Download or read book The Languages of Japan written by Masayoshi Shibatani and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-05-03 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of the two main indigenous languages of Japan includes the most comprehensive study of the polysynthetic Ainu language yet to appear in English as well as a comprehensive analysis of Japanese linguistics.
Download or read book Language Diversity Surveys as Agents of Change written by Joe Nicholas and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 1994 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is essential for anyone concerned with language or linguistic minorities in education. It provides a thorough and clear explanation of the background to, and issues surrounding, language diversity in British education. It will be of interest both to the expert and those seeking an introduction to the field. The study reviews and re-evaluates surveys of language diversity in British education in the context of 'action research'. The author argues that the process of surveying activity is at least as important as the data reported. Evidence for this argument is provided through original research undertaken among students and teachers in Further Education. The study includes ethnographic research into teachers' attitudes and responses to language surveys. The author offers a useful new model for surveys investigating language diversity among students or school children.
Download or read book The Germanic Languages written by Wayne Harbert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-21 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germanic - one of the largest sub-groups of the Indo-European language family - comprises 37 languages with an estimated 470 million speakers worldwide. This book presents a comparative linguistic survey of the full range of Germanic languages, both ancient and modern, including major world languages such as English and German (West Germanic), the Scandinavian (North Germanic) languages, and the extinct East Germanic languages. Unlike previous studies, it does not take a chronological or a language-by-language approach, organized instead around linguistic constructions and subsystems. Considering dialects alongside standard varieties, it provides a detailed account of topics such as case, word formation, sound systems, vowel length, syllable structure, the noun phrase, the verb phrase, the expression of tense and mood, and the syntax of the clause. Authoritative and comprehensive, this much-needed survey will be welcomed by scholars and students of the Germanic languages, as well as linguists across the many branches of the field.
Download or read book The Slavic Languages written by Roland Sussex and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-21 with total page 5 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Slavic group of languages - the fourth largest Indo-European sub-group - is one of the major language families of the modern world. With 297 million speakers, Slavic comprises 13 languages split into three groups: South Slavic, which includes Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian; East Slavic, which includes Russian and Ukrainian; and West Slavic, which includes Polish, Czech and Slovak. This 2006 book, written by two leading scholars in Slavic linguistics, presents a survey of all aspects of the linguistic structure of the Slavic languages, considering in particular those languages that enjoy official status. As well as covering the central issues of phonology, morphology, syntax, word-formation, lexicology and typology, the authors discuss Slavic dialects, sociolinguistic issues, and the socio-historical evolution of the Slavic languages. Accessibly written and comprehensive in its coverage, this book will be welcomed by scholars and students of Slavic languages, as well as linguists across the many branches of the discipline.
Download or read book The Languages of Native North America written by Marianne Mithun and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-06-07 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an authoritative survey of the several hundred languages indigenous to North America. These languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. Part I of the book provides an overview of structural features of particular interest, concentrating on those that are cross-linguistically unusual or unusually well developed. These include syllable structure, vowel and consonant harmony, tone, and sound symbolism; polysynthesis, the nature of roots and affixes, incorporation, and morpheme order; case; grammatical distinctions of number, gender, shape, control, location, means, manner, time, empathy, and evidence; and distinctions between nouns and verbs, predicates and arguments, and simple and complex sentences; and special speech styles. Part II catalogues the languages by family, listing the location of each language, its genetic affiliation, number of speakers, major published literature, and structural highlights. Finally, there is a catalogue of languages that have evolved in contact situations.
Download or read book The Celtic Languages written by Donald MacAulay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only modern account to describe all surviving Celtic languages in detail.
Download or read book Using Surveys in Language Programs written by James Dean Brown and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-06-18 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a comprehensive, but practical, overview of the different phases and activities involved in the development and implementation of effective survey projects by language-teaching professionals. The text, which includes chapters on planning, designing, gathering, analyzing, and reporting survey research, would be accessible to graduate students, language teachers, administrators, and researchers. The theoretical and practical issues involved in survey design are defined and discussed in digestible chunks. All concepts are explained in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step manner, with ample examples and checklists provided. Each chapter also includes a list of key terms, a set of review questions, and a collection of exercises for practical application. In this text, language-teaching professionals will find all of the crucial information needed to survey students and teachers about their beliefs and practices. The results can then be used for developing curriculum, evaluating the success of language programs, or doing other relevant research.
Download or read book The Amazonian Languages written by R. M. W. Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-09-23 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Amazon Basin is arguably both one of the least-known and the most complex linguistic regions in the world. It is the home of some 300 languages belonging to around twenty language families, plus more than a dozen genetic isolates, and many of these languages (often incompletely documented and mostly endangered) show properties that constitute exceptions to received ideas about linguistic universals. This book provides an overview in a single volume of this rich and exciting linguistic area. The editors and contributors have sought to make their descriptions as clear and accessible as possible, in order to provide a basis for further research on the structural characteristics of Amazonian languages and their genetic and areal relationships, as well as a point of entry to important cross-linguistic data for the wider constituency of theoretical linguists.
Download or read book The Papuan Languages of New Guinea written by William A. Foley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-11-20 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to the descriptive and historical linguistics of the Papuan languages of New Guinea provide an accessible account of one of the richest and most diverse linguistic situations in the world. The Papuan languages number over 700 (or 20 per cent of the world's total) in more than sixty language families. Less than a quarter of the individual languages have yet been adequately documented, and in this sense William Foley's book might be considered premature. However, in the search for language universals and generalisations in linguistic typology, it would be foolhardy to neglect the information that is available. In this respect alone, the present volume, systematically organised on mainly typology principles, is particularly timely and useful. In addition, the processes of linguistic diffusion are present in New Guinea to an extent probably paralleled elsewhere on the globe. The Papuan Languages of New Guinea will be of interest not only to general and comparative linguists and to typologists, but also to sociolinguists and anthropologists for the information it provides on the social dynamics of language content.
Download or read book The essential role of language in survey research written by Mandy Sha and published by RTI Press. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language users, such as survey respondents and interviewers, must speak the same language literally and figuratively to interact with each other. As diversity grows in the United States and globally, interviewers and respondents may speak a different language or speak the same language differently that reflects their own cultural norms of communication. This book discusses the role of language in survey research when comparisons across groups, cultures, and countries are of interest. Language use in surveys is dynamic, including words, symbols (e.g., arrows), and even emojis. The entire survey life cycle is carried out through language. Researchers write or translate questions and instructions that will address research questions and then pretest them using various techniques, including qualitative inquiry that focuses on context beyond just “the numbers.” Human or virtual data collectors use persuasive messages to communicate with survey respondents and encourage their survey participation. Respondents must comprehend and interpret survey questions and instructions to provide a response. All of these survey processes and products contribute to data quality, and the role of language is essential. Praise for The Essential Role of Language in Survey Research “This book highlights the importance of language issues for data quality, provides frameworks for conceptualizing the underlying processes, presents diverse methods for identifying problems at an early stage, and illustratesand evaluates potential solutions in the form of improved translation and pretesting procedures.” --Daphna Oyserman and Norbert Schwarz, University of Southern California “The role of language and issues of language are particularly salient for multinational, multiregional, or multicultural (3MC) comparative surveys that are designed to collect data and compare findings from two or more populations. This book highlights the critical need to consider a range ofissues pertaining to language at various aspects and stages of 3MC survey design and implementation.” --Julie de Jong, Kristen Cibelli Hibben, and Jennifer Kelley, University of Michigan, and Dorothée Behr, GESIS–Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Germany “The need to reach increasingly diverse target populations requires survey researchers to be ever more aware of the role of verbal and nonverbal language in the survey research process. This book provides a great resource for readers new to the subject, as well as experts, seeking to understand the implications of language for survey design, implementation, and resulting data quality.” --Antje Kirchner, RTI International, and Coeditor of Big Data Meets Survey Science: A Collection of Innovative Methods “Covering a range of topics fundamental to high-quality surveys in cross-cultural contexts, this new volume features ‘language’ in its varied roles within survey methodology and practice, including questionnaire design, translation, and fieldwork implementation for quantitative and qualitative research. The Essential Role of Language in Survey Research uses in-country examples and analyses from across the globe to underscore specific challenges that survey researchers confront in their work.” --Patrick Moynihan and Martha McRoy, Pew Research Center
Download or read book The Afroasiatic Languages written by Zygmunt Frajzyngier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 707 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afroasiatic languages are spoken by some 300 million people in Northern, Central and Eastern Africa and the Middle East. This book is the first typological study of these languages, which are comprised of around 375 living and extinct varieties. They are an important object of study because of their typological diversity in the areas of phonology (some have tone; others do not), morphology (some have extensive inflectional systems; others do not), position of the verb in the clause (some are verb-initial, some are verb-medial, and some are verb-final) and in the semantic functions they encode. This book documents this typological diversity and the typological similarities across the languages and includes information on endangered and little-known languages. Requiring no previous knowledge of the specific language families, it will be welcomed by linguists interested in linguistic theory, typology, historical linguistics and endangered languages, as well as scholars of Africa and the Middle East.
Download or read book Reports of Surveys and Studies in the Teaching of Modern Foreign Languages 1959 1961 written by Modern Language Association of America and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Measures of Language Proficiency in Censuses and Surveys written by Pádraig Ó Riagáin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a systematic analysis of a wide range of questions used in censuses, national surveys and international surveys to measure language proficiency. It addresses the urgent need in language related survey research for a comprehensive examination of the large existing body of survey data in order to provide a fuller understanding of the extent to which survey results are shaped by the way language proficiency questions are worded. While census and survey language proficiency data are extensively used in a wide range of research areas, as well as in forming, implementing and monitoring government policies, there are as yet no universally accepted survey measures of language proficiency. This book will therefore provide a valuable resource for students and scholars working in sociological areas that use census or survey language data, such as sociology of language, sociology of education, politics, racial and ethnic studies, and cultural studies; as well as for policy analysts.
Download or read book The Languages of the Soviet Union written by Bernard Comrie and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1981-06-04 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A general account of the languages of the Soviet Union, one of the most diverse multinational and multilingual states in the world as well as one of the most important. There are some 130 languages spoken in the USSR, belonging to five main families and ranging from Russian, which is the first language of about 130,000,000 people, to Aluet, spoken only by 96 (in the 1970 census). Dr Comrie has two general aims. First, he presents the most important structural features of these languages, their genetic relationships and classification and their distinctive typological features. Secondly, he examines the social and political background to the use of functioning of the various languages in a multilingual state. The volume will be of importance and interest to linguists and to those with a broader professional interest in the Soviet Union.
Download or read book Collecting Managing and Assessing Data Using Sample Surveys written by Peter Stopher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A step-by-step guide to the design and implementation of surveys.
Download or read book The Mesoamerican Indian Languages written by Jorge A. Suarez and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1983-04-14 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At least a hundred indigenous Indian languages are known to have been spoken in Mesoamerica, but it is only in the past fifty years that many of them have been adequately described. Professor Suárez draws together this considerable mass of scholarship in a general survey that will provide an invaluable source of reference.
Download or read book Equal Educational Opportunity Project Series written by United States Commission on Civil Rights and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
