Joseph C. Salmons and Shannon Dubenion-SmithPublication Date August 2007More LessThis volume contains 22 revised papers originally presented at the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, held August 2005 in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The papers cover a broad range of languages, including well-studied languages of Europe but also Aramaic, Zoque and Uto-Aztecan, Japanese and Korean, Afrikaans, and the Pilbara languages of Australia. The theoretical approaches taken are equally diverse, often bringing together aspects of ‘formal’ and ‘functional’ theories in a single contribution. Many of the chapters provide fresh data, including several drawing on data from electronic corpora. Topics range from traditional comparative reconstruction to prosodic change and the role of processing in syntactic change.
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Historical Linguistics 2007
Editor(s): Monique Dufresne, Fernande Dupuis and Etleva VocajPublication Date November 2009More LessFor more than three decades, the International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) has been characterized by diversity, both in terms of the theoretical frameworks used by its researchers and the wide variety of languages that are analyzed. ICHL 18, which took place at the Université du Québec à Montréal in August 2007, was no exception to the continuation of this tradition. The articles in the present volume encompass many different approaches and a wide range of theories, including grammaticalization, generative approaches to linguistic change and variation, reanalysis, the use of analogy, and the interplay between internal and external factors. The volume is divided into four sections, dealing with phonology, with syntax, morphology, and semantics, with external factors in linguistic change, and with tools and methodologies. This way, this volume aims to be a reflection of the diverse trends in current historical linguistic study.
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Historical Linguistics 2009
Editor(s): Ans M.C. van Kemenade and Nynke de HaasPublication Date April 2012More LessThe International Conference on Historical Linguistics has always been a forum that reflects the general state of the art in the field, and the 2009 edition, held in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, fully allows the conclusion that the field has been thriving over the years. The studies presented in this volume are an expression of ongoing theoretical discussions as well as new analytical approaches to the study of issues concerning language change. Taken together, they reflect some of the current challenges in the field, as well as the opportunities offered by judicious use of theoretical models and careful corpus-based work. The volume's contributions are organized under the following headings: I. General and Specific Issues of Language Change, II. Linguistic Variation and Change in Germanic, III. Linguistic Variation and Change in Greek, and IV. Linguistic Change in Romance.
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Historical Linguistics 2011
Editor(s): Ritsuko Kikusawa and Lawrence A. ReidPublication Date November 2013More LessThis volume of selected papers from the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Osaka, Japan, July 2011) presents a set of stimulating and ground-breaking studies on a wide range of languages and language families. As the scope of studies that can be characterized as ‘Historical Linguistics’ has expanded, ICHL conferences have likewise seen a broadening of topics presented, and this conference was no exception, reflected by the inclusion in this volume of a plenary presentation on the grammaticalization of expressions of negation and gendered kinship in American Sign Language. Three other papers propose new views of the role of grammaticalization in English, Chinese, and Niger-Congo languages. Four of the papers discuss specific problems that arise in the comparison and reconstruction of linguistic features in a range of languages from Asia, Europe and South America. The last six studies deal with innovative approaches to the historical development of suppletion in Romance languages, possessive classifiers in Austronesian, universal quantifiers in Germanic, adjectival sequences in English, exaptation in Celtic and Early English, and drift in Ancient Egyptian.
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Historical Linguistics 2013
Editor(s): Dag T.T. HaugPublication Date October 2015More LessThe International Conference on Historical Linguistics is the main conference for specialists in language change, and the 2013 conference in Oslo drew more than 300 participants, with 182 papers presented in the general session. The 16 papers selected for inclusion in this volume from the general session of ICHL 2013 not only provide a clear picture of the state of the art in various subfields of historical linguistics but also present recent insights in diachronic phonology, typology, morphology and morphosyntax. The languages and families covered include English, German, Scandinavian, French, Occitan, Portuguese, Sardinian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, Old Japanese and Austronesian. The volume will be useful to any linguist with an interest in diachronic matters as well as general linguistic theory.
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Historical Linguistics 2015
Editor(s): Michela Cennamo and Claudia FabrizioPublication Date September 2019More LessThe collection of articles presented in this volume addresses a number of general theoretical, methodological and empirical issues in the field of Historical Linguistics, in different levels of analysis and on different themes: (i) phonology, (ii) morphology, (iii) morphosyntax, (iv) syntax, (v) diachronic typology, (vi) semantics and pragmatics, and (vii) language contact, variation and diffusion. The topics discussed, often in a comparative perspective, feature a variety of languages and language families and cover a wide range of research areas. Novel analyses and often new diachronic data — also from less known and under-investigated languages — are provided to the debate on the principles, mechanisms, paths and models of language change, as well as the relationship between synchronic variation and diachrony. The volume is of interest to scholars of different persuasions working on all aspects of language change.
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Historical Linguistics 2017
Editor(s): Bridget DrinkaPublication Date July 2020More LessThe collected articles in this volume address an array of cutting-edge issues in the field of historical linguistics, including new theoretical approaches and innovative methodologies for studying language through a diachronic lens. The articles focus on the following themes: I. Case & Argument Structure, II. Alignment & Diathesis, III. Patterns, Paradigms, & Restructuring, IV. Grammaticalization & Construction Grammar, V. Corpus Linguistics & Morphosyntax, VI. Languages in Contact. Papers reflect a wide range of perspectives, and focus on issues and data from an array of languages and language families, from new analyses of case and argument structure in Ancient Greek to phonological evidence for language contact in Vietnamese, from patterns of convergence in Neo-Aramaic to the development of the ergative in Basque. The volume contributes substantially to the debate surrounding core issues of language change: the role of the individual speaker, the nature of paths of grammaticalization, the role of contact, the interface of diachrony and synchrony, and many other issues. It should be useful to any reader hoping to gain insight into the nature of language change.
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Historical Philology
Editor(s): Bela Brogyanyi and Reiner LippPublication Date October 1992More LessThe present volume mainly contains contributions on the classical language, Greek and Latin. In addition to the historical comparative linguistic aspects of these languages, philological and historical questions are dealt with as well. Consideration of Italic and Romance topics is also included. The volume is divided into 7 sections: I. Greek linguistics, II. Greek lexicology, III. Mycenology. IV. Greek philology, V. Italic and Latin philology, VI. Latin and Romance languages, VII. Roman history.
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Historical Romance Linguistics
Editor(s): Randall Gess and Deborah ArteagaPublication Date May 2006More LessThis volume contains 17 studies on historical Romance linguistics within a variety of current theoretical frameworks; it includes studies on phonology, morphology and syntax, focusing solely or comparatively on all five ‘major’ Romance languages: French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. An introduction by the eminent Romance Linguist Jürgen Klausenburger addresses the fit of these studies in the overall development of the field of historical Romance linguistics since the 19th century. The studies in this volume demonstrate an organic link between Malkiel’s (1961) ‘classic’ definition of Romance linguistics and the field of Romance linguistics today, because just as scholars of the field in the 19th century successfully applied the dominant paradigm of (historical) linguistics of their time, Neogrammarian theory, so do the authors contained in the present volume avail themselves of current linguistic advances to achieve equally significant results.
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A Historical Syntax of Late Middle Indo-Aryan (Apabhraṃśa)
Author(s): Vit BubenikPublication Date October 1998More LessThis monograph aims to close the gap in our knowledge of the nature and pace of grammatical change during the formative period of today’s Indo-Aryan languages. During the 6th-12th c. the gradual erosion of the synthetic morphology of Old Indo-Aryan resulted ultimately in the remodelling of its syntax in the direction of the New Indo-Aryan analytic type.
This study concentrates on the emergence and development of the ergative construction in terms of the passive-to-ergative reanalysis and the co-existence of the ergative construction with the old and new analytic passive constructions. Special attention is paid to the actuation problem seen as the tug of war between conservative and eliminative forces during their development. Other chapters deal with the evolution of grammatical and lexical aspect, causativization, modality, absolute constructions and subordination.
This study is based on a wealth of new data gleaned from original poetic works in Apabhraṃśa (by Svayaṃbhādeva, Puṣpadanta, Haribhadra, Somaprabha et al.). It contains sections dealing with descriptive techniques of Medieval Indian grammarians (esp. Hemacandra). All the Sanskrit, Prakrit and Apabhraṃśa examples are consistently parsed and translated.
The opus is cast in the theoretical framework of Functional Grammar of the Prague and Amsterdam Schools. It should be of particular interest to scholars and students of Indo-Aryan and general historical linguistics, especially those interested in the issues of morphosyntactic change and typology in their sociohistorical setting.
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History and Perspectives of Language Study
Editor(s): Olga Mišeska Tomić and Milorad RadovanovićPublication Date August 2000More LessEach of the contributions in this volume expresses in some way the hope that it is possible to achieve an integrity of linguistics, understood as a science of man, in its psychological, sociological, pragmatic and cultural context. The first section focuses on the history of language study, the second section on the integrative description of facets of language, and the last section on the need for the study of language in context.
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A History of Indo-European Verb Morphology
Author(s): Kenneth ShieldsPublication Date July 1992More LessThis book explores the origin and evolution of important grammatical categories of the Indo-European verb, including the markers of person, tense, number, aspect, and mood. Its central thesis is that many of these markers can be traced to original deictic particles which were incorporated into verbal structures in order to indicate the 'hic and nunc' and various degrees of remoteness from the 'hic and nunc'. The alterations to which these deictic elements were subject are viewed here in the context of an Indo-European language very different from Brugmannian Indo-European, many features of which, it is argued, appeared only in the period of dialectal development. This book challenges numerous traditional proposals about the Indo-European verb; all reconstructions contained in it are firmly based on extant data and are consonant with established principles of linguistic change.
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Iconicity in Language
Editor(s): Raffaele SimonePublication Date February 1995More LessSeveral current linguistic approaches converge in rejecting the wide-spread idea that language is an autonomous system, i.e. that it is structured independently from the outside world and the natural equipment of language users. Around the world, semiotically biased linguistics (functionalism, naturalism, etc.) takes this position, which differentiates it very clearly from generative linguistics. One of the basic assumptions of such approaches is that language structure includes some non-arbitrary aspects, from the phonological through the textual level, and a great amount of research has occurred in the last decade regarding the “iconic aspects” of language(s). This volume focuses on generally neglected dimensions of language and semiotic activity, featuring contributions by philosophers, linguists, semioticians, and psychologists. After tracing the tradition of iconicity in the history of linguistic thought, the central section is devoted to specific analyses emphasizing the role of non-arbitrary phenomena in language foundation and linguistic structure. Specifically discussed are numeration systems, the gestural systems of communication among deaf people, the genesis of writing in children, and inter-ethnic communication.
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The Initiation of Sound Change
Editor(s): Maria-Josep Solé and Daniel RecasensPublication Date July 2012More LessThe origins of sound change is one of the oldest and most challenging questions in the study of language. The goal of this volume is to examine current approaches to sound change from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, including articulatory variation and modeling, speech perception mechanisms and neurobiological processes, geographical and social variation, and diachronic phonology. This diversity of perspectives contributes to a fruitful cross-fertilization across disciplines and represents an attempt to formulate converging ideas on the factors that lead to sound change. This book is addressed to scholars in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, and phonology as well as to researchers in speech production and perception, cognition and modeling. Given the theoretical and methodological interest of the contributions as well as the novel instrumental techniques applied to the study of sound change, this volume will interest professionals teaching language typology, laboratory phonology, sound change, phonetics and phonological theory at the graduate level.
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Instrumental Studies in Arabic Phonetics
Editor(s): Zeki Majeed Hassan and Barry HeselwoodPublication Date December 2011More LessBrought together in this volume are fourteen studies using a range of modern instrumental methods – acoustic and articulatory – to investigate the phonetics of several North African and Middle Eastern varieties of Arabic. Topics covered include syllable structure, quantity, assimilation, guttural and emphatic consonants and their pharyngeal and laryngeal mechanisms, intonation, and language acquisition. In addition to presenting new data and new descriptions and interpretations, a key aim of the volume is to demonstrate the depth of objective analysis that instrumental methods can enable researchers to achieve. A special feature of many chapters is the use of more than one type of instrumentation to give different perspectives on phonetic properties of Arabic speech which have fascinated scholars since medieval times. The volume will be of interest to phoneticians, phonologists and Arabic dialectologists, and provides a link between traditional qualitative accounts of spoken Arabic and modern quantitative methods of instrumental phonetic analysis.
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Integrational Linguistics
Author(s): Hans-Heinrich LiebPublication Date January 1984More LessThis is the first volume of a work envisioned to consist of six volumes, providing a complete overview of the unified approach to basic problems of linguistics, as developed by Hans-Heinrich Lieb. This first volume contains a detailed overview of Integrational Linguistics, and outlines a major fragment of a theory of language systems. The further volumes will discuss: II. A theory of grammars; III. Language universals and language contrast; IV. Syntax and semantics; V. Morphology and morphosemantics; VI. Lexical semantics.
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Invariance, Markedness and Distinctive Feature Analysis
Author(s): Yishai TobinPublication Date December 1994More LessThis volume provides a new kind of contrastive analysis of two unrelated languages — English and Hebrew — based on the semiotic concepts of invariance, markedness and distinctive feature theory. It concentrates on linguistic forms and constructions which are remarkably different in each language despite the fact that they share the same familiar classifications and labels. Tobin demonstrates how and why traditional and modern syntactic categories such as grammatical number; verb tense, aspect, mood and voice; conditionals and interrogatives; etc., are not equivalent across languages. It is argued that these so-called universal concepts function differently in each language system because they belong to distinct language-specific semantic domains which are marked by different sets of semantic features. The data used in this volume have been taken from a wide range of both spoken and written discourse and texts reflecting people's actual use of language presented in their relevant linguistic and situational contexts.
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Issues in Phonological Structure
Editor(s): S.J. Hannahs and Mike DavenportPublication Date December 1999More LessThis volume contains revised, expanded and updated versions of papers originally presented at the International Workshop on Phonological Structure held at the University of Durham in September 1994. As the title suggests, the contributions focus on aspects of phonological structure, both segment internal and suprasegmental.
A number of questions surrounding phonological structure are approached from a wide variety of theoretical standpoints, including the frameworks of prosodic phonology, declarative phonology, optimality theory, metrical phonology, government phonology, feature geometry, particle theory and dependency phonology. This range of viewpoints allows the crossfertilisation of various strands of phonological thinking with respect to many of the central issues concerning phonological structure.
The empirical basis of the contributions is also wide-ranging, including among the languages dealt with Aranda, Cayuvava, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish.
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Italic and Romance
Editor(s): Herbert J. IzzoPublication Date January 1980More LessThe papers in this volume deal with the languages of ancient Italy and the Romance dialects that grew from them. The arrangement of papers in the volume is topical, starting with ancient Italy and moving upward in time and outward in space through general Romance to Italian, French and Provençal, Spanish, Romanian and Sardinian.
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Keys to the History of English
Editor(s): Thijs Porck, Moragh S. Gordon and Luisella CaonPublication Date April 2024More LessThis volume brings together contributions selected from papers delivered at the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL, Leiden 2021). The contributions deal with various aspects of English language across time and geographical space, shedding light on both long-term developments and singular documents of particular linguistic interest. A wide range of methodologies are represented, including corpus linguistics, acoustic phonetics and philology. Chapters showcase work on syntax and word order (parataxis and hypotaxis from Old to Late Modern English; left-dislocation in Old English; do-support in Scots), diachronic linguistic change (phonological developments of lateral /l/ in English; modality in noun clauses from Old to Early Modern English; editorial practices of Middle English punctuation across time) and lexicography and lexis (Old English glosses of the Durham Ritual; Old English lexicographers from 17th-century Germany; lexical differences between Old and Middle English; Yiddish loanwords in English). This volume will be of interest to those working on morphology, syntax and lexicography of English, historical linguistics, language change, history of linguistics, computational historical linguistics and related sub-disciplines.
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Language and Ideology
Editor(s): René Dirven, Roslyn M. Frank and Cornelia IliePublication Date March 2001More LessTogether with its sister volume on Theoretical Cognitive Approaches, this volume explores the contribution which cognitive linguistics can make to the identification and analysis of overt and hidden ideologies. This volume shows that descriptive tools which cognitive linguistics developed for the analysis of language-in-use are highly efficient for the analysis of ideologies as well. Amongst them are the concept of grounding and the speaker’s deictic centre, iconographic reference, frames, cultural cognitive models as a subgroup of Idealized Cognitive Models, conceptual metaphors, root metaphors, frames as groups of metaphors, mental spaces, and conceptual blending.
The first section ‘Political metaphor and ideology’ discusses topics such as Nazi Germany, discrimination of Afro-Americans, South Africa’s “rainbow nation”, and the impeachment campaign against President Clinton. The second section, on cross-cultural “Otherness” deals with cultural clashes such as those between the Basque symbolic world and the general European value systems; between the Islam and the West, determining its treatment of Iraq in the Gulf War; and between Hong Kong “Otherness” and centuries of Western dominance. The third section deals with ‘Metaphors for institutional ideologies’ and concentrates on the globalisation of the North and South American markets, on insults in (un)parliamentary debates, and on the Internet being for sale.
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Language and Ideology
Editor(s): René Dirven, Bruce Hawkins and Esra SandikciogluPublication Date February 2001More LessTogether with its sister volume on Descriptive Cognitive Approaches, this volume explores the contribution which cognitive linguistics can make to the identification and analysis of overt and hidden ideologies. As a theory of language which sees language as the accumulation of the conventionalised conceptualisations of a given linguistic and/or cultural community or sub-group within it, cognitive linguistics is called upon to make its own inroads in the study of ideology. This volume offers theoretical approaches and first discusses the philosophical foundations of cognitive linguistics. The question whether cognitive linguistics is not an ideology itself is not tabooed. The speaker’s deictic centre is the anchoring point, not only for spatial, temporal or interactional deixis, but also for cultural and ideological deixis. Cognitive linguistics is also confronted with a severe Marxist critique, but the potential convergence between the two ‘philosophies’ is highlighted as well. Further the question is raised to what extent the central nervous system and the grammatical system of a language impose sexually biased, and hence ideological representations on cognition. Finally, linguistics itself is seen as a potential bearer of ideological deviations as was the case with the ‘politics of linguistics’ in Nazi Germany, and even with the quest for the Indo-European homeland in comparative and historical linguistics throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th century.
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Language and Text
Editor(s): Adam Pawłowski, Jan Mačutek, Sheila Embleton and George MikrosPublication Date December 2021More LessSpecialists in quantitative linguistics the world over have recourse to a solid and universal methodology. These days, their methods and mathematical models must also respond to new communication phenomena and the flood of data produced daily. While various disciplines (computer science, media science) have different ways of processing this onslaught of information, the linguistic approach is arguably the most relevant and effective. This book includes recent results from many renowned contemporary practitioners in the field. Our target audiences are academics, researchers, graduate students, and others involved in linguistics, digital humanities, and applied mathematics.
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The Language Builder
Author(s): Claude HagègePublication Date June 1993More LessLinguistics, as a social science, should have something to teach us about humans as social beings. However, modern grammatical theories regard languages as autonomous systems, so these theories are little concerned with speakers and hearers, their interactions, and their relationship to the world around them. Further, these theories tend toward excessive concern with methodology and the properties of linguistic systems, neglecting, in fact, the languages themselves and those who use them in everyday life. Even the shift toward cognitive approaches, promising for their new insights into the brain, still misses an equally important aspect of language, namely a framework which would account for the social activity by which speakers build linguistic structures in order to meet the requirements of communication. Based on a wide range of languages, Hagège's work sheds light on the human language building activity. He argues that the conscious and unconscious 'signatures' of human nature are written everywhere in language. The study of these signatures gives insight into basic characteristics of human beings, tends to re-humanize linguistics, and stresses the importance of language as a dynamic activity as opposed to a self-contained system.
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Language Change and Variation
Editor(s): Ralph W. Fasold and Deborah SchiffrinPublication Date January 1989More LessThe study of language variation in social context continues to hold the attention of a large number of linguists. This research is promoted by the annual colloquia on New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English' (NWAVE). This volume is a selection of revised papers from the NWAVE XI, held at Georgetown University. It deals with a number of items, some of which have often been discussed, others that have been less emphasized. The first group of articles in the volume center on a frequent theme: speech communities as the essential setting for understanding variation in language. Earlier work in linguistic variation dealt for the most part with phonological variation and change. Syntactic and morphological change and variation in syntax are also discussed. A selection on the role of variation in understanding first language acquisition comprises three papers. Articles in the last section of the volume concern theoretical controversy and methodological advances.
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Language Contact and Development around the North Sea
Editor(s): Merja Stenroos, Martti Mäkinen and Inge SærheimPublication Date April 2012More LessThis volume brings together eleven studies on the history of language and writing in the North Sea area, with focus on contacts and interchanges through time. Its range spans from the investigation of pre-Germanic place-names to present-day Shetland; the materials studied include glosses, legal and trade documents as well as place names and modern dialects. The volume is unique in its combination of linguistics and place-name studies with literacy studies, which allows for a very dynamic picture of the history of language contact and texts in the North Sea area. Different approaches come together to illuminate a major insight: the omnipresence of multilingualism as a context for language development and a formative characteristic of literacy. Among the contributors are experts on English, Nordic and German language history. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students working on the history of Northern European languages, literacy studies and language contact
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Language Contact, Inherited Similarity and Social Difference
Author(s): Danny LawPublication Date June 2014More LessThis book offers a study of long-term, intensive language contact between more than a dozen Mayan languages spoken in the lowlands of Guatemala, Southern Mexico and Belize. It details the massive restructuring of syntactic and semantic organization, the calquing of grammatical patterns, and the direct borrowing of inflectional morphology, including, in some of these languages, the direct borrowing of even entire morphological paradigms. The in-depth analysis of contact among the genetically related Lowland Mayan languages presented in this volume serves as a highly relevant case for theoretical, historical, contact, typological, socio- and anthropological linguistics. This linguistically complex situation involves serious engagement with issues of methods for distinguishing contact-induced similarity from inherited similarity, the role of social and ideological variables in conditioning the outcomes of language contact, cross-linguistic tendencies in language contact, as well as the effect that inherited similarity can have on the processes and outcomes of language contact.
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Language Contacts in Prehistory
Editor(s): Henning AndersenPublication Date April 2003More LessEvery language includes layers of lexical and grammatical elements that entered it at different times in the more or less distant past. Hence, for periods preceding our earliest historical documentation, linguistic stratigraphy — the systematic study of such layers — may yield information about the prehistory of a given tradition of speaking in a variety of ways. For instance, irregular phonological reflexes may be evidence of the convergence of diverse dialects in the formation of a language, and layers of material from different source languages may form a record of changing cultural contacts in the past. In this volume are discussed past problems and current advances in the stratigraphy of Indo-European, African, Southeast Asian, Australian, Oceanic, Japanese, and Meso-American languages.
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