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Linguists have long been interested in systems of nominal classification due to their diverse functions as well as cognitive and cultural correlates. Among others, ongoing research has focused on semantic, functional and morphosyntactic properties of complex systems such as co-occurring gender and numeral classifiers. Such approaches have typically focused on the languages of north-western South America and Papua New Guinea. This volume proposes to fill in a gap in existing research by focusing on Asia, based on case studies from languages belonging to a wide range of families, i.e., Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Dravidian, Hmong-Mien, Indo-European, Mongolic, Sino-Tibetan and Tai-Kadai as well as the language isolate Nivkh. Gender and classifiers in these languages are approached within several different perspectives, i.e., functional, typological and diachronic, thus revealing complex patterns in their lexical and pragmatic functions as well as origin, development and loss. Describing and analysing such properties is a unique and innovative contribution of the volume.
The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages a...
Offers a linguistic window into contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, looking at how they survive and interface with agricultural and industrial societies.
As each period in the history of the language sciences has chosen to focus on different key questions, the study of that history promises to open our eyes to the variety of interesting questions that can be asked, and answered – taking off the blinders of contemporary preoccupations. September 1–5, 2005, linguists from twenty-five countries gathered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to share their passion for the history of their discipline. This volume is a distillation of many fine contributions from that conference, shedding light on the many different approaches to the study of language.
This is a book about the multi-faceted notion of gender. Gender differences form the basis for family life, patterns of socialization, distribution of tasks, and spheres of responsibilities. The way gender is articulated shapes the world of individuals, and of the societies they live in. Gender has three faces: Linguistic Gender-the original sense of 'gender'-is a feature of many languages and reflects the division of nouns into grammatical classes or genders (feminine, masculine,This is a book about the multi-faceted notion of gender. Gender differences form the basis for family life, patterns of socialization, distribution of tasks, and spheres of responsibilities. The way gender is articu...
The handbook will offer a survey of the field of linguistics in the early 21st century for the Southeast Asian Linguistic Area. The last half century has seen a great increase in work on language contact, work in genetic, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics, and since the 1990s especially documentation of endangered languages. The book will provide an account of work in these areas, focusing on the achievements of SEAsian linguistics, as well as the challenges and unresolved issues, and provide a survey of the relevant major publications and other available resources. We will address: Survey of the languages of the area, organized along genetic lines, with discussion of relevant political and cultural background issues Theoretical/descriptive and typological issues Genetic classification and historical linguistics Areal and contact linguistics Other areas of interest such as sociolinguistics, semantics, writing systems, etc. Resources (major monographs and monograph series, dictionaries, journals, electronic data bases, etc.) Grammar sketches of languages representative of the genetic and structural diversity of the region.
The significant advances witnessed over the last years in the broad field of linguistic variation testify to a growing convergence between sociolinguistic approaches and the somewhat older historical and comparative research traditions. Particularly within cognitive and functional linguistics, the evolution towards a maximally dynamic approach to language goes hand in hand with a renewed interest in corpus research and quantitative methods of analysis. Many researchers feel that only in this way one can do justice to the complex interaction of forces and factors involved in linguistic variability, both synchronically and diachronically. The contributions to the present volume illustrate the ...
This book provides a refreshing perspective on the description, study and representation of consonant clusters in Polish. What are the sources of phonotactic complexity? What properties or principles motivate the phonological structure of initial and final consonant clusters? In answering these questions, a necessary turning point consists in investigating sequences of consonants at their most basic level, namely in terms of phonological features. The analysis is exploratory: it leads to discovering prevalent feature patterns in clusters from which new phonotactic generalizations are derived. A recurring theme in the book is that phonological features vary in weight depending on (1) their di...
This book explores the concept of linguistic worldview, which is underpinned by the underlying idea that languages, in their lexicogrammatical structures and patterns of usage, encode interpretations of reality that symbolize, shape, and construct speakers’ cultural experience. The volume traces the development of the linguistic worldview conception from its origins in ancient Greece to 20th-century linguistic relativity, Western ethnosemantics, parallel movements in eastern Europe, and contemporary inquiry into languacultures. It outlines the important theoretical issues, surveys the major approaches, and identifies areas of both convergence and discrepancy between them. By proposing thre...
This innovative work highlights interdisciplinary research on phonetics and phonology across multiple languages, building on the extensive body of work of Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk on the study of sound structure and speech. // The book features concise contributions from both established and up-and-coming scholars who have worked with Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk across a range of disciplinary fields toward broadening the scope of how sound structure and speech are studied and how phonological and phonetic research is conducted. Contributions bridge the gap between such fields as phonological theory, acoustic and articulatory phonetics, and morphology, but also includes perspectives ...