Download or read book Languages and Their Speakers written by Timothy Shopen and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1987-05-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Languages and Their Speakers provides an introduction both to languages themselves and to their social functions. Written especially for nonlinguistics majors, the book considers how speakers know their languages—know them as grammatical systems and know them as part of a cultural matrix.

Download or read book The Languages of Australia written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ground-breaking 1980 study of over 200 Australian languages is still valuable, especially for its non-technical opening chapters.

Download or read book Australian Languages written by Claire Bowern and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses controversial issues in the application of the comparative method to the languages of Australia which have recently come to international prominence. Are these languages 'different' in ways that challenge the fundamental assumptions of historical linguistics? Can subgrouping be successfully undertaken using the Comparative Method? Is the genetic construct of a far-flung 'Pama-Nyungan' language family supportable by classic methods of reconstruction? Contrary to increasingly established views of the Australian scene, this book makes a major contribution to the demonstration that traditional methods can indeed be applied to these languages. These studies, introduced by chapters on subgrouping methodology and the history of Australian linguistic classification, rigorously apply the comparative method to establishing subgroups among Australian languages and justifying the phonology of Proto-Pama-Nyungan. Individual chapters can profitably be read either for their contribution to Australian linguistic prehistory or as case studies in the application of the comparative method. Contributions by: B. Alpher; B. Baker; C. Bowern; C. Bowern & H. Koch; G. Breen; L. Campbell; I. Green & R. Nordlinger; L. Hercus & P. Austin; H. Koch; P. McConvell & M. Laughren; L. Miceli; G. O'Grady & K. L. Hale; J. Simpson & L. Hercus.

Download or read book Cultural Contact and Linguistic Relativity Among the Indians of Northwestern California written by Sean O'Neill and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the linguistic relativity principle in relation to the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk Indians Despite centuries of intertribal contact, the American Indian peoples of northwestern California have continued to speak a variety of distinct languages. At the same time, they have come to embrace a common way of life based on salmon fishing and shared religious practices. In this thought-provoking re-examination of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, Sean O’Neill looks closely at the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk peoples to explore the striking juxtaposition between linguistic diversity and relative cultural uniformity among their communities. O’Neill examines intertribal contact, multilingualism, storytelling, and historical change among the three tribes, focusing on the traditional culture of the region as it existed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He asks important historical questions at the heart of the linguistic relativity hypothesis: Have the languages in fact grown more similar as a result of contact, multilingualism, and cultural convergence? Or have they instead maintained some of their striking grammatical and semantic differences? Through comparison of the three languages, O’Neill shows that long-term contact among the tribes intensified their linguistic differences, creating unique Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk identities. If language encapsulates worldview, as the principle of linguistic relativity suggests, then this region’s linguistic diversity is puzzling. Analyzing patterns of linguistic accommodation as seen in the semantics of space and time, grammatical classification, and specialized cultural vocabularies, O’Neill resolves the apparent paradox by assessing long-term effects of contact.

Download or read book Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 1320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World is an authoritative single-volume reference resource comprehensively describing the major languages and language families of the world. It will provide full descriptions of the phonology, semantics, morphology, and syntax of the world’s major languages, giving insights into their structure, history and development, sounds, meaning, structure, and language family, thereby both highlighting their diversity for comparative study, and contextualizing them according to their genetic relationships and regional distribution. Based on the highly acclaimed and award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, this volume will provide an edited collection of almost 400 articles throughout which a representative subset of the world's major languages are unfolded and explained in up-to-date terminology and authoritative interpretation, by the leading scholars in linguistics. In highlighting the diversity of the world’s languages — from the thriving to the endangered and extinct — this work will be the first point of call to any language expert interested in this huge area. No other single volume will match the extent of language coverage or the authority of the contributors of Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Extraordinary breadth of coverage: a comprehensive selection of just under 400 articles covering the world's major languages, language families, and classification structures, issues and dispute Peerless quality: based on 20 years of academic development on two editions of the leading reference resource in linguistics, Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics Unique authorship: 350 of the world's leading experts brought together for one purpose Exceptional editorial selection, review and validation process: Keith Brown and Sarah Ogilvie act as first-tier guarantors for article quality and coverage Compact and affordable: one-volume format makes this suitable for personal study at any institution interested in areal, descriptive, or comparative language study - and at a fraction of the cost of the full encyclopedia

Download or read book Handbook of Australian Languages written by Robert M. W. Dixon and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1979 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook makes available short grammatical sketches of Australian languages. Each grammar is written in a standard format, following guidelines provided by the editors, and includes a sample text and vocabulary text. In the introduction the editors discuss some of the recurrent features of languages across the continent, together with grammars of Guugu Yimidhirr by John Haviland; Pitta-Pitta by Barry J. Blake; Gumbaynggir by Diana Eades; and Yaygir by Terry Crowley.

Download or read book Language at Large written by Alexandra Aikhenvald and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-07-27 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume brings together important essays on syntax and semantics by Aikhenvald and Dixon. It focusses on topics in linguistic typology, the analysis of previously undescribed languages and issues in the grammar and lexicography of English.

Download or read book Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia written by Michael Walsh and published by Aboriginal Studies Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of aspects of language and culture in different parts of Aboriginal Australia.

Download or read book Antipassive written by Katarzyna Janic and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the morpho-syntactic and semantic aspects of the antipassive construction from synchronic, diachronic, and typological perspectives. The nineteen contributions assembled in this volume address a wide range of aspects pertinent to the antipassive construction, such as lexical semantics, the properties of the antipassive markers, as well as the issue of fuzzy boundaries between the antipassive construction and a range of other formally and functionally similar constructions in genealogically and areally diverse languages. Purely synchronically oriented case studies are supplemented by contributions that shed light on the diachronic development of the antipassive construction and the antipassive markers. The book should be of central interest to many scholars, in particular to those working in the field of language typology, semantics, syntax, and historical linguists, as well as to specialists of the language families discussed in the individual contributions.

Download or read book Handbook of Australian Languages written by R.M.W. Dixon and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1979-12-31 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook makes available short grammatical sketches of Australian languages. Each grammar is written in a standard format, following guidelines provided by the editors, and includes a sample text and vocabulary text. In the introduction the editors discuss some of the recurrent features of languages across the continent, together with grammars of Guugu Yimidhirr by John Haviland; Pitta-Pitta by Barry J. Blake; Gumbaynggir by Diana Eades; and Yaygir by Terry Crowley.

Download or read book Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P written by Anna Asbury and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The category P belongs to a less studied area in theoretical linguistics, which has only recently attracted considerable attention. This volume brings together pioneering work on adpositions in spatial relations from different theoretical and cross-linguistic perspectives. The common theme in these contributions is the complex semantic and syntactic structure of PPs. Analyses are presented in several different frameworks and approaches, including generative syntax, optimality theoretic semantics and syntax, formal semantics, mathematical modeling, lexical syntax, and pragmatics. Among the languages featured in detail are English, German, Hebrew, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, and Persian. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of formal semantics, syntax and language typology, as well as scholars with a more general interest in spatial cognition.

Download or read book The Evolution of Morphology written by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-14 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the evolution of the grammatical structure of words in the more general contexts of human evolution and the origins of language. The consensus in many fields is that language is well designed for its purpose, and became so either through natural selection or by virtue of non-biological constraints on how language must be structured. Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy argues that in certain crucial respects language is not optimally designed. This can be seen, he suggests, in the existence of not one but two kinds of grammatical organization - syntax and morphology - and in the morphological and morpho-phonological complexity which leads to numerous departures from the one-form-one-meaning principle. Having discussed the issue of good and bad design in a wider biological context, the author shows that conventional explanations for the nature of morphology do not work. Its poor design features arose, he argues, from two characteristics present when the ancestors of modern humans had a vocabulary but no grammar. One of these was a synonymy-avoidance expectation, while the other was an articulatory and phonological apparatus that encouraged the development of new synonyms. Morphology developed in response to these conflicting pressures. In this stimulating and carefully argued account Professor McCarthy offers a powerful challenge to conventional views of the relationship between syntax and morphology, to the adaptationist view of language evolution, and to the notion that language in some way reflects 'laws of form'. This fundamental contribution to understanding the nature and evolution of language will be of wide interest to linguists of all theoretical persuasions as well as to scholars in cognitive science and anthropology.

Download or read book Aboriginal History written by and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Language in Australia written by Suzanne Romaine and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguists and non-linguists will find in this volume a guide and reference source to the rich linguistic heritage of Australia.

Download or read book Demonstratives written by Holger Diessel and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1999-12-15 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All languages have demonstratives, but their form, meaning and use vary tremendously across the languages of the world. This book presents the first large-scale analysis of demonstratives from a cross-linguistic and diachronic perspective. It is based on a representative sample of 85 languages. The first part of the book analyzes demonstratives from a synchronic point of view, examining their morphological structures, semantic features, syntactic functions, and pragmatic uses in spoken and written discourse. The second part concentrates on diachronic issues, in particular on the development of demonstratives into grammatical markers. Across languages demonstratives provide a frequent historical source for definite articles, relative and third person pronouns, nonverbal copulas, sentence connectives, directional preverbs, focus markers, expletives, and many other grammatical markers. The book describes the different mechanisms by which demonstratives grammaticalize and argues that the evolution of grammatical markers from demonstratives is crucially distinct from other cases of grammaticalization.

Download or read book Australian Languages written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-14 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Dixon presents a comprehensive study of the indigenous languages of Australia.

Download or read book Space in Language and Cognition written by Stephen C. Levinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-20 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Languages differ in how they describe space, and such differences between languages can be used to explore the relation between language and thought. This 2003 book shows that even in a core cognitive domain like spatial thinking, language influences how people think, memorize and reason about spatial relations and directions. After outlining a typology of spatial coordinate systems in language and cognition, it is shown that not all languages use all types, and that non-linguistic cognition mirrors the systems available in the local language. The book reports on collaborative, interdisciplinary research, involving anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, conducted in many languages and cultures around the world, which establishes this robust correlation. The overall results suggest that thinking in the cognitive sciences underestimates the transformative power of language on thinking. The book will be of interest to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers, and especially to students of spatial cognition.