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Author: Bernd Heine
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191527831
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
"This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. "Like other biological phenomena, language cannot be fully understood without reference to its evolution, whether proven or hypothesized," wrote Talmy Givón in 2002. As the languages spoken 8,000 years ago were typologically much the same as they are today and as no direct evidence exists for languages before then, evolutionary linguists are at a disadvantage compared to their counterparts in biology. Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva seek to overcome this obstacle by combining grammaticalization theory, one of the main methods of historical linguistics, with work in animal communication and human evolution. The questions they address include: do the modern languages derive from one ancestral language or from more than one? What was the structure of language like when it first evolved? And how did the properties associated with modern human languages arise, in particular syntax and the recursive use of language structures? The authors proceed on the assumption that if language evolution is the result of language change then the reconstruction of the former can be explored by deploying the processes involved in the latter. Their measured arguments and crystal-clear exposition will appeal to all those interested in the evolution of language, from advanced undergraduates to linguists, cognitive scientists, human biologists, and archaeologists.
Author: Bernd Heine
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191527831
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Get Book Here
Book Description
"This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. "Like other biological phenomena, language cannot be fully understood without reference to its evolution, whether proven or hypothesized," wrote Talmy Givón in 2002. As the languages spoken 8,000 years ago were typologically much the same as they are today and as no direct evidence exists for languages before then, evolutionary linguists are at a disadvantage compared to their counterparts in biology. Bernd Heine and Tania Kuteva seek to overcome this obstacle by combining grammaticalization theory, one of the main methods of historical linguistics, with work in animal communication and human evolution. The questions they address include: do the modern languages derive from one ancestral language or from more than one? What was the structure of language like when it first evolved? And how did the properties associated with modern human languages arise, in particular syntax and the recursive use of language structures? The authors proceed on the assumption that if language evolution is the result of language change then the reconstruction of the former can be explored by deploying the processes involved in the latter. Their measured arguments and crystal-clear exposition will appeal to all those interested in the evolution of language, from advanced undergraduates to linguists, cognitive scientists, human biologists, and archaeologists.
Author: Bernd Heine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199227764
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 437
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Book Description
This book reconstructs what the earliest grammars might have been and shows how they could have led to the languages of modern humankind. It considers whether these languages derive from a single ancestral language; what the structure of language was when it first evolved; and how the properties associated with modern human languages first arose.
Author: Claire Lefebvre
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521025386
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
This study focuses on the cognitive processes involved in creole genesis: relexification, reanalysis, and direct leveling. The role of these processes is documented by a detailed comparison of Haitian creole with its two major contributing languages, French and Fongbe, to illustrate how mechanisms from source languages show themselves in creole. The author examines the input of adult, as opposed to child, speakers and resolves the problems in the three main approaches, universalist, superstratist and substratist, which have been central to the recent debate on creole development.
Author: Louis G. Kelly
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027245908
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
Much is known about the grammar of the modistae and about its eclipse; this book sets out to trace its rise. In the late eleventh century grammar became an analytical rather than an exegetical discipline under the impetus of the new theology. Under the impetus of Arab learning the ancient sciences were reshaped according to the norms of Aristotle's Analytics, and developed within a structure of speculative sciences beginning with grammar and culminating in theology. Though the modistae acknowledge Aristotle, Donatus, Priscian and the Arab commentators, their roots also lie in Augustine and Boethius, and they took as much from their scholastic contemporaries as they gave them. This book traces the genesis of a grammar which communicated freely with other speculative sciences, shared their structures and methods, and affirmed its own individuality by defining its object as the causes of language.
Author: Marge E. Landsberg
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110847531
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
Author: Jürgen Trabant
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 9783110170252
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 270
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Book Description
The contributions to this volume reflect the state of the art in the renewed discussion on the origin of language. Some of the most important specialists in the field - life scientists and linguists - primarily examine two aspects of the question: the origin of the language faculty and the evolution of the first language. At stake is the relation between nature and culture and between universality and historical particularity as well as cognition, communication, and the very essence of language.
Author: Marcel Danesi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253113709
Category : Literary Criticism & Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
"... serious scholars of Vico as well as glottogeneticists will find much of value in this excellent monograph." -- New Vico Studies "... a provocative, well-researched argument which might find reapplication in the fields of anthropology, semiotics, archeology, psychology or even philosophy." -- Theological Book Review Danesi returns to the work of the 18th-century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico to create a persuasive, original account of the evolution and development of language, one of the deep mysteries of human existence. The Vichian reconstruction of the origin of language is described at length, then evaluated in light of contemporary research in the cognitive, social, and biological sciences.
Author: James Lantolf
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 422
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Book Description
Integrates theory, research, and practice on the learning of second and foreign languages as informed by sociocultural and activity theory. It familiarizes students, teachers, and other researchers who do not work within the theory with its principal claims and constructs in particular as they relate to second language research. The book also describes and illustrates the use of activity theory to support practical and conceptual innovations in second language education.
Author: George Steiner
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480411868
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
DIV“A fresh, revelatory, golden eagle’s eye-view of western literature.” —Financial Times/divDIV Early in Grammars of Creation, George Steiner references Plato’s maxim that in “all things natural and human, the origin is the most excellent.” Creation, he argues, is linguistically fundamental in theology, philosophy, art, music, literature—central, in fact, to our very humanity. Since the Holocaust, however, art has shown a tendency to linger on endings—on sundown instead of sunrise. Asserting that every use of the future tense of the verb “to be” is a negation of mortality, Steiner draws on everything from world wars and the Nazis to religion and the word of God to demonstrate how our grammar reveals our perceptions, reflections, and experiences. His study shows the twentieth century to be largely a failed one, but also offers a glimpse of hope for Western civilization, a new light peeking just over the horizon./div
Author: Talmy Givón
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027232539
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
Complex hierarchic syntax is a hallmark of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the evolutionary apex of the uniquely - human language faculty - evolutionary yet mysteriously immune to Darwinian adaptive selection. Prof. Givón's book treats syntactic complexity as an integral part of the evolutionary rise of human communication. The book first describes grammar as an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic object- and-event cognition and mental representation. It then surveys the two grand developmental trends of human language: diachrony, the communal enterprise directly responsible for fashioning synchronic morpho-syntax and cross-language diversity; and ontogeny, the individual endeavor directly responsible for acquiring the competent use of grammar. The genesis of syntactic complexity along these two developmental trends is compared with second language acquisition, pre-grammatical pidgin and pre-human communication. The evolutionary relevance of language diachrony, language ontogeny and pidginization is argued for on general bio-evolutionary grounds: It is the organism's adaptive on-line behavior- invention, learning and skill acquisition - that is the common thread running through all three developmental trends. The neuro-cognitive circuits that underlie language, and their evolutionary underpinnings, are described and assessed. Recursive embedding turns out to be not an adaptive target on its own, but the by-product of two distinct adaptive moves: (i) the recruitment of conjoined clauses as modal operators on, or referential specifiers of, other clauses; and (ii) the subsequent condensation of paratactic into syntactic structures.
