The Semitic Languages

The Semitic Languages
Author: John Huehnergard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 773
Release: 2019-02-18
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 042965538X

The Semitic Languages presents a comprehensive survey of the individual languages and language clusters within this language family, from their origins in antiquity to their present-day forms. This second edition has been fully revised, with new chapters and a wealth of additional material. New features include the following: • new introductory chapters on Proto-Semitic grammar and Semitic linguistic typology • an additional chapter on the place of Semitic as a subgroup of Afro-Asiatic, and several chapters on modern forms of Arabic, Aramaic and Ethiopian Semitic • text samples of each individual language, transcribed into the International Phonetic Alphabet, with standard linguistic word-by-word glossing as well as translation • new maps and tables present information visually for easy reference. This unique resource is the ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics and language. It will be of interest to researchers and anyone with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, linguistic anthropology and language development.

The Semitic Languages

The Semitic Languages
Author: Stefan Weninger
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 1298
Release: 2011-12-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110251582

The handbook The Semitic Languages offers a comprehensive reference tool for Semitic Linguistics in its broad sense. It is not restricted to comparative Grammar, although it covers also comparative aspects, including classification. By comprising a chapter on typology and sections with sociolinguistic focus and language contact, the conception of the book aims at a rather complete, unbiased description of the state of the art in Semitics. Articles on individual languages and dialects give basic facts as location, numbers of speakers, scripts, numbers of extant texts and their nature, attestation where appropriate, and salient features of the grammar and lexicon of the respective variety. The handbook is the most comprehensive treatment of the Semitic language family since many decades.

Case in Semitic

Case in Semitic
Author: Rebecca Hasselbach
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2013-05-02
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 019967180X

This book reconstructs the Semitic case system, based on a detailed analysis of the expression of grammatical roles and relations in the attested Semitic languages. It brings typological methods to bear on the study of comparative Semitics and includes detailed analyses of a wide range of data. The book will interest Semiticists and typologists.

The Legacy of the Kitāb

The Legacy of the Kitāb
Author: Ramzi Baalbaki
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2008-08-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 904744230X

This book is a comprehensive study of the Kitāb of Sībawayhi (d. 180/796), undoubtedly the most authoritative work in the long history of Arabic grammar. It carefully examines the methodological concepts and methods that underline Sībawayhi’s analysis of Arabic and the way in which these methods evolved at the hands of later grammarians. Placing the Kitāb within the context of early Arabic philological activity, this book analyzes a wide range of its passages and demonstrates the coherency of its author’s system of grammatical analysis and the interrelatedness of his analytical tools and notions. In particular, Sībawayhi’s huge influence on the overall Arabic grammatical tradition is highlighted throughout the book. This notwithstanding, it is argued that most later grammarians largely neglect the semantic dimension which vividly features in Sībawayhi’s approach to language as a social behavior and his reconstruction of the internal thinking of the speaker and the listener.

The Body in Language

The Body in Language
Author: Matthias Brenzinger
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2014-07-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004274294

The Body in Language: Comparative studies of Linguistic Embodiment provides new insights into the theory of linguistic embodiment in its universal and cultural aspects. The contributions of the volume offer theoretical reflections on grammaticalization, lexical semantics, philosophy, multimodal communication and - by discussing metaphorization and metonymy in figurative language - on cognitive linguistics in general. Case studies contribute first-hand data on embodiment from more than 15 languages and present findings on the body in language in diverse cultures from various continents. Embodiment fundamentally underlies human conceptualization and the present discussions reveal a wide range of target domains in conceptual transfers with the body as the source domain.

Measuring Grammatical Complexity

Measuring Grammatical Complexity
Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2014
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199685304

This book examines the question of whether languages can differ in grammatical complexity and, if so, how relative complexity differences might be measured. The volume differs from others devoted to the question of complexity in language in that the authors all approach the problem from the point of view of formal grammatical theory, psycholinguistics, or neurolinguistics. Chapters investigate a number of key issues in grammatical complexity, taking phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic considerations into account. These include what is often called the 'trade-off problem', namely whether complexity in one grammatical component is necessarily balanced by simplicity in another; and the question of interpretive complexity, that is, whether and how one might measure the difficulty for the hearer in assigning meaning to an utterance and how such complexity might be factored in to an overall complexity assessment. Measuring Grammatical Complexity brings together a number of distinguished scholars in the field, and will be of interest to linguists of all theoretical stripes from advanced undergraduate level upwards, particularly those working in the areas of morphosyntax, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics.

Languaging Class: Reflecting on the Linguistic Articulations of Structural Inequalities

Languaging Class: Reflecting on the Linguistic Articulations of Structural Inequalities
Author: Claudia Ortu
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2023-04-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1648896472

This volume explores the issue of social class from the point of view of its linguistic articulations. Indeed, as Machin and Richardson (2008) stated, “discourses may be variously approached as (often simultaneously) reflecting class structures, as a site of class inequalities, as expressive of class identities or class consciousness and/or as a constituent part of more performative class action.” Some of the contributions that make up the volume were presented at a conference held at Cagliari University, Italy, in 2017 and responded to the call for analyses on the role of language in reflecting, maintaining, enacting, and inculcating ideas on social class in literary and non-literary texts and discourses in any cultural or linguistic setting. This volume aspires to encourage scholars in disciplines and academic fields that have shied away from reflections on structural inequalities in favor of studies on ethnic, gender, and cultural identities in the last decades to take back on board the concept of social class and to engage with it in a novel way. The variety of approaches – ranging from the more traditional sociolinguistic one, anthropology, to literary and discourse studies – and cultural settings – with case studies coming from 3 continents – represented in the chapters show that social class is a productive and illuminating concept for trying to (re)make sense of social reproduction and change.

Grammar as a Window Onto Arabic Humanism

Grammar as a Window Onto Arabic Humanism
Author: M. G. Carter
Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2006
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9783447054447

The majority of these articles dedicated to Michael G. Carter address aspects of Classical Arabic grammar. Ramzi Baalbaki discusses Mu'addib's treatise Daqa-'iq al-Tas.rif. Kees Versteegh considers questions of the government of 'inna in a treatise by the grammarian al-Warraq. Yasir Suleiman considers the fierce extra-linguistic debates which took place in the wake of two recent publications provocatively featuring Sibawayhi's name in the title. Pierre Larcher treats questions of authenticity surrounding a longish quotation from al-Farabi's Kitab al-'alfaz wa-l-huruf. Adrian Gully addresses the relationship between two important treatises on syntax and rhetoric from the eighth and sixth centuries AH respectively. Georges Bohas and Abderrahim Saguer consider the extent to which Arabic roots display a biliteral core which can be assigned a fairly constant semantic value. James Dickins provides an in-depth analysis of the system of verbal diatheses in Central Urban Sudanese Arabic. Werner Diem investigates the euphemistic use of the root lhq in its first and fourth forms to refer to death. Ronak Husni and Janet Watson analyse typical patterns of errors in Arabic essays written by English-speaking learners of Arabic. Finally, in a case study of the medieval translations of Aristotle's Poetics, Lutz Edzard and Adolf Kohnken look at the central status of Arabic for the transmission of Classical knowledge.

The Politics of Written Language in the Arab World

The Politics of Written Language in the Arab World
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2017-07-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004346171

The Politics of Written Language in the Arab World connects the fascinating field of contemporary written Arabic with the central sociolinguistic notions of language ideology and diglossia. Focusing on Egypt and Morocco, the authors combine large-scale survey data on language attitudes with in-depth analyses of actual language usage and explicit (and implicit) language ideology. They show that writing practices as well as language attitudes in Egypt and Morocco are far more receptive to vernacular forms than has been assumed. The individual chapters cover a wide variety of media, from books and magazines to blogs and Tweets. A central theme running through the contributions is the social and political function of “doing informality” in a changing public sphere steadily more permeated by written Arabic in a number of media.