Download or read book The Fall of Language in the Age of English written by Minae Mizumura and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Kobayashi Hideo Award, The Fall of Language in the Age of English lays bare the struggle to retain the brilliance of one's own language in this period of English-language dominance. Born in Tokyo but raised and educated in the United States, Minae Mizumura acknowledges the value of a universal language in the pursuit of knowledge yet also embraces the different ways of understanding offered by multiple tongues. She warns against losing this precious diversity. Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human societies, Mizumura shows, but in the globalized world of the Internet, English is fast becoming the sole common language of humanity. The process is unstoppable, and striving for total language equality is delusional—and yet, particular kinds of knowledge can be gained only through writings in specific languages. Mizumura calls these writings "texts" and their ultimate form "literature." Only through literature and, more fundamentally, through the diverse languages that give birth to a variety of literatures, can we nurture and enrich humanity. Incorporating her own experiences as a writer and a lover of language and embedding a parallel history of Japanese, Mizumura offers an intimate look at the phenomena of individual and national expression.
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 1396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Exploring Language Change written by Mari Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this student-friendly text, Jones and Singh explore the phenomenon of language change, with a particular focus on the social contexts of its occurrence and possible motivations, including speakers’ intentions and attitudes. Presenting new or little-known data, the authors draw a distinction between "unconscious" and "deliberate" change. The discussion on "unconscious" change considers phenomena such as the emergence and obsolescence of individual languages, whilst the sections on "deliberate" change focus on issues of language planning, including the strategies of language revival and revitalization movements. There is also a detailed exploration of what is arguably the most extreme instance of "deliberate" change; language invention for real-world use. Examining an extensive range of language situations, Exploring Language Change makes a clear, but often ignored distinction between concepts such as language policy and planning, and language revival and revitalization. Also featured are a number of case studies which demonstrate that real-life language use is often much more complex than theoretical abstractions might suggest. This is a key text for students on a variety of courses, including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and language policy and planning.
Download or read book Library of Congress Subject Headings written by Library of Congress. Cataloging Policy and Support Office and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 1456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book One Europe Many Nations written by James B. Minahan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-07-30 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dominating world politics since 1945, the Cold War created a fragile peace while suppressing national groups in the Cold War's most dangerous theater—Europe. Today, with the collapse of Communism, the European Continent is again overshadowed by the specter of radical nationalism, as it was at the beginning of the century. Focusing on the many possible conflicts that dot the European landscape, this book is the first to address the Europeans as distinct national groups, not as nation-states and national minorities. It is an essential guide to the national groups populating the so-called Old World-groups that continue to dominate world headlines and present the world community with some of its most intractable conflicts. While other recent reference books on Europe approach the subject of nations and nationalism from the perspective of the European Union and the nation-state, this book addresses the post-Cold War nationalist resurgence by focusing on the most basic element of any nationalism—the nation. It includes entries on nearly 150 groups, surveying these groups from the earliest period of their national histories to the dawn of the 21st century. In short essays highlighting the political, social, economic, and historical evolution of peoples claiming a distinct identity in an increasingly integrated continent, the book provides both up-to-date information and historical background on the European national groups that are currently making the news and those that will produce future headlines.
Download or read book Native Peoples of the World written by Steven L. Danver and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 2475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines the world's indigenous peoples, their cultures, the countries in which they reside, and the issues that impact these groups.
Download or read book Information theoretic causal inference of lexical flow written by Johannes Dellert and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to infer large phylogenetic networks from phonetically encoded lexical data and contribute in this way to the historical study of language varieties. The technical step that enables progress in this case is the use of causal inference algorithms. Sample sets of words from language varieties are preprocessed into automatically inferred cognate sets, and then modeled as information-theoretic variables based on an intuitive measure of cognate overlap. Causal inference is then applied to these variables in order to determine the existence and direction of influence among the varieties. The directed arcs in the resulting graph structures can be interpreted as reflecting the existence and directionality of lexical flow, a unified model which subsumes inheritance and borrowing as the two main ways of transmission that shape the basic lexicon of languages. A flow-based separation criterion and domain-specific directionality detection criteria are developed to make existing causal inference algorithms more robust against imperfect cognacy data, giving rise to two new algorithms. The Phylogenetic Lexical Flow Inference (PLFI) algorithm requires lexical features of proto-languages to be reconstructed in advance, but yields fully general phylogenetic networks, whereas the more complex Contact Lexical Flow Inference (CLFI) algorithm treats proto-languages as hidden common causes, and only returns hypotheses of historical contact situations between attested languages. The algorithms are evaluated both against a large lexical database of Northern Eurasia spanning many language families, and against simulated data generated by a new model of language contact that builds on the opening and closing of directional contact channels as primary evolutionary events. The algorithms are found to infer the existence of contacts very reliably, whereas the inference of directionality remains difficult. This currently limits the new algorithms to a role as exploratory tools for quickly detecting salient patterns in large lexical datasets, but it should soon be possible for the framework to be enhanced e.g. by confidence values for each directionality decision.
Download or read book Culture Incarnate written by Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1995 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As old national boundaries erode and political uncertainty and ethnic assertion emerge, new voices of anthropologists and ethnographers studying their own cultures have begun to be heard more clearly. This collection focuses on the former Soviet Union, where non-Russian academics are studying their people's ethnography, folklore, rituals, languages, ethnic conflicts, and other areas. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book New Trends in Nordic and General Linguistics written by Martin Hilpert and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a survey of current work in Nordic and General Linguistics, with a special focus on language contact. The papers in this book were presented at the 11th International Conference of Nordic and General Linguistics (ICNGL) in Freiburg. The ICNGL conference series aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas on Scandinavian and other languages, between researchers from the Nordic countries and elsewhere. The present volume focuses on language contact, which has always been a topic of great interest in Nordic Linguistics. Additionally, the contributions in this book address issues of phonology, morpho-syntax, syntax, and grammaticalization. The book is meant to be a snapshot of Nordic Linguistics as it is practiced today, reflecting at the same time its established research traditions as well as its forages into new methodologies and theories.
Download or read book The Concise Dictionary of World Place Names written by John Everett-Heath and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-13 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is no populated place without a name, and every name is chosen for a reason. This fascinating dictionary unveils the etymological roots and history of thousands of locations and landmarks from around the world. It contains over 11,000 entries, and covers an enormous range of country, region, island, city, town, mountain and river names from across the world, as well as the name in the local language. Place names are continually changing, and new names are adopted for many different reasons such as invasion, revolution, and decolonization. The Concise Dictionary of World Place-Names includes selected former names, and, where appropriate, some historical detail to explain the transition. The names of places often offer a real insight into the places themselves, revealing religious and cultural traditions, the migration of peoples, the ebb and flow of armies, the presence of explorers, local languages, industrial developments and topography. Superstition and legend can also play a part. This new edition has been updated to include over 750 new names, including Azincourt, Kropyvnyts'kyy , and Tlaxcala. It has also been edited to reflect socio-political and geographical shifts, notably the reorganisation of the French regions, and their consequent name alterations, as well as the decommunization of Ukrainian place-names. In addition to the entries themselves, the dictionary includes two appendices: a glossary of foreign word elements which appear in place-names and their meanings, and a list of personalities and leaders from all over the world who have influenced the naming of places.
Download or read book Soviet Politics of Emancipation of Ethnic Minority Woman written by Yulia Gradskova and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a new perspective through a closer look on “Other”, i.e. ethnic minority women defined by the Soviet documents as natsionalka. Applying decolonial theory and critical race and whiteness studies, the book analyzes archive documents, early Soviet films and mass publications in order to explore how the “emancipation” and “culturalization” of women of “culturally backward nations” was practiced and presented for the mass Soviet audience. Whilst the special focus of the book lies in the region between the Volga and the Urals (and Muslim women of the Central Eurasia), the Soviet emancipation practices are presented in the broader context of gendered politics of modernization in the beginning of the 20th century. The analysis of the Soviet documents of the 1920s-1930s not only subverts the Soviet story on “generous help” with emancipation of natsionalka through uncovering its imperial/colonial aspects, but also makes an important contribution to the studies of imperial domination and colonial politics. This book is addressed to all interested in Russian and Eurasian studies and in decolonial approach to gender history.
Download or read book Foreign Social Science Bibliographies written by United States. Bureau of the Census and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Grammar of Warrongo written by Tasaku Tsunoda and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-12-23 with total page 783 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warrongo is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language that used to be spoken in northeast Australia. This volume is largely based on the rich data recorded from the last fluent speaker. It details the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. In particular, it provides a truly scrutinizing description of syntactic ergativity - a phenomenon that is rare among the world's language. It also shows that, unlike some other Australian languages, Warrongo has noun phrases that are configurational. Overall this volume shows what can be documented of a language that has only one speaker.
Download or read book Tatar and Chuvash Code copies in Mari written by André Hesselbäck and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Languages and Cultures written by Edgar C. Polomé and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1988 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of 64 papers by contributors throughout the world presents work from a variety of fields, primarily Indo-European linguistics and philology, and thus reflects the broad interests of Edgar C. Polomé.
Download or read book Syllable Stress and Sign written by Jeroen van de Weijer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing Phonological Detail Part I: Segmental Structure and Representations Part II: Syllable, Stress and Sign Part II of Representing Phonological Detail focuses on the latest phonological research on suprasegmental structure and sign language. The first main theme in this volume is syllable structure, touching on phonotactics, syllabification, gemination, syllable weight, diphthongization, and other rules. The other main theme is tone and stress, including issues in data collection, the assignment of primary and secondary stress, resolution of stress clashes, lexical accent, and syntax-tone interaction. The final section is on sign language, with special attention paid to iconicity, phonological processes, and the relation between phonetic and phonological representation.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation written by Robert A. Saunders and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-05-13 with total page 774 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical Dictionary of the Russian Federation provides insight into this rapidly developing country. The volume includes coverage of pivotal movements, events, and persons in the late Soviet Union (1985-1991) and contemporary Russia (1991-present), as well as detailed entries covering the country's expansive geography, unique culture, diverse ethnic groups, and complex political and social environment. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, maps, a bibliography, and over 600 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, events, places, and organizations.
