Ancient Egyptian

Ancient Egyptian PDF Author: Antonio Loprieno
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521443845
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The language of Ancient Egypt has been the object of careful investigation since its decipherment in the nineteenth century, but this is the first accessible account that uses the insight of modern linguistics. Antonio Loprieno discusses the hieroglyphic system and its cursive varieties, and the phonology, morphology and syntax of Ancient Egyptian, as well as looking at its genetic ties with other languages of the Near East. This book will be indispensable for both linguists and Egyptologists.

Ancient Egyptian

Ancient Egyptian PDF Author: Antonio Loprieno
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521443845
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The language of Ancient Egypt has been the object of careful investigation since its decipherment in the nineteenth century, but this is the first accessible account that uses the insight of modern linguistics. Antonio Loprieno discusses the hieroglyphic system and its cursive varieties, and the phonology, morphology and syntax of Ancient Egyptian, as well as looking at its genetic ties with other languages of the Near East. This book will be indispensable for both linguists and Egyptologists.

The Linguistic Cycle

The Linguistic Cycle PDF Author: Elly van Gelderen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019975604X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Elly van Gelderen examines the linguistic cycle and describes how it offers a unique perspective on the language faculty.

The Negative Existential Cycle

The Negative Existential Cycle PDF Author: Ljuba Veselinova
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961103399
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 670

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Book Description
In 1991, William Croft suggested that negative existentials (typically lexical expressions that mean ‘not exist, not have’) are one possible source for negation markers and gave his hypothesis the name Negative Existential Cycle (NEC). It is a variationist model based on cross-linguistic data. For a good twenty years following its formulation, it was cited at face-value without ever having been tested by (historical)-comparative data. Over the last decade, Ljuba Veselinova has worked on testing the model in a comparative perspective, and this edited volume further expands on her work. The collection presented here features detailed studies of several language families such as Bantu, Chadic and Indo-European. A number of articles focus on the micro-variation and attested historical developments within smaller groups and clusters such as Arabic, Mandarin and Cantonese, and Nanaic. Finally, variation and historical developments in specific languages are discussed for Ancient Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, Moksha-Mordvin (Uralic), Bashkir (Turkic), Kalmyk (Mongolic), three Pama-Nyungan languages, O’dam (Southern Uto-Aztecan) and Tacana (Takanan, Amazonian Bolivia). The book is concluded by two chapters devoted to modeling cyclical processes in language change from different theoretical perspectives. Key notions discussed throughout the book include affirmative and negative existential constructions, the expansion of the latter into verbal negation, and subsequently from more specific to more general markers of negation. Nominalizations as well as the uses of negative existentials as standalone negative answers figure among the most frequent pathways whereby negative existentials evolve as general negation markers. The operation of the Negative Existential Cycle appears partly genealogically conditioned, as the cycle is found to iterate regularly within some families but never starts in others, as is the case in Bantu. In addition, other special negation markers such as nominal negators are found to undergo similar processes, i.e. they expand into the verbal domain and thereby develop into more general negation markers. The book provides rich information on a specific path of the evolution of negation, on cyclical processes in language change, and it show-cases the historical-comparative method in a modern setting.

The Linguistic Cycle : Language Change and the Language Faculty

The Linguistic Cycle : Language Change and the Language Faculty PDF Author: Department of English Arizona State University Elly van Gelderen Regents' Professor
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199857636
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Elly van Gelderen provides examples of linguistic cycles from a number of languages and language families, along with an account of the linguistic cycle in terms of minimalist economy principles. A cycle involves grammaticalization from lexical to functional category followed by renewal. Some well-known cycles involve negatives, where full negative phrases are reanalyzed as words and affixes and are then renewed by full phrases again. Verbal agreement is another example: full pronouns are reanalyzed as agreement markers and are renewed again. Each chapter provides data on a separate cycle from a myriad of languages. Van Gelderen argues that the cross-linguistic similarities can be seen as Economy Principles present in the initial cognitive system or Universal Grammar. She further claims that some of the cycles can be used to classify a language as analytic or synthetic, and she provides insight into the shape of the earliest human language and how it evolved.

Middle Egyptian

Middle Egyptian PDF Author: James P. Allen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139917099
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
Middle Egyptian introduces the reader to the writing system of ancient Egypt and the language of hieroglyphic texts. It contains twenty-six lessons, exercises (with answers), a list of hieroglyphic signs, and a dictionary. It also includes a series of twenty-six essays on the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian history, society, religion, literature, and language. Grammar lessons and cultural essays allows users not only to read hieroglyphic texts but also to understand them, providing the foundation for understanding texts on monuments and reading great works of ancient Egyptian literature. This third edition is revised and reorganized, particularly in its approach to the verbal system, based on recent advances in understanding the language. Illustrations enhance the discussions, and an index of references has been added. These changes and additions provide a complete and up-to-date grammatical description of the classical language of ancient Egypt for specialists in linguistics and other fields.

Historical Linguistics 2011

Historical Linguistics 2011 PDF Author: Ritsuko Kikusawa
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027271194
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This volume of selected papers from the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Osaka, Japan, July 2011) presents a set of stimulating and ground-breaking studies on a wide range of languages and language families. As the scope of studies that can be characterized as ‘Historical Linguistics’ has expanded, ICHL conferences have likewise seen a broadening of topics presented, and this conference was no exception, reflected by the inclusion in this volume of a plenary presentation on the grammaticalization of expressions of negation and gendered kinship in American Sign Language. Three other papers propose new views of the role of grammaticalization in English, Chinese, and Niger-Congo languages. Four of the papers discuss specific problems that arise in the comparison and reconstruction of linguistic features in a range of languages from Asia, Europe and South America. The last six studies deal with innovative approaches to the historical development of suppletion in Romance languages, possessive classifiers in Austronesian, universal quantifiers in Germanic, adjectival sequences in English, exaptation in Celtic and Early English, and drift in Ancient Egyptian.

Languages of the World

Languages of the World PDF Author: Asya Pereltsvaig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107002788
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Introduces readers to the rich diversity of human languages, familiarizing them with the variety of languages around the world.

Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des alten Orients

Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des alten Orients PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 812

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Book Description


Verbal Periphrasis in Ancient Greek

Verbal Periphrasis in Ancient Greek PDF Author: Klaas Bentein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198747098
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Ancient Greek is commonly considered a 'synthetic' or 'inflectional' language, that is, a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. Nevertheless, already at the earliest stages of the language one finds traces of multi-word 'periphrastic' constructions similar to those in the modern European languages, as in ἦ*n *g*i*nό#u*e*n*a, 'it was happening', or ἔ*y*e*i ἀ*t*i#uά*s*a*4, 'he has dishonoured'. Verbal Periphrasis in Ancient Greek offers a systematic investigation of periphrastic constructions with the verbs 'to be' and 'to have' based on an extensive corpus of texts, ranging from the eighth century BC to the eighth century AD. It clarifies the notions of 'verbal periphrasis' and 'adjectival periphrasis' from a theoretical point of view, and offers a broad introduction to a selection of recent advancements in linguistics. It includes a diachronic analysis which investigates constructions in all three main aspectual domains-perfect aspect, imperfective aspect, and perfective aspect-combining a qualitative with a quantitative approach. In doing so, the volume presents a substantial contribution to our understanding of the ancient Greek verbal system and its development over time.

Egyptian-Coptic Linguistics in Typological Perspective

Egyptian-Coptic Linguistics in Typological Perspective PDF Author: Eitan Grossman
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110346516
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
This volume presents the Egyptian-Coptic language in cross-linguistic (‘typological’) perspective. It is aimed at linguists of all stripes, especially typologists, historical linguists, and specialists in Egyptian-Coptic, Afroasiatic languages, or African languages. Uniquely, the contributions are written by both typologists and experts of Egyptian-Coptic and typologists. The former provide case studies dealing with particular aspects of the various phases of the Egyptian-Coptic language (e.g., COLLIER on conditional constructions), while the latter situate Egyptian-Coptic data in cross-linguistic perspective (e.g., those by GUELDEMANN and GENSLER). The volume also includes an introductory section that includes an overview of the Egyptian-Coptic language (HASPELMATH), a sketch of its sociohistorical setting (GROSSMAN & RICHTER), its relationship with language typology (RICHTER), and the way in which Egyptian-Coptic data should be presented to nonspecialists, focusing on transliteration and glossing (GROSSMAN & HASPELMATH). This is the first book to bring together language typology and the Egyptian-Coptic language in an explicit fashion.