Variation in German

Variation in German PDF Author: Stephen Barbour
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521357043
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This book examines the interrelations between language and society in the German-speaking countries. The questions 'what is German and who speaks it?' and 'how does the language vary dependent on social, political and geographical factors?' are addressed and placed in their historical context. This is a comprehensive account of major topics in the contemporary study of German sociolinguistics, and topics covered include the history and development of the German language, German as a minority language, minority languages in German-speaking countries, traditional dialects, variation in contemporary colloquial speech, the influence of English on German, and German in East and West. It draws together much otherwise inaccessible material from a great range of sources. The authors also assess critically research work carried out in German-speaking countries.

Variation in German

Variation in German PDF Author: Stephen Barbour
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521357043
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book examines the interrelations between language and society in the German-speaking countries. The questions 'what is German and who speaks it?' and 'how does the language vary dependent on social, political and geographical factors?' are addressed and placed in their historical context. This is a comprehensive account of major topics in the contemporary study of German sociolinguistics, and topics covered include the history and development of the German language, German as a minority language, minority languages in German-speaking countries, traditional dialects, variation in contemporary colloquial speech, the influence of English on German, and German in East and West. It draws together much otherwise inaccessible material from a great range of sources. The authors also assess critically research work carried out in German-speaking countries.

Choice, Rationality and Social Theory (RLE Social Theory)

Choice, Rationality and Social Theory (RLE Social Theory) PDF Author: Barry Hindess
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317652134
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
Choice, Rationality and Social Theory is a powerful rebuttal of the remarkably influential theories underlying 'rational choice analysis'. Rational choice analysis maintains that social life is principally to be explained as the outcome of rational choices on the part of individual actors. Adherents of this view include not only philosophers, political scientists and sociologists, but also prominent politicians in Western governments – notably of the United Kingdom and the United States. Rational choice analysis is said to be rigorous, capable of great technical sophistication, and able to generate powerful explanations on the basis of a few, relatively simple theoretical assumptions. Barry Hindess argues that the theory is seriously deficient, first, because there are important actors in the modern world other than human individuals, and second, because it says nothing about those processes of deliberation that play an important part in actors' decisions. The use of highly questionable assumptions about actors and their rationality has the effect of closing off important areas of intellectual inquiry and ignoring the reality of certain forms of thought and the social conditions on which they depend. These points are established through detailed examination of the concepts of the actor and of rationality – providing an overall argument that constitutes a serious challenge to any adherent of rational choice analysis.

Contrastive Register Variation

Contrastive Register Variation PDF Author: Stella Neumann
Publisher: ISSN
ISBN: 9783110238587
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

Intra-individual Variation in Language

Intra-individual Variation in Language PDF Author: Alexander Werth
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110743035
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
This volume offers several empirical, methodological, and theoretical approaches to the study of observable variation within individuals on various linguistic levels. With a focus on German varieties, the chapters provide answers on the following questions (inter alia): Which linguistic and extra-linguistic factors explain intra-individual variation? Is there observable intra-individual variation that cannot be explained by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors? Can group-level results be generalised to individual language usage and vice versa? Is intra-individual variation indicative of actual patterns of language change? How can intra-individual variation be examined in historical data? Consequently, the various theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches in this volume offer a better understanding of the meaning of intra-individual variation for patterns of language development, language variation and change. The inter- and transdisciplinary nature of the volume is an exciting new frontier, and the results of the studies in this book provide a wealth of new findings as well as challenges to some of the existing findings and assumptions regarding the nature of intra-individual variation.

The German Language in Switzerland

The German Language in Switzerland PDF Author: Felicity J. Rash
Publisher: Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This book offers a broad survey of issues relating to the German language in Switzerland. The initial focus is on the German-speaking community's relationship with the French, Italian and Romansh language communities. Consideration is then given to the complex issue of diglossia within the germanophone Swiss community, and the maintenance of both the Swiss German dialects and the Swiss German standard language as co-existent codes of equal status. The Swiss German dialects, the Swiss variety of standard German, and the influence of various foreign languages on both of these language forms are described in some detail. Finally, sociolinguistic issues affecting the German language in Switzerland are considered: the connection between social variation and linguistic change; language variation stemming from differences of age, sex and ethnic origin; and linguistic behaviour and phatic communication.

Explaining Russian-German code-mixing

Explaining Russian-German code-mixing PDF Author: Nikolay Hakimov
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961103305
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The study of grammatical variation in language mixing has been at the core of research into bilingual language practices. Although various motivations have been proposed in the literature to account for possible mixing patterns, some of them are either controversial, or remain untested. Little is still known about whether and how frequency of use of linguistic elements can contribute to the patterning of bilingual talk. This book is the first to systematically explore the factor usage frequency in a corpus of bilingual speech. The two aims are (i) to describe and analyze the variation in mixing patterns in the speech of Russia German adolescents and young adults in Germany, and (ii) to propose and test usage-based explanations of variation in mixing patterns in three morphosyntactic contexts: the adjective-modified noun phrase, the prepositional phrase, and the plural marking of German noun insertions in bilingual sentences. In these contexts, German noun insertions combine with either Russian or German words and grammatical markers, thus yielding mixed bilingual and German monolingual constituents in otherwise Russian sentences, the latter also labelled as embedded-language islands. The results suggest that the frequency with which words are used together mediates the distribution of mixing patterns in each of the examined contexts. The differing impacts of co-occurrence frequency are attributed to the distributional and semantic specifics of the analyzed morphosyntactic configurations. Lexical frequency has been found to be another important determinant in this variation. Other factors include recency, or lexical priming, in discourse in the case of prepositional phrases, and phonological and structural similarities and differences in the inflectional systems of the contact languages in the case of plural marking.

Variation in English and German Nominal Coreference

Variation in English and German Nominal Coreference PDF Author: Kerstin Anna Kunz
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783631610176
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
The topic of this work is nominal coreference in English and German. Its focus is on coreference relations that establish textual coherence and continuity above the local level of the clause. The book shows how linguistic options for creating coreference in English and German can be interpreted against the background of their motivating factors. It discusses mental text processing, German-English systemic contrasts and register peculiarities as possible sources for variation on different linguistic levels. Hermeneutic and example-based observations are complemented by a corpus-linguistic analysis of English and German political essays and German translations from the English originals. The study finally highlights linguistic and functional correlations of coreference instantiations in English and German texts, additionally shedding light on coreference strategies employed in translations. It thus yields an incentive for future research as well as providing a wealth of insights for language and translation teaching.

A Frequency Dictionary of German

A Frequency Dictionary of German PDF Author: Randall Jones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135182965
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A Frequency Dictionary of German is an invaluable tool for all learners of German, providing a list of the 4,034 most frequently used words in the language. Based on a 4.2 million-word corpus which is evenly divided between spoken, fiction and non-fiction texts, the dictionary provides a detailed frequency-based list plus alphabetical and part of speech indexes. All entries in the rank frequency list feature the English equivalent, a sample sentence plus an indication of major register variation. The dictionary also contains twenty-one thematically organized lists of frequently used words on a variety of topics as well as eleven special vocabulary lists. A Frequency Dictionary of German aims to enable students of all levels to maximize their study of German vocabulary in an efficient and engaging way.

German Phonetics and Phonology

German Phonetics and Phonology PDF Author: Mary Grantham O'Brien
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300196504
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
8.2.1. Consonants

Language Variation--European Perspectives

Language Variation--European Perspectives PDF Author: Frans Hinskens
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027234817
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This volume presents 16 original studies of variation in languages representing the three main European language families, as well as in varieties of Greek and Hungarian. The studies concern variation in or across dialects or dialect groups, in standard varieties or in emerging regional varieties of the standard. Several studies investigate a specific linguistic element or structure, while others focus on areas of tension between variation and prescriptive standard norms, on regional standard varieties and regiolects, on problems of linguistic classification (from folk linguistic or dialect geographical perspectives) and the classification of speakers. Language acquisition plays a main role in three studies. The studies in this volume represent a range of methods, including ethnographic and 'interpretative' approaches, conversation analysis, analyses of the internal and geographical distribution of dialect features, the classification and quantitative analyses of socio-demographic speaker background data, quantitative analyses of both diachronic and synchronic language data, phonetic measurements, as well as (quasi-)experimental perception studies. The volume thus offers a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmos of world-wide research on variability in (originally) European languages at the beginning of the 21th century and the linguistic expression of cultural diversity.