Agreement in Language Contact

Agreement in Language Contact
Author: Florian Dolberg
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2019-06-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027262411

Gender in English changed dramatically from the elaborate system found in Old English to the very simple he/she/it-alternation in use from (late) Middle English onwards. While either system is well described and understood, the change from one to the other is anything but: more than 120 years of research into the matter provided no prevailing opinion – let alone a consensus – regarding how it proceeded or why it occurred. The present study is the first to address this issue in the context of language contact with Old Norse, assessing this contact influence in relation to both language-formal and semantico-cognitive factors. This empirical, functional account uses rigorous, innovative methodology, interdisciplinary evidence, and well-established models of synchronic variation in diachronic application to draw a fine-grained picture of the variation, change, and loss of gender from Old to Middle English and its underlying mainsprings. The resulting plausible and parsimonious explanations will prove relevant to students and scholars of historical linguistics, morpho-syntax, language variation and change, or language contact, to name but a few.

Sign Language

Sign Language
Author: Jim G. Kyle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1988-02-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521357173

The discovery of the importance of sign language in the deaf community is very recent indeed. This book provides a study of the communication and culture of deaf people, and particularly of the deaf community in Britain. The authors' principal aim is to inform educators, psychologists, linguists and professionals working with deaf people about the rich language the deaf have developed for themselves - a language of movement and space, of the hands and of the eyes, of abstract communication as well as iconic story telling. The first chapters of the book discuss the history of sign language use, its social aspects and the issues surrounding the language acquisition of deaf children (BSL) follows, and the authors also consider how the signs come into existence, change over time and alter their meanings, and how BSL compares and contrasts with spoken languages and other signed languages. Subsequent chapters examine sign language learning from a psychological perspective and other cognitive issues. The book concludes with a consideration of the applications of sign language research, particularly in the contentious field of education. There is still much to be discovered about sign language and the deaf community, but the authors have succeeded in providing an extensive framework on which other researchers can build, from which professionals can develop a coherent practice for their work with deaf people, and from which hearing parents of deaf children can draw the confidence to understand their children's world.

Agree to Agree

Agree to Agree
Author: Peter W. Smith
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2020
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3961102147

Agreement is a pervasive phenomenon across natural languages. Depending on one’s definition of what constitutes agreement, it is either found in virtually every natural language that we know of, or it is at least found in a great many. Either way, it seems to be a core part of the system that underpins our syntactic knowledge. Since the introduction of the operation of Agree in Chomsky (2000), agreement phenomena and the mechanism that underlies agreement have garnered a lot of attention in the Minimalist literature and have received different theoretical treatments at different stages. Since then, many different phenomena involving dependencies between elements in syntax, including movement or not, have been accounted for using Agree. The mechanism of Agree thus provides a powerful tool to model dependencies between syntactic elements far beyond φ-feature agreement. The articles collected in this volume further explore these topics and contribute to the ongoing debates surrounding agreement. The authors gathered in this book are internationally reknown experts in the field of Agreement.

The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact

The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact
Author: Anthony P. Grant
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 788
Release: 2020-01-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0190876905

Every language has been influenced in some way by other languages. In many cases, this influence is reflected in words which have been absorbed from other languages as the names for newer items or ideas, such as perestroika, manga, or intifada (from Russian, Japanese, and Arabic respectively). In other cases, the influence of other languages goes deeper, and includes the addition of new sounds, grammatical forms, and idioms to the pre-existing language. For example, English's structure has been shaped in such a way by the effects of Norse, French, Latin, and Celtic--though English is not alone in its openness to these influences. Any features can potentially be transferred from one language to another if the sociolinguistic and structural circumstances allow for it. Further, new languages--pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages--can come into being as the result of language contact. In thirty-three chapters, The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact examines the various forms of contact-induced linguistic change and the levels of language which have provided instances of these influences. In addition, it provides accounts of how language contact has affected some twenty languages, spoken and signed, from all parts of the world. Chapters are written by experts and native-speakers from years of research and fieldwork. Ultimately, this Handbook provides an authoritative account of the possibilities and products of contact-induced linguistic change.

Hungarian Language Contact Outside Hungary

Hungarian Language Contact Outside Hungary
Author: Anna Fenyvesi
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2005-06-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027294461

In Communist times, it was impossible to do sociolinguistic work on Hungarian in contact with other languages. In the short period of time since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Hungarian sociolinguists have certainly done their very best to catch up. This volume brings together the fruits of their work, some of which was hitherto only available in Hungarian. The reader will find a wealth of information on many bilingual communities involving Hungarian as a minority language. The communities covered in the book are located in countries neighboring Hungary (Austria, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Ukraine) as well as overseas (in Australia and the United States). Several of the chapters discuss material derived from the Sociolinguistics of Hungarian Outside Hungary project. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on how the language use of Hungarian minority speakers has been influenced by the majority or contact language, both on a sociolinguistic macro-level as well as on the micro-level. In the search for explanations, particular attention is given to typological aspects of language change under the conditions of language contact.

Language Contact and Contact Languages

Language Contact and Contact Languages
Author: Peter Siemund
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027219273

This new volume on language contact and contact languages presents cutting-edge research by distinguished scholars in the field as well as by highly talented newcomers. It has two principal aims: to analyze language contact from different perspectives – notably those of language typology, diachronic linguistics, language acquisition and translation studies; and to describe, explain, and elaborate on universal constraints on language contact. The individual chapters offer systematic comparisons of a wealth of contact situations and the book as a whole makes a valuable contribution to deepening our understanding of contact-induced language change. With its broad approach, this work will be welcomed by scholars of many different persuasions.

English as a Contact Language

English as a Contact Language
Author: Daniel Schreier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2013-01-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1139619268

Recent developments in contact linguistics suggest considerable overlap of branches such as historical linguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, pidgin/creole linguistics, language acquisition, etc. This book highlights the complexity of contact-induced language change throughout the history of English by bringing together cutting-edge research from these fields. Special focus is on recent debates surrounding substratal influence in earlier forms of English (particularly Celtic influence in Old English), on language shift processes (the formation of Irish and overseas varieties) but also on dialects in contact, the contact origins of Standard English, the notion of new epicentres in World English, the role of children and adults in language change as well as transfer and language learning. With contributions from leading experts, the book offers fresh and exciting perspectives for research and is at the same time an up-to-date overview of the state of the art in the respective fields.

Sociolinguistic Typology

Sociolinguistic Typology
Author: Peter Trudgill
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2011-10-20
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199604347

This book considers how far social factors explain why human societies produce different kinds of language at different times and places and why some languages and dialects get simpler while others get more complex. It does so in the context of a wide range of languages and societies.

Contact, Structure, and Change

Contact, Structure, and Change
Author: Anna M. Babel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-03-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781607856078

Contact, Structure, and Change addresses the classic problem of how and why languages change over time through the lens of two uniquely productive and challenging perspectives: the study of language contact and the study of Indigenous American languages. Each chapter in the volume draws from a distinct theoretical positioning, ranging from documentation and description, to theoretical syntax, to creole languages and sociolinguistics. This volume acts as a Festschrift honoring Sarah G. Thomason, a long-time professor at the University of Michigan, whose career spans the disciplines of historical linguistics, contact linguistics, and Native American studies. This conversation among distinguished scholars who have been influenced by Thomason extends and in some cases refracts the questions her work addresses through a collection of studies that speak to the enduring puzzles of language change.

Languages in Contact

Languages in Contact
Author: John Holm
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2003-12-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1139437089

There is widespread agreement that certain non-Creole language varieties are structurally quite different from the European languages out of which they grew; however, until recently, linguists have found difficulty in accounting for either their genesis or their synchronic structure. This 2003 study argues that the transmission of source languages from native to non-native speakers led to 'partial restructuring', whereby some of the source languages' morphosyntax was retained, but a significant number of substrate and interlanguage features were also introduced. Comparing languages such as African-American English, Afrikaans and Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese, John Holm identifies the linguistic processes that lead to partial restructuring, bringing into focus a key span on the continuum of contact-induced language change which has not previously been analysed. Informed by the first systematic comparison of the social and linguistic facts in the development of these languages, this book will be welcomed by students of contact linguistics, sociolinguistics and anthropology.