Gates of Peristan

Gates of Peristan
Author: Alberto M. Cacopardo
Publisher: ISIAO
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2001
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

The Indo-Aryan Languages

The Indo-Aryan Languages
Author: Danesh Jain
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1086
Release: 2007-07-26
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1135797110

The Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by at least 700 million people throughout India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands. They have a claim to great antiquity, with the earliest Vedic Sanskrit texts dating to the end of the second millennium B.C. With texts in Old Indo-Aryan, Middle Indo-Aryan and Modern Indo-Aryan, this language family supplies a historical documentation of language change over a longer period than any other subgroup of Indo-European. This volume is divided into two main sections dealing with general matters and individual languages. Each chapter on the individual language covers the phonology and grammar (morphology and syntax) of the language and its writing system, and gives the historical background and information concerning the geography of the language and the number of its speakers.

A grammar of Palula

A grammar of Palula
Author: Henrik Liljegren
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2016-02-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3946234313

This grammar provides a grammatical description of Palula, an Indo-Aryan language of the Shina group. The language is spoken by about 10,000 people in the Chitral district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. This is the first extensive description of the formerly little-documented Palula language, and is one of only a few in-depth studies available for languages in the extremely multilingual Hindukush-Karakoram region. The grammar is based on original fieldwork data, collected over the course of about ten years, commencing in 1998. It is primarily in the form of recorded, mainly narrative, texts, but supplemented by targeted elicitation as well as notes of observed language use. All fieldwork was conducted in close collaboration with the Palula-speaking community, and a number of native speakers took active part in the process of data gathering, annotation and data management. The main areas covered are phonology, morphology and syntax, illustrated with a large number of example items and utterances, but also a few selected lexical topics of some prominence have received a more detailed treatment as part of the morphosyntactic structure. Suggestions for further research that should be undertaken are given throughout the grammar. The approach is theory-informed rather than theory-driven, but an underlying functional-typological framework is assumed. Diachronic development is taken into account, particularly in the area of morphology, and comparisons with other languages and references to areal phenomena are included insofar as they are motivated and available. The description also provides a brief introduction to the speaker community and their immediate environment.

The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics

The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics
Author: Raymond Hickey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1687
Release: 2017-04-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1316839451

Providing a contemporary and comprehensive look at the topical area of areal linguistics, this book looks systematically at different regions of the world whilst presenting a focussed and informed overview of the theory behind research into areal linguistics and language contact. The topicality of areal linguistics is thoroughly documented by a wealth of case studies from all major regions of the world and, with chapters from scholars with a broad spectrum of language expertise, it offers insights into the mechanisms of external language change. With no book currently like this on the market, The Cambridge Handbook of Areal Linguistics will be welcomed by students and scholars working on the history of language families, documentation and classification, and will help readers to understand the key area of areal linguistics within a broader linguistic context.

Pastoral practices in High Asia

Pastoral practices in High Asia
Author: Hermann Kreutzmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2012-03-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9400738455

In conventional views, pastoralism was classified as a stage of civilization that needed to be abolished and transcended in order to reach a higher level of development. In this context, global approaches to modernize a rural society have been ubiquitous phenomena independent of ideological contexts. The 20th century experienced a variety of concepts to settle mobile groups and to transfer their lifestyles to modern perceptions. Permanent settlements are the vivid expression of an ideology-driven approach. Modernization theory captured all walks of life and tried to optimize breeding techniques, pasture utilization, transport and processing concepts. New insights into other aspects of pastoralism such as its role as an adaptive strategy to use marginal resources in remote locations with difficult access could only be understood as a critique of capitalist and communist concepts of modernization. In recent years a renaissance of modernization theory-led development activities can be observed. Higher inputs from external funding, fencing of pastures and settlement of pastoralists in new townships are the vivid expression of 'modern' pastoralism in urban contexts. The new modernization programme incorporates resettlement and transformation of lifestyles as to be justified by environmental pressure in order to reduce degradation in the age of climate change.

Encyclopedia of World Geography

Encyclopedia of World Geography
Author: R. W. McColl
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
Total Pages: 1182
Release: 2014-05-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0816072299

Presents a comprehensive guide to the geography of the world, with world maps and articles on cartography, notable explorers, climate and more.

The Linguistics of Temperature

The Linguistics of Temperature
Author: Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 948
Release: 2015-02-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027269173

The volume is the first comprehensive typological study of the conceptualisation of temperature in languages as reflected in their systems of central temperature terms (hot, cold, to freeze, etc.). The key issues addressed here include questions such as how languages categorize the temperature domain and what other uses the temperature expressions may have, e.g., when metaphorically referring to emotions (‘warm words’). The volume contains studies of more than 50 genetically, areally and typologically diverse languages and is unique in considering cross-linguistic patterns defined both by lexical and grammatical information. The detailed descriptions of the linguistic and extra-linguistic facts will serve as an important step in teasing apart the role of the different factors in how we speak about temperature – neurophysiology, cognition, environment, social-cultural practices, genetic relations among languages, and linguistic contact. The book is a significant contribution to semantic typology, and will be of interest for linguists, psychologists, anthropologists and philosophers.

Modern Loves

Modern Loves
Author: Jennifer S. Hirsch
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2006
Genre: Companionate marriage
ISBN: 9780472099597

Grounded in recent, cutting edge feminist anthropological theory, these essays discuss how women and men do courtship, intimacy, and marriage around the world