Kategoria BISAC: Language Arts & Disciplines >> Linguistics - Historical & Comparative

Conflict and Compromise, Volume 3: Finland examines historical and developmental patterns during the Swedish, Russian and post-independence periods of Finland's history. McRae outlines Finland's changing social structures, showing how the language groups have evolved within these structures in the twentieth century. He compares how Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking citizens perceive themselves and other language groups, as well as the similarities and differences in their views on political and social issues. Further, the book describes in detail the constitutional and...

Das Arbeitsheft stellt ein einfuhrendes Panorama der italienischen Sprachwissenschaft dar. Dabei richtet es sich nicht nur an Studierende der Italianistik, sondern auch an Studierende anderer Disziplinen. Neben den Methoden der modernen Linguistik und ihrer Darstellung anhand italienischer Beispiele werden auch Aspekte der Wissenschaftsgeschichte behandelt. Diese betreffen sowohl die italienische Rezeption moderner linguistischer Methoden, als auch die Beschaftigung mit sprachwissenschaftlich relevanten Themen in vorwissenschaftlicher Zeit in Italien, d.h. von den Sprachbetrachtungen...

The eighteenth century is an important period both in the history of science and in the history of languages. Interest in science, and especially in the useful sciences, exploded and a new, modern approach to scientific discovery and the accumulation of knowledge emerged. It was during this century, too, that ideas on language and language practice began to change. Latin had been more or less the only written language used for scientific purposes, but gradually the vernaculars became established as fully acceptable alternatives for scientific writing. The period is of interest, moreover,...

Historical linguistics, the oldest field in linguistics, has been traditionally dominated by phonological and etymological investigations. Only in the late twentieth century have linguists begun to focus their interest and research on the area of syntactic change and the insight it provides on the nature of language. This volume represents the first major contribution on the mechanisms of syntactic change.

The fourteen articles that make up this volume were selected from the Symposium on the Mechanisms of Syntactic Change held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1976,...

In 1821, Sequoyah, a Cherokee metalworker and inventor, introduced a writing system that he had been developing for more than a decade. His creation the Cherokee syllabary helped his people learn to read and write within five years and became a principal part of their identity. This groundbreaking study traces the creation, dissemination, and evolution of Sequoyah s syllabary from script to print to digital forms. Breaking with conventional understanding, author Ellen Cushman shows that the syllabary was not based on alphabetic writing, as is often thought, but rather on Cherokee syllables...

Why do grammars change? The cycle of negation proposed by Jespersen is crucially linked to the status of items and phrases. The definition of criteria establishing when a polarity item becomes a negative element, and the identification of the role of phrases for the evolution of negation are the two objectives pursued by the contributions to this volume.

The contributions look at the emergence of negative items, and their relation within a given sentence, with particular reference to English and French. The comparative perspective supports the documentation of the fine-grained...

Reflecting a multitude of developments in the study of language change and variation over the last ten years, this extensively updated second edition features a number of new chapters and remains the authoritative reference volume on a core research area in linguistics.

• A fully revised and expanded edition of this acclaimed reference work, which has established its reputation based on its unrivalled scope and depth of analysis in this interdisciplinary field
• Includes seven new chapters, while the remainder have undergone thorough revision and updating to incorporate...