Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective

Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective PDF Author: Lars Johanson
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447059145
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The term Transeurasian refers to a large group of geographically adjacent languages stretching from the Pacific in the East to the Mediterranean in the West. They share a significant amount of linguistic properties and include five linguistic families: Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic. There is disagreement among scholars on the question whether these languages are genealogically related in the sense of an "Altaic" family. Many linguists, however, seem to agree on at least one point, namely that investigations into the striking correspondences in the domain of verbal morphology could substantially help unravelling the question. The present volume brings together prominent specialists in the field who explore potentially shared features of verbal morphology among the Transeurasian languages and search for the best way to explain them. Important issues dealt with include the following: How useful is verbal morphology really in establishing genealogical relations among languages? Is there concrete evidence for cognate verbal morphology across the Transeurasian languages? Is it possible to draw wider connections with Indo-European and Uralic? How to distinguish between genealogical retention and copying of verbal morphology? In which ways can typological similarities be significant in this context?

Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective

Transeurasian Verbal Morphology in a Comparative Perspective PDF Author: Lars Johanson
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
ISBN: 9783447059145
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The term Transeurasian refers to a large group of geographically adjacent languages stretching from the Pacific in the East to the Mediterranean in the West. They share a significant amount of linguistic properties and include five linguistic families: Japanese, Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic. There is disagreement among scholars on the question whether these languages are genealogically related in the sense of an "Altaic" family. Many linguists, however, seem to agree on at least one point, namely that investigations into the striking correspondences in the domain of verbal morphology could substantially help unravelling the question. The present volume brings together prominent specialists in the field who explore potentially shared features of verbal morphology among the Transeurasian languages and search for the best way to explain them. Important issues dealt with include the following: How useful is verbal morphology really in establishing genealogical relations among languages? Is there concrete evidence for cognate verbal morphology across the Transeurasian languages? Is it possible to draw wider connections with Indo-European and Uralic? How to distinguish between genealogical retention and copying of verbal morphology? In which ways can typological similarities be significant in this context?

Diachrony of Verb Morphology

Diachrony of Verb Morphology PDF Author: Martine Robbeets
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110400111
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
This book deals with shared verb morphology in Japanese and other languages that have been identified as Transeurasian (traditionally: “Altaic”) in previous research. It analyzes shared etymologies and reconstructed grammaticalizations with the goal to provide evidence for the genealogical relatedness of these languages.

The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages

The Oxford Guide to the Transeurasian Languages PDF Author: Martine Robbeets
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198804628
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 984

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Book Description
This volume provides a comprehensive treatment of the Transeurasian languages. It offers detailed structural overviews of individual languages, as well as comparative perspectives and insights from typology, genetics, and anthropology. The book will be an indispensable resource for anyone interested in Transeurasian and comparative linguistics.

Shared Grammaticalization

Shared Grammaticalization PDF Author: Martine Irma Robbeets
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902720599X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
This book offers fresh perspectives on “shared grammaticalization”, a state whereby two or more languages have the source and the target of a grammaticalization process in common. While contact-induced grammaticalization has generated great interest in recent years, far less attention has been paid to other factors that may give rise to shared grammaticalization. This book intends to put this situation right by approaching shared grammaticalization from an integrated perspective, including areal as well as genealogical and universal motivations and by searching for ways to distinguish between these factors. The volume offers a wealth of empirical facts, presented by internationally renowned specialists, on the Transeurasian languages (i.e. Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic, and Turkic) — the languages in focus —as well as on various other languages. Shared Grammaticalization will appeal to scholars and advanced students concerned with linguistic reconstruction, language contact and linguistic typology, and to anyone interested in grammaticalization theory.

Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia

Grammaticalization Scenarios from Europe and Asia PDF Author: Walter Bisang
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110560445
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 685

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Book Description
This volume intends to fill the gap in the grammaticalization studies setting as its goal the systematic description of grammaticalization processes in genealogically and structurally diverse languages. To address the problem of the limitations of the secondary sources for grammaticalization studies, the editors rely on sketches of grammaticalization phenomena from experts in individual languages guided by a typological questionnaire.

Language Dispersal Beyond Farming

Language Dispersal Beyond Farming PDF Author: Martine Robbeets
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264643
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Why do some languages wither and die, while others prosper and spread? Around the turn of the millennium a number of archaeologists such as Colin Renfrew and Peter Bellwood made the controversial claim that many of the world’s major language families owe their dispersal to the adoption of agriculture by their early speakers. In this volume, their proposal is reassessed by linguists, investigating to what extent the economic dependence on plant cultivation really impacted language spread in various parts of the world. Special attention is paid to "tricky" language families such as Eskimo-Aleut, Quechua, Aymara, Bantu, Indo-European, Transeurasian, Turkic, Japano-Koreanic, Hmong-Mien and Trans-New Guinea, that cannot unequivocally be regarded as instances of Farming/Language Dispersal, even if subsistence played a role in their expansion.

Ethnolinguistic Prehistory

Ethnolinguistic Prehistory PDF Author: George L. van Driem
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004448373
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
This volume provides the most up-to-date and holistic but compact account of the peopling of the world from the perspective of language, genes and material culture, presenting a view from the Himalayas. The phylogeny of language families, the chronology of branching of linguistic family trees and the historical and modern geographical distribution of language communities inform us about the spread of languages and linguistic phyla. The global distribution and the chronology of spread of Y chromosomal haplogroups appears closely correlated with the spread of language families. New findings on ancient DNA have greatly enhanced our understanding of the prehistory and provenance of our biological ancestors. The archaeological study of past material cultures provides yet a third independent window onto the complex prehistory of our species.

The Turkic Languages

The Turkic Languages PDF Author: Lars Johanson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000488241
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 549

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Book Description
The Turkic languages are spoken today in a vast geographical area stretching from southern Iran to the Arctic Ocean and from the Balkans to the great wall of China. There are currently 20 literary languages in the group, the most important among them being Turkish with over 70 million speakers; other major languages covered include Azeri, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Noghay, Tatar, Turkmen, Uyghur, Uzbek, Yakut, Yellow Uyghur and languages of Iran and South Siberia. The Turkic Languages is a reference book which brings together detailed discussions of the historical development and specialized linguistic structures and features of the languages in the Turkic family. Seen from a linguistic typology point of view, Turkic languages are particularly interesting because of their astonishing morphosyntactic regularity, their vast geographical distribution, and their great stability over time. This volume builds upon a work which has already become a defining classic of Turkic language study. The present, thoroughly revised edition updates and augments those authoritative accounts and reflects recent and ongoing developments in the languages themselves, as well as our further enhanced understanding of the relations and patterns of influence between them. The result is the fruit of decades-long experience in the teaching of the Turkic languages, their philology and literature, and also of a wealth of new insights into the linguistic phenomena and cultural interactions defining their development and use, both historically and in the present day. Each chapter combines modern linguistic analysis with traditional historical linguistics; a uniform structure allows for easy typological comparison between the individual languages. Written by an international team of experts, The Turkic Languages will be invaluable to students and researchers within linguistics, Turcology, and Near Eastern and Oriental Studies.

The Origins of Language Revisited

The Origins of Language Revisited PDF Author: Nobuo Masataka
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811542503
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
This book summarizes the latest research on the origins of language, with a focus on the process of evolution and differentiation of language. It provides an update on the earlier successful book, “The Origins of Language” edited by Nobuo Masataka and published in 2008, with new content on emerging topics. Drawing on the empirical evidence in each respective chapter, the editor presents a coherent account of how language evolved, how music differentiated from language, and how humans finally became neurodivergent as a species. Chapters on nonhuman primate communication reveal that the evolution of language required the neural rewiring of circuits that controlled vocalization. Language contributed not only to the differentiation of our conceptual ability but also to the differentiation of psychic functions of concepts, emotion, and behavior. It is noteworthy that a rudimentary form of syntax (regularity of call sequences) has emerged in nonhuman primates. The following chapters explain how music differentiated from language, whereas the pre-linguistic system, or the “prosodic protolanguage,” in nonhuman primates provided a precursor for both language and music. Readers will gain a new understanding of music as a rudimentary form of language that has been discarded in the course of evolution and its role in restoring the primordial synthesis in the human psyche. The discussion leads to an inspiring insight into autism and neurodiversity in humans. This thought-provoking and carefully presented book will appeal to a wide range of readers in linguistics, psychology, phonology, biology, anthropology and music.

The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia

The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia PDF Author: Edward Vajda
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111378462
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
The Languages and Linguistics of Northern Asia: A Comprehensive Guide surveys the indigenous languages of Asia’s North Pacific Rim, Siberia, and adjacent portions of Inner Eurasia. It provides in-depth descriptions of every first-order family of this vast area, with special emphasis on family-internal subdivision and dialectal differentiation. Individual chapters trace the origins and expansion of the region’s widespread pastoral-based language groups as well as the microfamilies and isolates spoken by northern Asia’s surviving hunter-gatherers. Separate chapters cover sparsely recorded languages of early Inner Eurasia that defy precise classification and the various pidgins and creoles spread over the region. Other chapters investigate the typology of salient linguistic features of the area, including vowel harmony, noun inflection, verb indexing (also known as agreement), complex morphologies, and the syntax of complex predicates. Issues relating to genealogical ancestry, areal contact and language endangerment receive equal attention. With historical connections both to Eurasia’s pastoral-based empires as well as to ancient population movements into the Americas, the steppes, taiga forests, tundra and coastal fringes of northern Asia offer a complex and fascinating object of linguistic investigation.