Download or read book The loss of grammatical gender in the history of english written by Snejana Iovtcheva and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-12-13 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: A, Syracuse University (USA) (USA: Syracuse University), language: English, abstract: This paper analyzes the question of how and why grammatical gender got lost in English. In order to do so, it reviews the recent literature on gender shifts in Old English and Middle English. The paper identifies several theoretical explanations based on both diachronic studies of English and general theoretical studies of gender. More concretely, the paper discusses the work of Greville Corbett (1991) on gender, Anne Curzan’s (2003) analysis on gender shifts in the history of English, and Charles Jones’s (1988) assumption of a possible paradigm shift in Old English. At the same time, older studies are given as an example for why certain premises did not work in the past. The paper first coments the relationship of English within the language families, provides a linguistic definition of grammatical gender, and describes major properties of the Modern English gender systems as well as those of the Old English gender system. It looks at the morphological and syntactic changes that triggered a shift in the English gender system. It is argued that not only external changes but also an underlying paradigm shift induced the demise of grammatical gender in Old English. In addition, the role of the personal pronouns is analyzed. According to Curzan (2003) and Corbett (1991) the role of the personal pronouns may prove to be the key in explaining the shift in the gender system.
Download or read book Gender Shifts in the History of English written by Anne Curzan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-04-24 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and why did grammatical gender, found in Old English and in other Germanic languages, gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to 'irregular agreement' (such as she for ships) and 'sexist' language use (such as generic he) in Modern English, and how is the language continuing to evolve in these respects? Anne Curzan's accessibly written and carefully researched study is based on extensive corpus data, and will make a major contribution by providing a historical perspective on these often controversial questions. It will be of interest to researchers and students in history of English, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, language and gender, and medieval studies.
Download or read book Grammatical Gender in English written by Charles Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988, this book explores the grammatical loss of gender in English. It demonstrates that from the end of the Old English period, there was a considerable time period, of about three hundred years, during which there existed "echoes" of the gender classification of nouns. The study records the best known conclusions concerning the behaviour of anaphoric pronouns under grammatical gender "stress" in the late Old English and Middle English periods. It focuses on a discussion of attributive word morphology in the noun phrase.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics written by Michael T. Putnam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 1176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive overview of the structure of modern Germanic languages. Written by a team of internationally-renowned experts, it is a vital resource for students and researchers investigating the Germanic family of languages and dialects, covering key topics such as phonology, morphology, syntax, heritage and minority languages.
Download or read book The Ayenbite of Inwyt Written in the Dialect of the County of Kent written by Laurent (Dominican) and published by . This book was released on 1855 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A History of the English Language written by Richard Hogg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-17 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history and development of English, from the earliest known writings to its status today as a dominant world language, is a subject of major importance to linguists and historians. In this book, a team of international experts cover the entire recorded history of the English language, outlining its development over fifteen centuries. With an emphasis on more recent periods, every key stage in the history of the language is covered, with full accounts of standardisation, names, the distribution of English in Britain and North America, and its global spread. New historical surveys of the crucial aspects of the language are presented, and historical changes that have affected English are treated as a continuing process, helping to explain the shape of the language today. This complete and up-to-date history of English will be indispensable to all advanced students, scholars and teachers in this prominent field.
Download or read book Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II written by Francesca Di Garbo and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. Volume two consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity. This volume is preceded by volume one, which, in addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia.
Download or read book Gender written by Linda Brannon and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-30 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fully updated and revised eighth edition examines the behavioral, biological, and social context in which people express gendered behaviors, utilizing the latest research to help students think critically about research findings and stereotypes and provoking them to examine and revise their own preconceptions. The text’s unique pedagogical program helps students understand the portrayal of gender in the media and the application of gender research in the real world. Headlines from the news open each chapter; Gendered Voices present true personal accounts of people’s lives; According to the Media boxes highlight gender-related coverage in newspapers, magazines, books, TV, and movies; while According to the Research boxes offer the latest scientifically based research to help students analyze the accuracy and fairness of gender images presented in the media. Additionally, Considering Diversity sections emphasize the cross-cultural perspective of gender. Key features of the new edition include Expanded discussion of transgender and non-binary identities 12 new headline articles including topics ranging from the myth of biological sex to the wars over sex education and the factors involved in the gender pay gap Comprehensive digital resources with content for instructors and students. Intended for undergraduate or graduate courses on the psychology of gender, psychology of sex, gender issues, women in society, and women’s or men’s studies, this book is also applicable to sociology and anthropology courses on diversity.
Download or read book Germanic Heritage Languages in North America written by Janne Bondi Johannessen and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents new empirical findings about Germanic heritage varieties spoken in North America: Dutch, German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, West Frisian and Yiddish, and varieties of English spoken both by heritage speakers and in communities after language shift. The volume focuses on three critical issues underlying the notion of ‘heritage language’: acquisition, attrition and change. The book offers theoretically-informed discussions of heritage language processes across phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics and the lexicon, in addition to work on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and contact settings. With this, the volume also includes a variety of frameworks and approaches, synchronic and diachronic. Most European Germanic languages share some central linguistic features, such as V2, gender and agreement in the nominal system, and verb inflection. As minority languages faced with a majority language like English, similarities and differences emerge in patterns of variation and change in these heritage languages. These empirical findings shed new light on mechanisms and processes.
Download or read book Unhistorical Gender Assignment in Layamon s Brut written by Seiji Shinkawa and published by Linguistic Insights. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (doctoral)-- Sophia University, 2011.
Download or read book The Gender of Death written by Karl Siegfried Guthke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated historical study of gendered personifications of death in Western art, literature, and culture.
Download or read book Gender Across Languages written by Marlis Hellinger and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2002-04-10 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second of a three-volume comprehensive reference work on “Gender across Languages”, which provides systematic descriptions of various categories of gender (grammatical, lexical, referential, social) in 30 languages of diverse genetic, typological and socio-cultural backgrounds. Among the issues discussed for each language are the following: What are the structural properties of the language that have an impact on the relations between language and gender? What are the consequences for areas such as agreement, pronominalisation and word-formation? How is specification of and abstraction from (referential) gender achieved in a language? Is empirical evidence available for the assumption that masculine/male expressions are interpreted as generics? Can tendencies of variation and change be observed, and have alternatives been proposed for a more equal linguistic treatment of women and men? This volume (and the previous two volumes) will provide the much-needed basis for explicitly comparative analyses of gender across languages. All chapters are original contributions and follow a common general outline developed by the editors. The book contains rich bibliographical and indexical material.Languages of Volume 2: Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, Hindi, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Welsh.
Download or read book Sexing the World written by Anthony Corbeill and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-18 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender—masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), neuter bodies (corpora). Sexing the World surveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and the human hermaphrodite. Beginning with the ancient grammarians, Anthony Corbeill examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless of whether that object was animate or inanimate. This informed the Roman poets who, for a time, changed at whim the grammatical gender for words as seemingly lifeless as "dust" (pulvis) or "tree bark" (cortex). Corbeill then applies the idea of fluid grammatical gender to the basic tenets of Roman religion and state politics. He looks at how the ancients tended to construct Rome's earliest divinities as related male and female pairs, a tendency that waned in later periods. An analogous change characterized the dual-sexed hermaphrodite, whose sacred and political significance declined as the republican government became an autocracy. Throughout, Corbeill shows that the fluid boundaries of sex and gender became increasingly fixed into opposing and exclusive categories. Sexing the World contributes to our understanding of the power of language to shape human perception.
Download or read book Language and Woman s Place written by Robin Tolmach Lakoff and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1975 publication of Robin Tolmach Lakoff's Language and Woman's Place, is widely recognized as having inaugurated feminist research on the relationship between language and gender, touching off a remarkable response among language scholars, feminists, and general readers. For the past thirty years, scholars of language and gender have been debating and developing Lakoff's initial observations. Arguing that language is fundamental to gender inequality, Lakoff pointed to two areas in which inequalities can be found: Language used about women, such as the asymmetries between seemingly parallel terms like master and mistress, and language used by women, which places women in a double bind between being appropriately feminine and being fully human. Lakoff's central argument that "women's language" expresses powerlessness triggered a controversy that continues to this day. The revised and expanded edition presents the full text of the original first edition, along with an introduction and annotations by Lakoff in which she reflects on the text a quarter century later and expands on some of the most widely discussed issues it raises. The volume also brings together commentaries from twenty-six leading scholars of language, gender, and sexuality, within linguistics, anthropology, modern languages, education, information sciences, and other disciplines. The commentaries discuss the book's contribution to feminist research on language and explore its ongoing relevance for scholarship in the field. This new edition of Language and Woman's Place not only makes available once again the pioneering text of feminist linguistics; just as important, it places the text in the context of contemporary feminist and gender theory for a new generation of readers.
Download or read book Language and History written by Nigel Love and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-04-18 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years integrationist theory has mounted a radical challenge to the traditional notion of 'languages' as possible objects of inquiry. This volume develops the integrationist critique of orthodox linguistics.
Download or read book A history of English written by Míša Hejná and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2022-06-25 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where does today’s English language come from? This book takes its readers on a journey back in time, from present-day varieties to the Old English of Beowulf and beyond. Written for students with little or no background in linguistics, and reflecting the latest scholarship, it showcases the variation and change present throughout the history of English, and includes numerous exercises and sample texts for every period. The reverse-chronological approach taken by this book sets it apart from all existing textbooks of the last fifty years. Innovative features also include its focus on variation, multilingualism and language contact, its use of texts from outside the literary canon, and its inclusion of case studies from syntax, sociophonetics and historical pragmatics.
Download or read book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue written by John McWhorter and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar Why do we say “I am reading a catalog” instead of “I read a catalog”? Why do we say “do” at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history. Covering such turning points as the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century ad, John McWhorter narrates this colorful evolution with vigor. Drawing on revolutionary genetic and linguistic research as well as a cache of remarkable trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English— and its ironic simplicity due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados worldwide have been waiting for (and no, it’s not a sin to end a sentence with a preposition).
