Language Isolates

Language Isolates
Author: Lyle Campbell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317610911

Language Isolates explores this fascinating group of languages that surprisingly comprise a third of the world’s languages. Individual chapters written by experts on these languages examine the world's major language isolates and language isolates by geographic regions, with up-to-date descriptions of many, including previously unrecorded language isolates. Each language isolate represents a unique lineage and a unique window on what is possible in human language, making this an essential volume for anyone interested in understanding the diversity of languages and the very nature of human language. Language Isolates is key reading for professionals and students in linguistics and anthropology.

The History of Basque

The History of Basque
Author: R. L. Trask
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1136167560

Basque is the sole survivor of the very ancient languages of Western Europe. This book, written by an internationally renowned specialist in Basque, provides a comprehensive survey of all that is known about the prehistory of the language, including pronunciation, the grammar and the vocabulary. It also provides a long critical evaluation of the search for its relatives, as well as a thumbnail sketch of the language, a summary of its typological features, an external history and an extensive bibliography.

Standard Basque

Standard Basque
Author: Rudolf P.G. De Rijk
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 1407
Release: 2022-11-29
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 026254654X

The first modern pedagogically oriented reference to the grammar of standard Basque (Euskara Batua), in two parts: Part 1 presents detailed grammar lessons, Part 2 glosses and supplementary materials. A pre-Indo-European language with no known relatives, the Basque language survives in the Basque region of Spain and France, with about half a million native or near-native speakers. The local diversity of the language, with no fewer than eight different dialects, has hindered the development of a supradialectical written tradition. Twentieth-century Basque scholars recognized that the introduction of a standard language for written communication was vital for the continued existence of Basque, and the Euskaltzaindia, the Royal Academy of the Basque Language, has supervised the creation of a new shared form, Euskara Batua (“Unified Basque”), to be used as a written standard. Standard Basque: A Progressive Grammar is the first modern pedagogically oriented reference grammar in English for this new standard language. It guides the reader progressively through 33 chapters covering topics that range from orthography and pronunciation to case endings, verb forms, ergativity, and the antipassive and allocutive forms. In addition to information on the various dialects, the book includes thousands of example sentences drawn from Basque literature and extensive vocabulary listings. Most chapters conclude with exercises. Part 1 covers the grammar and Part 2 contains glosses for the example sentences and indexes. This book was prepared for publication after the author's death by Virginia de Rijk-Chan with Armand De Coene and Fleur Veraart and the assistance of linguists at Cornell University, Leiden University, and the University of the Basque Country. The glosses and supplementary material in Part 2 were prepared by Armand De Coene.

Reclaiming Basque

Reclaiming Basque
Author: Jacqueline Urla
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2012-03-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0874178800

The Basque language, Euskara, is one of Europe’s most ancient tongues and a vital part of today’s lively Basque culture. Reclaiming Basque examines the ideology, methods, and discourse of the Basque-language revitalization movement over the course of the past century and the way this effort has unfolded alongside the simultaneous Basque nationalist struggle for autonomy. Jacqueline Urla employs extensive long-term fieldwork, interviews, and close examination of a vast range of documents in several media to uncover the strategies that have been used to preserve and revive Euskara and the various controversies that have arisen among Basque-language advocates.

Iberian Interfaces

Iberian Interfaces
Author: Antonio Sáez Delgado
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2022-01-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030917525

This book explores a key historical moment for literary and cultural relations between Spain and Portugal. Focusing on the period between 1870 and 1930, it analyses the contacts between Portuguese and Spanish writers and artists of this period, showing that, at least among the cultural elites, there were intense and fruitful dialogues across political and linguistic borders. The book presents the Iberian Peninsula as a complex and multilingual cultural polysystem in which diverse literary cultures coexist and are mutually dependent upon each other. It offers a panoramic view of Iberian literary and cultural history, encompassing not just Portuguese and Spanish literary productions, but also Catalan, Galician and Basque works. Combining a clear theoretical foundation with deep historical knowledge and references to specific texts and works, the book offers a thorough introduction to Iberian literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

It is Difficult

It is Difficult
Author: Alfredo Jaar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 1998
Genre: Art
ISBN:

This important retrospective of Alfredo Jaar's work brings together projects from 1986 - 1996.

The Basque Country

The Basque Country
Author: Paddy Woodworth
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2012-01-10
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1908493232

The Basque Country is a land of fascinating paradoxes and enigmas. Home to one of Europe's oldest peoples and most mysterious languages, with a living folklore rich in archaic rituals and dances, it also boasts a dynamic post-modern energy, with the reinvention of Bilbao creating a model for the twenty-first-century city of cultural services and information technologies. Hugging the elbow of the Bay of Biscay on both the French and Spanish sides of the Pyrenees, this small territory abounds in big contrasts, ranging from moist green valleys to semi-desert badlands, from snowy sierras to sandy beaches, from harsh industrial landscapes to bucolic beech woods. This often idyllic scenery is the stage for fierce political passions. Almost every aspect of the Basque Country generates passionate disagreement, even its precise location. Spanish and French centralism, often authoritarian and sometimes brutal, has met with resistance for two centuries. Most recently and notoriously ETA, a terrorist group with deep popular support, has engaged in a bloody 45-year conflict. But many Basques consider themselves full French or Spanish citizens, and fear political and linguistic exclusion under Basque nationalist rule.

Gaming Utopia

Gaming Utopia
Author: Claudia Costa Pederson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 0253054524

In Gaming Utopia: Ludic Worlds in Art, Design, and Media, Claudia Costa Pederson analyzes modernist avant-garde and contemporary video games to challenge the idea that gaming is an exclusively white, heterosexual, male, corporatized leisure activity and reenvisions it as a catalyst for social change. By looking at over fifty projects that together span a century and the world, Pederson explores the capacity for sociopolitical commentary in virtual and digital realms and highlights contributions to the history of gaming by women, queer, and transnational artists. The result is a critical tool for understanding video games as imaginative forms of living that offer alternatives to our current reality. With an interdisciplinary approach, Gaming Utopia emphasizes how game design, creation, and play can become political forms of social protest and examines the ways that games as art open doors to a more just and peaceful world.

Prosody and Prosodic Interfaces

Prosody and Prosodic Interfaces
Author: Haruo Kubozono
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2022
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198869746

"This volume brings together novel, original studies on prosody and prosodic interfaces. It consists of fifteen chapters, some of which look at word prosody and phrase prosody in individual languages, some examine the interactions between lexical tones and intonation, and others analyze the syntax-prosody interface. Despite much recent attention paid to prosody, there is yet a significant number of languages and dialects that remain largely undocumented or understudied. Many chapters in this volume contribute to this empirical gap in prosodic research by presenting new data, based on original fieldwork and experiments. Moreover, many chapters address important questions pertaining to the interactions between lexical and postlexical tones with in-depth investigations of both lexical prosody and postlexical phonology. Furthermore, other chapters tackle the question of how prosodic structure-either lexical or postlexical-interacts with syntactic structure, thereby contributing to our understanding of the interaction between multiple components of the grammar, embedded in a thorough understanding of current linguistic theories. The volume as a whole addresses many difficult issues and illuminates the question of how prosody is structured in language and functions in human communication"--

Prescription and Tradition in Language

Prescription and Tradition in Language
Author: Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2016-11-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1783096527

This book contextualises case studies across a wide variety of languages and cultures, crystallising key interrelationships between linguistic standardisation and prescriptivism, and between ideas and practices. It focuses on different traditions of standardisation and prescription throughout the world and addresses questions such as how nationalistic idealisations of ‘traditional’ language persist (or shift) amid language change, linguistic variation and multilingualism. The volume explores issues of standardisation and the sociolinguistic phenomenon of prescription as a formative influence on the notional standard language as well as the interconnections between these in a wide range of geographical contexts. It balances the otherwise strong emphasis on English in English language publications on prescriptivism and breaks new ground with its multilingual approach across languages and nations. The book will appeal to scholars working within different linguistic traditions interested in questions relating to all aspects of standardisation and prescriptivism.