Download or read book Language Contact Inherited Similarity and Social Difference written by Danny Law and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-06-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 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.

Download or read book The Handbook of Language Contact written by Raymond Hickey and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 1065 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of the definitive reference on contact studies and linguistic change—provides extensive new research and original case studies Language contact is a dynamic area of contemporary linguistic research that studies how language changes when speakers of different languages interact. Accessibly structured into three sections, The Handbook of Language Contact explores the role of contact studies within the field of linguistics, the value of contact studies for language change research, and the relevance of language contact for sociolinguistics. This authoritative volume presents original findings and fresh research directions from an international team of prominent experts. Thirty-seven specially-commissioned chapters cover a broad range of topics and case studies of contact from around the world. Now in its second edition, this valuable reference has been extensively updated with new chapters on topics including globalization, language acquisition, creolization, code-switching, and genetic classification. Fresh case studies examine Romance, Indo-European, African, Mayan, and many other languages in both the past and the present. Addressing the major issues in the field of language contact studies, this volume: Includes a representative sample of individual studies which re-evaluate the role of language contact in the broader context of language and society Offers 23 new chapters written by leading scholars Examines language contact in different societies, including many in Africa and Asia Provides a cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world The Handbook of Language Contact, Second Edition is an indispensable resource for researchers, scholars, and students involved in language contact, language variation and change, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and language theory.

Download or read book Language Contact written by Jeroen Darquennes and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-08-19 with total page 866 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language Contact. An International Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of current topics in research on language contact. Broadly conceived, it stands out for its international approach to language contact, complementing the theoretical state-of-the-art with examples from traditionally eclipsed areas and languages. Next to a thorough introductory overview of the ground-breaking methodological and theoretical approaches that shaped the discipline, ample attention goes to the new and innovative insights on language contact in the 21st century. Combining concise introductory contributions with in-depth treatment of the most relevant case studies in the field, the handbook speaks to both junior and established scholars.

Download or read book Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond written by Karen Dakin and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-06-30 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language-contact phenomena in Mesoamerica and adjacent regions present an exciting field for research that has the potential to significantly contribute to our understanding of language contact and the role that it plays in language change. This volume presents and analyzes fresh empirical data from living and/or extinct Mesoamerican languages (from the Mayan, Uto-Aztecan, Totonac-Tepehuan and Otomanguean groups), neighboring non-Mesoamerican languages (Apachean, Arawakan, Andean languages), as well as Spanish. Language-contact effects in these diverse languages and language groups are typically analyzed by different subfields of linguistics that do not necessarily interact with one another. It is hoped that this volume, which contains works from different scholarly traditions that represent a variety of approaches to the study of language contact, will contribute to the lessening of this compartmentalization. The volume is relevant to researchers of language contact and contact-induced change and to anyone interested both in the historical development and present features of indigenous languages of the Americas and Latin American Spanish.

Download or read book The Mayan Languages written by Judith Aissen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mayan Languages presents a comprehensive survey of the language family associated with the Classic Mayan civilization (AD 200–900), a family whose individual languages are still spoken today by at least six million indigenous Maya in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. This unique resource is an ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Mayan languages and linguistics. Written by a team of experts in the field, The Mayan Languages presents in-depth accounts of the linguistic features that characterize the thirty-one languages of the family, their historical evolution, and the social context in which they are spoken. The Mayan Languages: provides detailed grammatical sketches of approximately a third of the Mayan languages, representing most of the branches of the family; includes a section on the historical development of the family, as well as an entirely new sketch of the grammar of "Classic Maya" as represented in the hieroglyphic script; provides detailed state-of-the-art discussions of the principal advances in grammatical analysis of Mayan languages; includes ample discussion of the use of the languages in social, conversational, and poetic contexts. Consisting of topical chapters on the history, sociolinguistics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse structure, and acquisition of the Mayan languages, this book will be a resource for researchers and other readers with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology, language acquisition, and linguistic typology.

Download or read book Arabic and contact induced change written by Stefano Manfredi and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a synthesis of current expertise on contact-induced change in Arabic and its neighbours, with thirty chapters written by many of the leading experts on this topic. Its purpose is to showcase the current state of knowledge regarding the diverse outcomes of contacts between Arabic and other languages, in a format that is both accessible and useful to Arabists, historical linguists, and students of language contact.

Download or read book The Indigenous Languages of the Americas written by Lyle Campbell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Indigenous Languages of the Americas is a comprehensive assessment of what is known about their history and classification. It identifies gaps in knowledge and resolves controversial issues while making new contributions of its own. The book deals with the major themes involving these languages: classification and history of the Indigenous languages of the Americas; issues involving language names; origins of the languages of the New World; unclassified and spurious languages; hypotheses of distant linguistic relationships; linguistic areas; contact languages (pidgins, lingua francas, mixed languages); and loanwords and neologisms.

Download or read book Postcolonial Language Varieties in the Americas written by Danae Maria Perez and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Americas, both indigenous and postcolonial languages today bear witness of massive changes that have taken place since the colonial era. However, a unified approach to languages from different colonial areas is still missing. The present volume studies postcolonial varieties that emerged due to changing linguistic and sociolinguistic conditions in different settings across the Americas. The studies cover indigenous languages that are undergoing lexical and grammatical change due to the presence of colonial languages and the emergence of new dialects and creoles due to contact. The contributions showcase the diversity of approaches to tackle fundamental questions regarding the processes triggered by language contact as well as the wide range of outcomes contact has had in postcolonial settings. The volume adds to the documentation of the linguistic properties of postcolonial language varieties in a socio-historically informed framework. It explores the complex dynamics of extra-linguistic factors that brought about the processes of language change in them and contributes to a better understanding of the determinant factors that lead to the emergence and evolution of such codes.

Download or read book Word Knowledge and Word Usage written by Vito Pirrelli and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 621 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Word storage and processing define a multi-factorial domain of scientific inquiry whose thorough investigation goes well beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplinary taxonomies, to require synergic integration of a wide range of methods, techniques and empirical and experimental findings. The present book intends to approach a few central issues concerning the organization, structure and functioning of the Mental Lexicon, by asking domain experts to look at common, central topics from complementary standpoints, and discuss the advantages of developing converging perspectives. The book will explore the connections between computational and algorithmic models of the mental lexicon, word frequency distributions and information theoretical measures of word families, statistical correlations across psycho-linguistic and cognitive evidence, principles of machine learning and integrative brain models of word storage and processing. Main goal of the book will be to map out the landscape of future research in this area, to foster the development of interdisciplinary curricula and help single-domain specialists understand and address issues and questions as they are raised in other disciplines.

Download or read book Historical Linguistics and Endangered Languages written by Patience Epps and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection showcases the contributions of the study of endangered and understudied languages to historical linguistic analysis, and the broader relevance of diachronic approaches toward developing better informed approaches to language documentation and description. The volume brings together perspectives from both established and up-and-coming scholars and represents a globally and linguistically diverse range of languages.The collected papers demonstrate the ways in which endangered languages can challenge existing models of language change based on more commonly studied languages, and can generate innovative insights into linguistic phenomena such as pathways of grammaticalization, forms and dynamics of contact-driven change, and the diachronic relationship between lexical and grammatical categories. In so doing, the book highlights the idea that processes and outcomes of language change long held to be universally relevant may be more sensitive to cultural and typological variability than previously assumed. Taken as a whole, this collection brings together perspectives from language documentation and historical linguistics to point the way forward for richer understandings of both language change and documentary-descriptive approaches, making this key reading for scholars in these fields.

Download or read book Linguistic Advances in Central American Spanish written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-29 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering all seven countries on the isthmus, this volume presents the first collection of original linguistic studies on Central American Spanish varieties, which have long been neglected in Hispanic Linguistics. The analyses in this collection span across disciplines such as sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, bilingualism, historical linguistics, and pragmatics. This volume bridges the gap between international and Central American scholars, as it highlights the work that has already been done by Central American scholars but is relatively unknown to scholars outside of the region. It also introduces readers to more recent work that sheds new light on Central American Spanish varieties, from both urban and rural settings as well as in bilingual communities where Spanish is in contact with indigenous languages.

Download or read book The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices written by Philip John Boyes and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing is not just a set of systems for transcribing language and communicating meaning, but an important element of human practice, deeply embedded in the cultures where it is present and fundamentally interconnected with all other aspects of human life. 'The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices' explores these relationships in a number of different cultural contexts and from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including archaeological, anthropological and linguistic. It offers new ways of approaching the study of writing and integrating it into wider debates and discussions about culture, history and archaeology.

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 Development of Modality in First Language Acquisition written by Ursula Stephany and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the development of modality from a crosslinguistic perspective and is closely related to two earlier volumes on the development of verb and nominal inflection in first language acquisition (SOLA 21 and 30) both methodologically and theoretically. Each of the fourteen contributions studies the early development of the form and function of expressions of deontic and dynamic agent-oriented modality or epistemic and evidential propositional modality in one of fourteen languages belonging to different morphological types and language families (seven Indo-European and seven non-Indo-European). The analyses are mainly based on longitudinal observations of children in their 2nd and 3rd years of life in conversational interaction with their caregivers, mostly the mothers. Main issues addressed are the development of directives and modulations of information in terms of certainty and evidentiality, also taking into account children’s developing social-pragmatic and cognitive skills. One of the main findings is that agent-oriented and propositional modality may develop in parallel depending on the typological characteristics of the language acquired. The decisive factor is whether notions of propositional modality are grammaticized and obligatorily expressed in the language. The findings are interpreted within non-nativist theoretical frameworks (Usage-based theories, Natural Morphology).

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody written by Carlos Gussenhoven and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 957 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook presents detailed accounts of current research in all aspects of language prosody, written by leading experts from different disciplines. The volume's comprehensive coverage and multidisciplinary approach will make it an invaluable resource for all researchers, students, and practitioners interested in prosody.

Download or read book Applicative Constructions in the World s Languages written by Fernando Zuniga and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-01-29 with total page 1100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a state-of-the-art cross-linguistic survey of applicative constructions in the functional-typological tradition. An introductory section sets the terminological and analytical stage, presents the methodology used by the different chapters, and provides a typological outlook. The individual contributions address the morphological, syntactic and semantic variation of applicatives, as well as their discourse-pragmatic function. They cover all major language families and some isolates that feature some illuminating version of the phenomenon, paying special attention to language-internal variation and unity. The phenomena surveyed range from those instances usually considered canonical (valency-increasing, syntactically and semantically predictable, productive, dedicated, and optional) to those occasionally understudied in descriptive works and frequently neglected in comparative studies (valency-neutral, rather unpredictable, lexicalized, syncretic, and/or obligatory).

Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages written by Daniel Siddiqi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 839 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages is a one-stop reference for linguists on those topics that come up the most frequently in the study of the languages of North America (including Mexico). This handbook compiles a list of contributors from across many different theories and at different stages of their careers, all of whom are well-known experts in North American languages. The volume comprises two distinct parts: the first surveys some of the phenomena most frequently discussed in the study of North American languages, and the second surveys some of the most frequently discussed language families of North America. The consistent goal of each contribution is to couch the content of the chapter in contemporary theory so that the information is maximally relevant and accessible for a wide range of audiences, including graduate students and young new scholars, and even senior scholars who are looking for a crash course in the topics. Empirically driven chapters provide fundamental knowledge needed to participate in contemporary theoretical discussions of these languages, making this handbook an indispensable resource for linguistics scholars.