Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact

Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact PDF Author: Emily Irene Crevels
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198723814
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book addresses the complex question of how and why languages have spread across the globe. International experts in the field explore this issue using new analytical research techniques and drawing on large databases, with a focus on the language and population histories of Island Southeast Asia/Oceania, Africa, and South America.

Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact

Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact PDF Author: Emily Irene Crevels
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198723814
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book addresses the complex question of how and why languages have spread across the globe. International experts in the field explore this issue using new analytical research techniques and drawing on large databases, with a focus on the language and population histories of Island Southeast Asia/Oceania, Africa, and South America.

Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact

Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact PDF Author: Mily Crevels
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191035750
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book addresses the complex question of how and why languages have spread across the globe: why do we find large language families distributed over a wide area in some regions, while elsewhere we find clusters of very small families or language isolates? What roles have agriculture, geography, climate, ethnic identity, and language ideologies played in language spread? In this volume, international experts in the field provide new answers to these and related questions, drawing on the increasingly large databases available and on novel analytical research techniques. The first part of the volume outlines some general issues and approaches in the study of language dispersal, diversification, and contact. In the rest of the volume, chapters compare the language and population histories of three major regions - Island Southeast Asia/Oceania, Africa, and South America - which show particularly interesting contrasts in the distribution of languages and language families. The volume is interdisciplinary in approach, with insights from archaeology, genetics, anthropology, and geography, and will be of interest to a wide range of scholars interested in language diversity and contact.

Approaches to Language and Culture

Approaches to Language and Culture PDF Author: Svenja Völkel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110726629
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 572

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.

Advances in Contact Linguistics

Advances in Contact Linguistics PDF Author: Norval Smith
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027260737
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Get Book Here

Book Description
Issues in multilingualism and its implications for communities and society at large, language acquisition and use, language diversification, and creative language use associated with new linguistic identities have become hot topics in both scientific and popular debates. A ubiquitous aspect of multilingualism is language contact. This book contains twelve articles that discuss specific aspects of Contact Linguistics. These articles cover a wide range of topics in the field, including creoles, areal linguistics, language mixing, and the sociolinguistic aspects of interactions with audiences. The book is dedicated to Pieter Muysken whose work on pidgin and creole languages, mixed languages, code-switching, bilingualism, and areal linguistics has been ground-breaking and inspirational for the authors in this book, as well as numerous other scholars working on the various facets of this rapidly expanding field.

Historical Linguistics and Endangered Languages

Historical Linguistics and Endangered Languages PDF Author: Patience Epps
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429641613
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection showcases the contributions of the study of endangered and understudied languages to historical linguistic analysis, and the broader relevance of diachronic approaches toward developing better informed approaches to language documentation and description. The volume brings together perspectives from both established and up-and-coming scholars and represents a globally and linguistically diverse range of languages.The collected papers demonstrate the ways in which endangered languages can challenge existing models of language change based on more commonly studied languages, and can generate innovative insights into linguistic phenomena such as pathways of grammaticalization, forms and dynamics of contact-driven change, and the diachronic relationship between lexical and grammatical categories. In so doing, the book highlights the idea that processes and outcomes of language change long held to be universally relevant may be more sensitive to cultural and typological variability than previously assumed. Taken as a whole, this collection brings together perspectives from language documentation and historical linguistics to point the way forward for richer understandings of both language change and documentary-descriptive approaches, making this key reading for scholars in these fields.

Applicative Constructions in the World’s Languages

Applicative Constructions in the World’s Languages PDF Author: Fernando Zuniga
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110730952
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1100

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents a state-of-the-art cross-linguistic survey of applicative constructions in the functional-typological tradition. An introductory section sets the terminological and analytical stage, presents the methodology used by the different chapters, and provides a typological outlook. The individual contributions address the morphological, syntactic and semantic variation of applicatives, as well as their discourse-pragmatic function. They cover all major language families and some isolates that feature some illuminating version of the phenomenon, paying special attention to language-internal variation and unity. The phenomena surveyed range from those instances usually considered canonical (valency-increasing, syntactically and semantically predictable, productive, dedicated, and optional) to those occasionally understudied in descriptive works and frequently neglected in comparative studies (valency-neutral, rather unpredictable, lexicalized, syncretic, and/or obligatory).

The Dynamics of Language

The Dynamics of Language PDF Author: Rajend Mesthrie
Publisher: Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd
ISBN: 1775822273
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
Linguistics – the close study of language and languages – is an indispensable foundation for all forms of knowledge. The African continent is blessed with hundreds of languages which act as local repositories of culture and interaction. South Africa alone has eleven official languages, plus Sign Language, many heritage languages, and new languages of global movements and migration. Part of the linguist’s business is to document, record and affirm languages and diversity. Applied linguists use their training to understand and enhance the role of language in education and upliftment, and the opportunities and challenges of new technologies of communication. The International Congress of Linguists meets every five years to reflect the development of the field and 2018 is the first time that the congress is being held in Africa. This book is a collection of the plenary and focus papers presented at the conference and thus represents current thinking in the major branches of language study as represented by leading local and international scholars. The papers discuss the history of languages, their structure, acquisition, diversity and use. At the same time due regard is paid to the African continent in connection with its linguistic diversity, multilingualism and educational and societal concerns. The Congress is meant to affirm the value of the languages of Africa, of languages and Linguistics in general, as well as to inspire and equip younger scholars to undertake advanced research into language in its many facets.

Postcolonial Language Varieties in the Americas

Postcolonial Language Varieties in the Americas PDF Author: Danae Maria Perez
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110724030
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the Americas, both indigenous and postcolonial languages today bear witness of massive changes that have taken place since the colonial era. However, a unified approach to languages from different colonial areas is still missing. The present volume studies postcolonial varieties that emerged due to changing linguistic and sociolinguistic conditions in different settings across the Americas. The studies cover indigenous languages that are undergoing lexical and grammatical change due to the presence of colonial languages and the emergence of new dialects and creoles due to contact. The contributions showcase the diversity of approaches to tackle fundamental questions regarding the processes triggered by language contact as well as the wide range of outcomes contact has had in postcolonial settings. The volume adds to the documentation of the linguistic properties of postcolonial language varieties in a socio-historically informed framework. It explores the complex dynamics of extra-linguistic factors that brought about the processes of language change in them and contributes to a better understanding of the determinant factors that lead to the emergence and evolution of such codes.

Language Isolates I: Aikanã to Kandozi-Shapra

Language Isolates I: Aikanã to Kandozi-Shapra PDF Author: Patience Epps
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110419408
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 744

Get Book Here

Book Description
This handbook provides the first broadly comprehensive, typologically-informed descriptive overview of the languages of Greater Amazonia. Organized by genealogical units, the chapters provide empirically rich descriptions of the phonology and grammar of all Amazonian families and isolates for which data and descriptions exist. Volume 1 focuses on the many isolates of the region – those languages for which no extant sisters can be identified.

Language Contact and Change in the Americas

Language Contact and Change in the Americas PDF Author: Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027267332
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 426

Get Book Here

Book Description
This unique collection of articles in honor of Marianne Mithun represents the very latest in research on language contact and language change in the Indigenous languages of the Americas. The book aims to provide new theoretical and empirical insights into how and why languages change, especially with regard to contact phenomena in languages of North America, Meso-America and South America. The individual chapters cover a broad range of topics, including sound change, morphosyntactic change, lexical semantics, grammaticalization, language endangerment, and discourse-pragmatic change. With chapters from distinguished scholars and talented newcomers alike, this book will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in internally- and externally-motivated language change.