Cross-linguistic Semantics

Cross-linguistic Semantics PDF Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027205698
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Cross-linguistic semantics – investigating how languages package and express meanings differently – is central to the linguistic quest to understand the nature of human language. This set of studies explores and demonstrates cross-linguistic semantics as practised in the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) framework, originated by Anna Wierzbicka. The opening chapters give a state-of-the-art overview of the NSM model, propose several theoretical innovations and advance a number of original analyses in connection with names and naming, clefts and other specificational sentences, and discourse anaphora. Subsequent chapters describe and analyse diverse phenomena in ten languages from multiple families, geographical locations, and cultural settings around the globe. Three substantial studies document how the metalanguage of NSM semantic primes can be realised in languages of widely differing types: Amharic (Ethiopia), Korean, and East Cree. Each constitutes a lexicogrammatical portrait in miniature of the language concerned. Other chapters probe topics such as inalienable possession in Koromu (Papua New Guinea), epistemic verbs in Swedish, hyperpolysemy in Bunuba (Australia), the expression of "momentariness" in Berber, ethnogeometry in Makasai (East Timor), value concepts in Russian, and “virtuous emotions” in Japanese. This book will be valuable for linguists working on language description, lexical semantics, or the semantics of grammar, for advanced students of linguistics, and for others interested in language universals and language diversity.

Cross-linguistic Semantics

Cross-linguistic Semantics PDF Author: Cliff Goddard
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027205698
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Cross-linguistic semantics – investigating how languages package and express meanings differently – is central to the linguistic quest to understand the nature of human language. This set of studies explores and demonstrates cross-linguistic semantics as practised in the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) framework, originated by Anna Wierzbicka. The opening chapters give a state-of-the-art overview of the NSM model, propose several theoretical innovations and advance a number of original analyses in connection with names and naming, clefts and other specificational sentences, and discourse anaphora. Subsequent chapters describe and analyse diverse phenomena in ten languages from multiple families, geographical locations, and cultural settings around the globe. Three substantial studies document how the metalanguage of NSM semantic primes can be realised in languages of widely differing types: Amharic (Ethiopia), Korean, and East Cree. Each constitutes a lexicogrammatical portrait in miniature of the language concerned. Other chapters probe topics such as inalienable possession in Koromu (Papua New Guinea), epistemic verbs in Swedish, hyperpolysemy in Bunuba (Australia), the expression of "momentariness" in Berber, ethnogeometry in Makasai (East Timor), value concepts in Russian, and “virtuous emotions” in Japanese. This book will be valuable for linguists working on language description, lexical semantics, or the semantics of grammar, for advanced students of linguistics, and for others interested in language universals and language diversity.

Morphologies of Asia and Africa

Morphologies of Asia and Africa PDF Author: Alan S. Kaye
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 1575065665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1420

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Book Description
In 1997, Eisenbrauns published the highly-regarded two-volume Phonologies of Asia and Africa, edited by Alan Kaye with the assistance of Peter T. Daniels, and the book rapidly became the standard reference for the phonologies of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Now the concept has been extended, and Kaye has assembled nearly 50 scholars to write essays on the morphologies of the same language group. The coverage is complete, copious, and again will likely become the standard work in the field. Contributors are an international Who’s Who of Afro-Asiatic linguistics, from Appleyard to Leslau to Voigt. It is with great sadness that we report the death of Alan Kaye on May 31, 2007, while these volumes were in the final stages of preparation for the press. Alan was diagnosed with bone cancer on May 1 while on research leave in the United Arab Emirates and was brought home to Fullerton by his son on May 22.

Afroasiatic

Afroasiatic PDF Author: Mauro Tosco
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027264570
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The articles in the present volume offer an updated view of the breadth of theoretical and empirical research being carried on in the different subgroups of the Afroasiatic phylum. They are written by leading specialists and are representative of widely different perspectives and interests, from the analysis of data from scarcely known varieties to the reappraisal of old debates (such as the value of the Classical Arabic verbal forms). Reflecting a great diversity of language structures and functions, the articles are grouped into three broad areas: the phylum as such in its classificatory and typological aspects; the analysis of the intricate morphology of Afroasiatic and its developments; and the syntax of Afroasiatic in its widest sense, from the clause to the sentence and beyond. They witness how Afroasiatic, with its unsurpassed historical depth and immense geographical breadth, keeps representing a constant source of fascinating data and implications for linguistic theory.

Semitic Languages

Semitic Languages PDF Author: Edward Lipiński
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042908154
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 792

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Book Description
The first comparative grammar of the Semitic languages, by H. Zimmern, was published a hundred years ago and the last original work of this kind was issued in Russian in 1972 by B.M. Grande. The present grammar, designed to come out in the centenary of the completion of Zimmern's work, fills thus a gap. Besides, it is based on both classical and modern Semitic languages, it takes new material of these last decades into account, and situates the Semitic languages in the wider context of Afro-Asiatic. The introduction briefly presents the languages in question. The main parts of the work are devoted to phonology, morphology, and syntax, with elaborate charts and diagrams. Then follows a discussion of fundamental questions related to lexicographical analysis. The study is supplemented by a glossary of linguistic terms used in Semitics, by a selective bibliography, by a general index, and by an index of words and forms. The book is the result of twenty-five years of research and teaching in comparative Semitic grammar.

Arabic as a Minority Language

Arabic as a Minority Language PDF Author: Jonathan Owens
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110805456
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

Aspects of the Morphosyntax of Tarifit Berber

Aspects of the Morphosyntax of Tarifit Berber PDF Author: Abdel El Hankari
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527574075
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Tarifit Berber is one of the less-studied Berber languages. This book is a comprehensive investigation of the overarching themes which lie at the heart of the morphosyntax of Berber. This includes a grammatical description of parts of speech, the inflectional classes of nouns, the construct state, word order, clitics, and valency. These topics are investigated within the minimalist approach to syntactic theory. One of the most significant findings of the book is that Tarifit Berber is claimed to have gone through a grammatical shift in word order from verb-subject-object (VSO), as displayed by the major studied Berber varieties, to a topic-prominent system. Novel analyses are also proposed for clitics and the causative system, in order to bring these grammatical aspects within the range of current theories.

A Grammar of the Jewish Arabic Dialect of Gabes

A Grammar of the Jewish Arabic Dialect of Gabes PDF Author: Wiktor Gębski
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1805112538
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
This volume undertakes a linguistic exploration of the endangered Arabic dialect spoken by the Jews of Gabes, a coastal city situated in Southern Tunisia. Belonging to the category of sedentary North African dialects, this variety is now spoken by a dwindling number of native speakers, primarily in Israel and France. Given the imminent extinction faced by many modern varieties of Judaeo-Arabic, including Jewish Gabes, the study's primary goal is to document and describe its linguistic nuances while reliable speakers are still accessible. Data for this comprehensive study were collected during fieldwork in Israel and France between December 2018 and March 2022. The volume's primary objective is a meticulous comparative analysis of Jewish Gabes, with a special emphasis on syntax, aiming to discern unique linguistic features through comparison with other North African dialects. The results of the study suggest that the Jewish dialect of Gabes emerged in the first wave of the Arab conquest of the Maghreb, thus exhibiting features that set it apart from its Muslim counterpart. This old variety therefore has the potential to provide invaluable information on the formation of Maghrebi Arabic and the mechanisms of language contact in the pre-Islamic Maghreb. The volume is organised in three main sections: phonology, morphology, and syntax, with the syntax section adopting historical and typological perspectives to shed light on this linguistic terra incognita.

Loanwords in the World's Languages

Loanwords in the World's Languages PDF Author: Martin Haspelmath
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110218437
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1104

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Book Description
"This landmark publication in comparative linguistics is the first comprehensive work to address the general issue of what kinds of words tend to be borrowed from other languages. The authors have assembled a unique database of over 70,000 words from 40 languages from around the world, 18,000 of which are loanwords. This database allows the authors to make empirically founded generalizations about general tendencies of word exchange among languages." --Book Jacket.

AIDA Granada: A Pomegranate of Arabic Varieties

AIDA Granada: A Pomegranate of Arabic Varieties PDF Author: Carmen Berlinches Ramos
Publisher: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza
ISBN: 8413408296
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
This volume, organized alphabetically, comprises 37 presentations from the 14th AIDA conference. The authors have revised their work, which has been reviewed to ensure suitability for publication as chapters. This selection of papers covers the Arabic-speaking world from East to West, and from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives (E. Larbi, F.B. Francisco). Scholars have delved into both theoretical (S. Procházka) and empirical realms, exploring topics such as the analysis of linguistic traits within cultural expressions (E. De Blasio, N. Fottouh & B. Horvat, A.S. Ould Mohamed Baba). Additionally, they have contributed to the description of previously unidentified linguistic varieties (J. Aguadé & A. Salim, A. Bar-Moshe, L. Ben Salah, M. Benítez Fernández, A. Torzullo). Their investigations have spanned phonological (A. Avram, V. Bozkurt, I. Youssef), morphological (G. Biţună, A. Boucherit, M. Garaoun, D. Wilmsen & F. Al Muhairi), morphosyntactic (M. Afkir, G. Chikovani, G. Grigore, A. Iriarte Díez, E. Ravier, A. Sigourou), and semantic aspects (L. Lombezzi, C. Taine-Cheikh); The exploration of sociolinguistic phenomena (L. Cerqueglini, J. Falchetta, J. Guerrero, I. Moufid, A. Naddari, L. Zack, K. Ziamari, D. Caubet & C. Miller); Arabic in contact with other languages (H. El Shazli, V. Engler, E. Gutova); and innovative teaching methodologies (N. Ejibadze).

Moroccan Feminist Discourses

Moroccan Feminist Discourses PDF Author: F. Sadiqi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137455098
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Both a scholarly and personal critique of current feminist Moroccan discourses, this book is a call for a larger-than-Islam framework that accommodates the Berber dimension. Sadiqi argues that current feminist discourse, both secular and Islamic ones, are not only divergent but limit the rich heritage, knowledge, and art of Berber women.