This dictionary is written for three audiences: first, native speakers of Ojibwa, Chippewa, and Ottawa who would like to have a consistent way to write their language, especially those who are engaged in teaching their language to others; second, students of the Ojibwa, Chippewa, and Ottawa language who need a reference work they can turn to; and finally, the scholarly world in general, particularly Algonquianists and linguists.
Language documentation is a rapidly emerging new field in linguistics which is concerned with the methods, tools and theoretical underpinnings for compiling a representative and lasting multipurpose record of a natural language. This volume presents in-depth introductions to major aspects of language documentation, including overviews on fieldwork ethics and data processing, guidelines for the basic annotation of digitally-stored multimedia corpora and a discussion on how to build and maintain a language archive. It combines theoretical and practical considerations and makes specific suggestions for the most common problems encountered in language documentation.
Key features
Eyak (dAXunhyuuga') is the traditional language of the Copper River Delta region of the Gulf of Alaska. This posthumous publication reflects Michael Krauss's systematic effort to document every aspect of the language, working closely with the last remaining fluent speakers. Adopting a theory-neutral approach, Krauss focuses on detailed description, providing exhaustive exemplification, as well as ample discussion of comparative and conflicting data from the related Tlingit and Dene (Athabaskan) languages, making the work particularly useful for Dene scholars. Non-specialists will find a window into the structure of a highly synthetic and typologically unusual language. This comprehensive work will also serve as a useful reference for the growing dAXunhyuuga' reclamation effort.
This book teaches the basics of the structure of the English language with plentiful extracts from novels, poems and plays, so that literature students learn how to identify parts of speech and discuss their effects. No previous linguistics experience is assumed. Each chapter is divided into a definition of a specific linguistic feature; a demonstration of it in a literary text; a literary exercise where readers identify it themselves and assess its effect; and a brief summary of the teaching point. Interpretation is subjective and readers will learn how to build linguistic evidence to support their view. Essential knowledge for anyone who analyses English Literature.
This book provides a detailed overview of research on mutual intelligibility between closely related languages. The book is organized around three sections which explore different facets of mutual intelligibility research. The first section outlines how to measure levels of intelligibility and its linguistic and extra-linguistic determinants. The second part grapples with questions and issues which arise once the measuring tools are established. A final section reflects on the practical and theoretical value of studying mutual intelligibility, including issues related to language planning and policy, such as cultural, communicative, educational, and economical matters.
Gorani refers to under-documented, endangered varieties spoken in a cluster within the Zagros mountains (Iran/Iraq). These varieties possess conservative features of importance to linguists. However, their study has been plagued by nomenclature and taxonomy issues. Traditional names for these languages have been supplanted first by orientalists' prescriptions and then by their linguist heirs. Inaccurate terminology has sewn discord between speaker communities, disturbing the sociolinguistic landscape. This volume represents the state of the art of Gorani's historical and socio-linguistics, documentation, and literature, as well as an effort to aid the decolonization of Gorani linguistics.
Why does language change? Why can we speak to and understand our parents but have trouble reading Shakespeare? Why is Chaucer's English of the fourteenth century so different from Modern English of the late twentieth century that the two are essentially different languages? Why are Americans and English 'one people divided by a common language'? And how can the language of Chaucer and Modern English - or Modern British and American English - still be called the same language? The present book provides answers to questions like these in a straightforward way, aimed at the non-specialist, with ample illustrations from both familiar and more exotic languages.
Most chapters in this new edition have been reworked, with some difficult passages removed, other passages thoroughly rewritten, and several new sections added, e.g. on the regularity of sound change and its importance for general historical-comparative linguistics. Further, the chapter notes and bibliography have all been updated.
The content is engaging, focusing on topics and issues that spark student interest. Its goals are broadly pedagogical and the level and presentation are appropriate for interested beginners with little or no background in linguistics. The language coverage for examples goes well beyond what is usual for books of this kind, with a considerable amount of data from various languages of India.
The claim that crosslinguistic disparities foster differences in nonlinguistic thought, often referred to as 'linguistic relativity', has for some time been the subject of intense debate. For much of that time the debate was not informed by much experimental work. Recently, however, there has been an explosion of research on linguistic relativity, carried out by numerous scholars interested in the interaction between language and nonlinguistic cognition. This book surveys the rapidly accruing research on this topic, much of it carried out in the last decade. Structured so as to be accessible to students and scholars in linguistics, psychology, and anthropology, it first introduces crucial concepts in the study of language and cognition. It then explores the relevant experimentally oriented research, focusing independently on the evidence for relativistic effects in spatial orientation, temporal perception, number recognition, color discrimination, object/substance categorization, gender construal, as well as other facets of cognition. This is the only book to extensively survey the recent work on linguistic relativity, and should serve as a critical resource for those concerned with the topic.
Language standardization is problematic because it imposes the dominant group's linguistic variety as the only correct one and promotes the idea of unit thinking, i.e., seeing the world as consisting of bounded, internally homogeneous units. This volume examines intentional practices to subvert such processes of language standardization (what we call counter-standardization practices) in language education and other contexts. By suggesting alternative classroom pedagogies, language reclamation processes for indigenous populations, and discourses about (mis)pronunciation, this volume explores more liberatory approaches: the post-unit thinking of language.
The encoding of motion event components is a central element in determining the nature of linguistic and conceptual representations underlying motion event construal. This work approaches the verbalization and conceptualization of motion events in German and English from a theoretical point of view and on the basis of a corpus study, an online survey, and an in-person experiment. The research focuses on the investigation of different factors determining motion event construal of native speakers and learners by examining cognitive variables - i.e., visual endpoint salience and cognitive cost caused by non-habitual aspect use - and grammatical factors - i.e., grammatical viewpoint aspect.
The dispersal of the Indo-European language family from the third millennium BCE is thought to have dramatically altered Europe's linguistic landscape. Many of the preexisting languages are assumed to have been lost, as Indo-European languages, including Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic and Armenian, dominate in much of Western Eurasia from historical times. To elucidate the linguistic encounters resulting from the Indo-Europeanization process, this volume evaluates the lexical evidence for prehistoric language contact in multiple Indo-European subgroups, at the same time taking a critical stance to approaches that have been applied to this problem in the past.
English Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish fills a gaping hole in the market for books on English phonetics and pronunciation because it not only combines theoretical issues and applications to practice, but it also adopts a contrastive English-Spanish approach to better suit the needs of Spanish-speaking learners of English (SSLE), enabling them to build gradually on the knowledge gained in each chapter.
The book covers the key concepts of English phonetics and phonology in seven chapters written in an accessible and engaging style:
1. Phonetics and Phonology
2. The Production and Classification of Speech Sounds
3. Vowels and Glides
4. Consonants
5. Segment Dynamics: Aspects of Connected Speech
6. Beyond the Segment: Stress and Intonation
7. Predicting Pronunciation from Spelling (and vice versa)
Features:
The book's companion website, EPSS Multimedia Lab, can be used on computers, smartphones and tablets, and is useful for the self-taught student and the busy lecturer alike.
The website of the EPSS Multimedia lab can be accessed here: http: //www.usc.gal/multimlab/
Features of the website:
The use of English as a global lingua franca has given rise to new challenges and approaches in our understanding of language and communication. One area where ELF (English as a lingua franca) studies, both from an empirical and theoretical orientation, have the potential for significant developments is in our understanding of the relationships between language, culture and identity. ELF challenges traditional assumptions concerning the purposed 'inexorable' link between a language and a culture. Due to the multitude of users and contexts of ELF communication the supposed language, culture and identity correlation, often conceived at the national level, appears simplistic and naïve. However, it is equally naïve to assume that ELF is a culturally and identity neutral form of communication. All communication involves participants, purposes, contexts and histories, none of which are 'neutral'. Thus, we need new approaches to understanding the relationship between language, culture and identity which are able to account for the multifarious and dynamic nature of ELF communication.
This volume, written by a foremost expert, is a fascinating contribution to cognitive-linguistic research on metonymy analyzing authentic texts. Its five studies expand current metonymy theory by providing evidence that metonymies regularly occur at more than one analytical level of the same utterance and that they chain to each other in discourse following certain patterns. Several analytical notions are developed or refined, such as inferential / metonymic chain, cascading, salience factor grid, etc. The role of metonymy in numerous constructional forms and meanings and in discourse-pragmatic meaning is clearly demonstrated in the book.