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Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages
by Gaston DorrenWhether you're a frequent visitor to Europe or just an armchair traveler, the surprising and extraordinary stories in Lingo will forever change the way you think about the continent, and may even make you want to learn a new language. Lingo spins the reader on a whirlwind tour of sixty European languages and dialects, sharing quirky moments from their histories and exploring their commonalities and differences. Most European languages are descended from a single ancestor, a language not unlike Sanskrit known as Proto-Indo-European (or PIE for short), but the continent's ever-changing borders and cultures have given rise to a linguistic and cultural diversity that is too often forgotten in discussions of Europe as a political entity. Lingo takes us into today's remote mountain villages of Switzerland, where Romansh is still the lingua franca, to formerly Soviet Belarus, a country whose language was Russified by the Bolsheviks, to Sweden, where up until the 1960s polite speaking conventions required that one never use the word you in conversation, leading to tiptoeing questions of the form: Would herr generaldirektr Rexed like a biscuit? Spanning six millenia and sixty languages in bite-size chapters, Lingo is a hilarious and highly edifying exploration of how Europe speaks.
Lingua Cosmica: Science Fiction from around the World
by Dale KnickerbockerAnthologies, awards, journals, and works in translation have sprung up to reflect science fiction's increasingly international scope. Yet scholars and students alike face a problem. Where does one begin to explore global SF in the absence of an established canon? Lingua Cosmica opens the door to some of the creators in the vanguard of international science fiction. Eleven experts offer innovative English-language scholarship on figures ranging from Cuban pioneer Daína Chaviano to Nigerian filmmaker Olatunde Osunsanmi to the Hugo Award-winning Chinese writer Liu Cixin. These essays invite readers to ponder the themes, formal elements, and unique cultural characteristics within the works of these irreplaceable—if too-little-known—artists. Dale Knickerbocker includes fantasists and genre-benders pushing SF along new evolutionary paths even as they draw on the traditions of their own literary cultures. Includes essays on Daína Chaviano (Cuba), Jacek Dukaj (Poland), Jean-Claude Dunyac (France), Andreas Eschbach (Germany), Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina), Sakyo Komatsu (Japan), Liu Cixin (China), Laurent McAllister (Yves Meynard and Jean-Louis Trudel, Francophone Canada), Olatunde Osunsanmi (Nigeria), Johanna Sinisalo (Finland), and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (Russia). Contributors: Alexis Brooks de Vita, Pawel Frelik, Yvonne Howell, Yolanda Molina-Gavilán, Vibeke Rützou Petersen, Amy J. Ransom, Hanna-Riikka Roine, Hanna Samola, Mingwei Song, Tatsumi Takayuki, Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo, and Natacha Vas-Deyres.
The Lingua Franca: Contact-Induced Language Change in the Mediterranean (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact)
by Natalie OpersteinWhose name is hidden behind the anonymity of the key publication on Mediterranean Lingua Franca? What linguistic reality does the label 'Lingua Franca' conceal? These and related questions are explored in this new book on an enduringly important topic. The book presents a typologically informed analysis of Mediterranean Lingua Franca, as documented in the Dictionnaire de la langue franque ou petit mauresque, which provides an important historical snapshot of contact-induced language change. Based on a close study of the Dictionnaire in its historical and linguistic context, the book proposes hypotheses concerning its models, authorship and publication history, and examines the place of the Dictionnaire's Lingua Franca in the structural typological space between Romance languages, on the one hand, and pidgins, on the other. It refines our understanding of the typology of contact outcomes while at the same time opening unexpected new avenues for both linguistic and historical research.
Lingua Franca and Français Tirailleur: From Sea Jargon to Military Order?
by Joanna NolanThis book explores how the eponymous and original Lingua Franca was recognized as a potential linguistic template for future military and colonial pidgins. The author traces the career trajectory of General Louis Faidherbe, a member of the French colonizing force in Algiers in the early 1830s and a recognized linguist, who rose up through the ranks in various African colonies and was the founder of regiments in West Africa, including the Senegal-based tirailleurs. Their artificially constructed military pidgin, Français Tirailleur, was a language modelled on the reduced grammar and lexicon of Lingua Franca. This book demonstrates the direct link between the two languages, as well as connections with other colonial pidgins in Asia that also derived to some extent from Lingua Franca. It will be of interest to students and scholars of language contact and language history, pidgins and creoles, and military and colonial history.
Lingua Franca in the Mediterranean
by J. E. WansboroughThe subject of this study is the language of commerce and diplomacy during the period from 1500 BCE to 1500 CE. Based on texts of chancery provenance, its aim is the identification of a linguistic sub-system that effected and informed the major channel of international relations. The standard procedures of contact and exchange generated a format that facilitated inter-lingual transfer of concepts and terms. Lingua Franca refers to the several natural languages that served as vehicle in the transfer, but also to the format itself.
Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love
by Julie SedivyA celebration of the beauty and mystery of language and how it shapes our lives, our loves, and our world.If there is one feature that defines the human condition, it is language: written, spoken, signed, understood, and misunderstood, in all its infinite glory. In this ingenious, lyrical exploration, Julie Sedivy draws on years of experience in the lab and a lifetime of linguistic love to bring the discoveries of linguistics home, to the place language itself lives: within the yearnings of the human heart and amid the complex social bonds that it makes possible.Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love follows the path that language takes through a human life—from an infant’s first attempts at sense-making to the vulnerabilities and losses that accompany aging. As Sedivy shows, however, language and life are inextricable, and here she offers them together: a childish misunderstanding of her mother’s meaning reveals the difficulty of relating to other minds; frustration with “professional” communication styles exposes the labyrinth of standards that define success; the first signs of hearing loss lead to a meditation on society’s discomfort with physical and mental limitations.Part memoir, part scientific exploration, and part cultural commentary, this book epitomizes the thrills of a life steeped in the aesthetic delights of language and the joys of its scientific scrutiny.
Linguistic Analyses: Handbook of African Languages (Linguistic Surveys of Africa #18)
by M. A. Bryan A. N. TuckerThis book, originally published in 1966, deals mainly with morphemes and with grammatical and syntactic behaviour. Although some vocabulary material is contained in this volume, and some more in the Linguistic Survey of the Northern Bantu Borderland, vocabulary comparison itself plays little part. The volume presents an overall picture of the working of representative languages from each section of the Handbook and provides grammatical material which will help future students in classifying the languages to their typological as apart from their lexical features.
The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes: Graeme Ritchie (Routledge Studies in Linguistics #Vol. 2)
by Graeme RitchieThis book starts from three observations. First, the use of humour is a complex, puzzling, and idiosyncratically human form of behaviour (and hence is of scientific interest). Second, there is currently no theory of how humour works. Third, one useful step towards a theory of humour is to analyze humorous items in precise detail, in order to understand their mechanisms.The author begins by considering how to study jokes rigorously: the assumptions to make, the guidelines to follow and the pitfalls to avoid. A critique of other work on humour is also provided. This introduces some important concepts, and also demonstrates the lack of agreement about what a theory of humour should look like. The language devices used in various jokes, such as puns or humour based on misinterpretation, are analysed in detail. The central part of the book develops, and demonstrates, proposals for how best to analyze the workings of simple jokes. Finally, the author makes some general suggestions about the language devices that seem to be central to the construction of jokes.The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes will be invaluable for researchers and advanced students of humour research, linguistics and cognitive science.
Linguistic and Cognitive Aspects of Quantification (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics #47)
by Katalin É. Kiss Tamás ZétényiThis volume presents the results of psycholinguistic research into various aspects of the grammar of quantification. The investigations involve children and adults, speakers of different languages, using a variety of experimental paradigms. A shared aspect of the studies is that they present their experimental results as evidence evaluating linguistic theories of quantification. Topics discussed include the interpretation of universal, comparative, and superlative quantifiers, quantifier spreading, scope interaction between pairs of quantifiers and between quantifiers and wh-phrases, distributivity and cumulativity, the interaction of quantifier interpretation with information structure, the disambiguating role of prosody, the functional overlap between universal quantification and perfectivity, and much more. The focus on experimental evidence makes this book essential reading for linguists (syntacticians, semanticists and pragmatists), psycholinguists and psychologists interested in quantification.
Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition in a Migrant Community
by David Singleton Vera ReganThis book provides a linguistic and cultural profile of the Polish diasporic communities in three different European countries: Ireland, France and Austria. The eight contributing chapters present original research on the acquisition and use of the languages of the respective host communities and also explore related elements of cultural acquisition. A number of aspects of second language acquisition are considered, notably the acquisition of phonology, lexicon and discourse, as well as aspects of sociolinguistic competence. In addition, varying approaches and research methods are reported on, each of which was chosen in consideration of the particular research issue addressed and the particular circumstances under which the research was carried out. These range from psycholinguistic approaches to second language acquisition to variationist approaches, and include both quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
Linguistic and Cultural Innovation in Schools
by Jane Spiro Eowyn CrisfieldThis book presents case studies of five schools engaged in radical change in order to engage with children's home languages and cultures in a more multilingual and inclusive way. Located around the globe, from Hawaii to Kenya, the case studies are informed by both researchers and professionals on the ground. While the schools in question are each anchored in a unique context and situation, they also have a common mission to see language diversity as a resource, and a responsibility to embrace all the languages of their pupils. The authors offer a rich resource for education professionals and policymakers, including not only theoretical insights but useful practical tips. This innovative volume will be a helpful resource for educational professionals interested in following a path of multilingualism as well as students and scholars of second language acquisition, heritage languages and cultures and multilingual educational policy.
Linguistic and Cultural Representation in Audiovisual Translation (Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies)
by Irene Ranzato Serenella ZanottiThis collection of essays offers a multi-faceted exploration of audiovisual translation, both as a means of intercultural exchange and as a lens through which linguistic and cultural representations are negotiated and shaped. Examining case studies from a variety of media, including film, television, and video games, the volume focuses on different modes of audiovisual translation, including subtitling and dubbing, and the representations of linguistic and stylistic features, cultural mores, gender, and the translation process itself embedded within them. The book also meditates on issues regarding accessibility, a growing concern in audiovisual translation research. Rooted in the most up-to-date issues in both audiovisual translation and media culture today, this volume is essential reading for students and scholars in translation studies, film studies, television studies, video game studies, and media studies.
Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Approaches on Implicatures and Presuppositions
by Salvatore Pistoia-Reda Filippo DomaneschiThis book discusses developments in the study of implicatures and presuppositions, drawing on recent linguistic and psycholinguistic literature. It provides original discussions of specific formal aspects of the theoretical reconstruction of these phenomena. The authors offer innovative experimental analyses in which crucial processing questions are addressed, and new experimental methodologies are introduced. The result is an advanced debate featuring broad empirical coverage of the issues, as well as an informed discussion of the connections between a Compositional Semantics and a Pragmatic Theory of Implicit Communication, in light of the empirical data coming from Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics. This book will be a worthwhile read for those with interests in both the formal and methodological aspects of these arguments.
Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader (Wiley Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology Ser. #1)
by Alessandro DurantiLinguistic Anthropology: A Reader is a comprehensive collection of the best work that has been published in this exciting and growing area of anthropology, and is organized to provide a guide to key issues in the study of language as a cultural resource and speaking as a cultural practice. <P><P><ul> <li>Revised and updated, this second edition contains eight new articles on key subjects, including speech communities, the power and performance of language, and narratives</li> <li>Selections are both historically oriented and thematically coherent, and are accessibly grouped according to four major themes: speech community and communicative competence; the performance of language; language socialization and literacy practices; and the power of language</li> <li>An extensive introduction provides an original perspective on the development of the field and highlights its most compelling issues</li> <li>Each section includes a brief introductory statement, sets of guiding questions, and list of recommended readings on the main topics</li> </ul>
Linguistic Archaeology: An Introduction and Methodological Guide
by Gerd CarlingLinguistic Archaeology provides students with an accessible introduction to the field of linguistic archaeology, both as theoretical framework and methodological toolkit, for understanding the conceptual foundations and practical considerations involved in reconstructing the prehistory of language.The book introduces the field’s expansion out of traditional approaches to focus more on the interplay of related disciplines and the reconstruction of human language beyond the written period. The opening chapter outlines key theories and charts their development from the nineteenth century through to today, drawing on work from computational historical linguistics, phylogenetics, and linguistic anthropology. Subsequent chapters build on theory to take a hands-on approach in mining empirical data in the process of reconstructing language prehistory, including references, links, and instructions to open access resources, and offering a step-by-step guide for employing the rich range of available methods in working with this data. Closing chapters situate theory and method in context against chronological and geographic perspectives and look ahead to future trajectories for continued progress in this emerging area of study.Offering a holistic entry point into linguistic archaeology, this innovative volume will be a helpful resource for students in historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology, language evolution, and cultural geography.
Linguistic Archaeology of South Asia
by Franklin SouthworthThis book brings together linguistic and archaeological evidence of South Asian prehistory. The author depicts and analyses the region, in particular the Indus Valley civilization, its links with neighbouring regions and its implications for social history. Each type of linguistic data is put into its socio-historical context. Consequently, the book is both a description of the unique methodology 'linguistic archaeology' and a treatment of South Asian linguistic data.
The Linguistic Atlas of England (Routledge Library Editions)
by Harold Orton Stewart Sanderson John WiddowsonThis fascinating record of how English is spoken in England is now being reprinted. Over 400 maps detail differences in phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax. The Atlas provides a unique survey of the linguistic geography of England.This volume was inspired by the English Dialect Survey which set out to elicit information about the current dialectical usages of the older members of the farming communities throughout rural England. The Survey secondly mapped this information to illustrate the regional distributions of those features of their speech which persisted from ancient times.Published after Orton's death, the publication of this volume testified to the sustained interest in the lingusitic geography of England.
Linguistic Bodies: The Continuity between Life and Language
by Ezequiel A. Di Paolo Hanne De Jaegher Elena Clare CuffariA novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language. Linguistic Bodies offers a fully embodied and fully social treatment of human language without positing mental representations. The authors present the first coherent, overarching theory that connects dynamical explanations of action and perception with language. Arguing from the assumption of a deep continuity between life and mind, they show that this continuity extends to language. Expanding and deepening enactive theory, they offer a constitutive account of language and the co-emergent phenomena of personhood, reflexivity, social normativity, and ideality. Language, they argue, is not something we add to a range of existing cognitive capacities but a new way of being embodied. Each of us is a linguistic body in a community of other linguistic bodies. The book describes three distinct yet entangled kinds of human embodiment, organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective; it traces the emergence of linguistic sensitivities and introduces the novel concept of linguistic bodies; and it explores the implications of living as linguistic bodies in perpetual becoming, applying the concept of linguistic bodies to questions of language acquisition, parenting, autism, grammar, symbol, narrative, and gesture, and to such ethical concerns as microaggression, institutional speech, and pedagogy.
The Linguistic Challenge of the Transition to Secondary School: A Corpus Study of Academic Language (Routledge Applied Corpus Linguistics)
by Alice Deignan Duygu Candarli Florence OxleyThis book provides a unique analysis and description of the linguistic challenges faced by school students as they move from primary to secondary school, a major transition, which some students struggle with emotionally and academically. The study: • draws on a bespoke corpus of 2.5 million words of written materials and transcribed classroom recordings, provided by the project's partner schools; • combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to the corpus data to explore linguistic variation across school levels, registers and subjects; • describes the procedures of corpus compilation and analysis of written and spoken academic language, showing how modern corpus tools can be applied to this far-reaching social and educational issue; • uncovers differences and similarities between the academic language that school children are exposed to at primary and secondary school, contrasting this against the backdrop of the non-academic language that they encounter outside school. This book is important reading for advanced students and researchers in corpus linguistics, applied linguistics and teacher education. It carries implications for policymakers and schools looking to support students at this critical point in their schooling.
Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City: Postmodern Individuals in Urban Communicative Settings (Routledge Studies in Language and Identity)
by Dick SmakmanLinguistic Choices in the Contemporary City focuses on how individuals navigate conversation in highly diversified contexts and provides a broad overview of state of the art research in urban sociolinguistics across the globe. Bearing in mind the impact of international travel and migration, the book accounts for the shifting contemporary studies to the workings of language choices in places where people with many different backgrounds meet and exchange ideas. It specifically addresses how people handle language use challenges in a broad range of settings to present themselves positively and meet their information and identity goals. While a speaker’s experience runs like a thread through this volume, the linguistic, cultural and situational focus is as broad as possible. It runs from the language choices of Chinese immigrants to Beijing and Finnish immigrants to Japan to the use of the local lingua franca by motor taxi drivers in Ngaoundéré, Cameroon, and how Hungarian students in their dorm rooms express views on political correctness uninhibitedly. As it turns out, language play, improvisation, humour, lies, as well as highly marked subconscious pronunciation choices, are natural parts of the discourses, and this volume provides numerous and extensive examples of these techniques. For each of the settings discussed, the perspective is taken of personalised linguistic and extra-linguistic styles in tackling communicative challenges. This way, a picture is drawn of how postmodern individuals in extremely different cultural and situational circumstances turn out to have strikingly similar human behaviours and intentions. Linguistic Choices in the Contemporary City is of interest to all those who follow theoretical and methodological developments in this field. It will be of use for upper level students in the fields of Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Linguistic Anthropology and related fields in which urban communicative settings are the focus.
A Linguistic Commentary on Livius Andronicus (Studies in Classics)
by Ivy LivingstonAs the oldest literary Latin preserved in any quantity, the language of Livius shows many features of linguistic interest and raises intriguing questions of phonolgy, morphology and syntax.
The Linguistic Construction of Reality
by George W. GraceThis book, originally published in 1987, considers how the science of linguistics creates its own objects of study. It argues that language is the one essential tool in the ‘social construction of reality’ – the way in which our environment as we perceive and respond to it is actually created by the cultural constructs we bring to bear on it – and that it is also the means by which this reality, once constructed, is preserved and transmitted from person to person and from generation to generation. Hence it is entirely appropriate to refer to the linguistic construction of reality.
Linguistic Convergence and Areal Diffusion: Case Studies from Iranian, Semitic and Turkic
by Éva Ágnes Csató Bo Isaksson Carina JahaniThe authors are outstanding scholars engaged in the study of language varieties spoken in 'convergence areas' in which speakers are multilingual in languages of at least two but sometimes all three language families. Many of the contributions present new data collected in fieldwork. The geographic area covered is Western and Central Asia where varieties of Iranian, Semitic and Turkic languages have entered into many different types of contact. The intricate linguistic contact situations demonstrate highly interesting convergence phenomena.
Linguistic Coping Strategies in Sign Language Interpreting
by Jemina NapierThis ground-breaking work, originally published 15 years ago, continues to serve as the primary reference on the theories of omission potential and translational contact in sign language interpreting. In the book, noted scholar Jemina Napier explores the linguistic coping strategies of interpreters by drawing on her own study of the interpretation of a university lecture from English into Australian Sign Language (Auslan). A new preface by the author provides perspective on the importance of the work and how it fits within the scholarship of interpretation studies. The concept of strategic omissions is explored here as a tool that is consciously used by interpreters as a coping strategy. Instead of being a mistake, omitting part of the source language can actually be part of an active decision-making process that allows the interpreter to convey the correct meaning when faced with challenges. For the first time, Napier found that omission potential existed within every interpretation and, furthermore, she proposed a new taxonomy of five different conscious and unconscious omission types. Her findings also indicate that Auslan/English interpreters use both a free and literal interpretation approach, but that those who use a free approach occasionally switch to a literal approach as a linguistic coping strategy to provide access to English terminology. Both coping strategies help negotiate the demands of interpretation, whether it be lack of subject-matter expertise, dealing with dense material, or the context of the situation. Napier also analyzes the interpreters' reflections on their decision-making processes as well as the university students' perceptions and preferences of their interpreters' linguistic choices and styles. Linguistic Coping Strategies in Sign Language Interpreting is a foundational text in interpretation studies that can be applied to interpreting in different contexts and to interpreter training.
Linguistic Culture and Language Policy (The Politics of Language)
by Harold SchiffmanBy looking closely at the multilingual democracies of India, France and the USA, Harold F. Schiffman examines how language policy is primarily a social construct based on belief systems, attitudes and myths.Linguistic Culture and Language Policy exposes language policy as culture-specific, helping us to understand why language policies evolve the way they do; why they work, or not; and how people's lives are affected by them. These issues will be of specific interest to linguists specialising in multilingual/multicultural societies, bilingual educationalists, curriculum planners and teachers.