An entirely new follow-up volume providing a detailed account of numerous additional issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics. This brand-new, second ...volume of The Handbook of Historical Linguistics is a complement to the well-established first volume first published in 2003. It includes extended content allowing uniquely comprehensive coverage of the study of language(s) over time. Though it adds fresh perspectives on several topics previously treated in the first volume, this Handbook focuses on extensions of diachronic linguistics beyond those key issues. This Handbook provides readers with studies of language change whose perspectives range from comparisons of large open vs. small closed corpora, via creolistics and linguistic contact in general, to obsolescence and endangerment of languages. Written by leading scholars in their respective fields, new chapters are offered on matters such as the origin of language, evidence from language for reconstructing human prehistory, invocations of language present in studies of language past, benefits of linguistic fieldwork for historical investigation, ways in which not only biological evolution but also field biology can serve as heuristics for research into the rise and spread of linguistic innovations, and more. Moreover, it: offers novel and broadened content complementing the earlier volume so as to provide the fullest available overview of a wholly engrossing field includes 23 all-new contributed chapters, treating some familiar themes from fresh perspectives but mostly covering entirely new topics features expanded discussion of material from language families other than Indo-European provides a multiplicity of views from numerous specialists in linguistic diachrony. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, researchers and professional linguists, as well as all those interested in the history of particular languages and the history of language more generally.
The paper examines the sources quoted in Mátyás Gyóni’s study on the history of the Byzantine thema Paristrion in the 11th century and on the ethnonyms used in the Alexias, adopting a new approach. ...Tracing the history of the word μιξοβάρβαρος from the classical era on, it states that the adjective was originally used to describe the (Greek and barbarian) inhabitants of the settlements situated in the border area of the Greek world, then to refer to a language different from the literary (Attic) Greek, linguistic phenomena or persons to be avoided and (morally) despicable, and finally to denounce an unorthodox (especially iconoclast) Christian. The 11-13th century Byzantine authors also used the adjective for denunciation. However, at the classical locus in Michael Attaleiates the adjective is neutral, used the same way as by two classical authors (Plat. 245d, Xen. Hell. 2, 1, 5), with the difference that mixobarbaroi (ODB s. v.) refers not to the inhabitants of a single town, but to the mixed population of a certain area, (the towns of) Paristrion. Anna Comnena’s usage in the Alexias is unique as there the most important characteristic of a μιξοβάρβαρος (probably from a mixed marriage) is that he is bilingual.
Book two of the Man'yōshū ('Anthology of Myriad Leaves') continues Alexander Vovin's new English translation of this 20-volume work originally compiled between c.759 and 785 AD. It is the earliest ...Japanese poetic anthology in existence and thus the most important compendium of Japanese culture of the Asuka and Nara periods.
This contribution analyzes the geographical name Θούλη, first recorded by Pytheas of Massalia in the period 330-325 BCE and mediated especially by Polybius, Strabo, Pliny and Procopius. Björn ...Collinder (1935/1936) designated this term as the earliest datable document of the Germanic Lautverschiebung. He also offered an appealing etymology, explaing the toponym on the basis of Old Norse þaularvágr “winding creek”, i.e. a place especially characteristic of the West Norwegian coast with its winding fjords. In the present study an alternative etymology by Torp is also analyzed, interpreting the toponym as a wooded place with regard to Old Norse þollr m. “tree, fir-tree, pine-tree”, and the witness of Procopius of Caesarea on the exceedingly large forests in Thule ‘The Gothic War’ VI.15. Independently of whether either of the solutions of Collinder or Torp is correct, around 330 BCE the First Germanic Sound Shift should already have been operating.
The collected articles in this volume address an array of cutting-edge issues in the field of historical linguistics, including new theoretical approaches and innovative methodologies for studying ...language through a diachronic lens. The articles focus on the following themes: I. Case & Argument Structure, II. Alignment & Diathesis, III. Patterns, Paradigms, & Restructuring, IV. Grammaticalization & Construction Grammar, V. Corpus Linguistics & Morphosyntax, VI. Languages in Contact. Papers reflect a wide range of perspectives, and focus on issues and data from an array of languages and language families, from new analyses of case and argument structure in Ancient Greek to phonological evidence for language contact in Vietnamese, from patterns of convergence in Neo-Aramaic to the development of the ergative in Basque. The volume contributes substantially to the debate surrounding core issues of language change: the role of the individual speaker, the nature of paths of grammaticalization, the role of contact, the interface of diachrony and synchrony, and many other issues. It should be useful to any reader hoping to gain insight into the nature of language change.
The article researches the etymologies of one oikonym and one microtoponym used several times in Northern Bavaria. Traditionally they were said to have Slavic etymologies, but the 2015 PhD thesis by ...J. Andraschke (publ. 2016) claimed them to have German(ic) etymologies. The comparison of the different etymologies shows clearly that the Slavic ones are to be preferred over the decidedly weaker German(ic) ones. The names go back to CSlav. *Čьrnidel(ьnik)ъ and *Dolьnica respectively.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the verbal phrases generated by the lexeme ”eye” in Spanish and Romanian. The contrastive study of phraseological units (at morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic ...level) that we carry out will provide us with the necessary tools in order to select the relevant and useful set expressions for developing a database whose recipients are Romanian learners of Spanish as a Foreign Language (levels A1-B2). We focus on the degree of equivalences, the argument structure, the communicative functions and on other points of intersection. Unlike the guidelines set by the curricular documents (The Common European Framework of References for Languages and Cervantes Institute Curricular Plan), we strongly believe that the introduction of the idiomatic component from the initial levels is possible and necessary, since phraseological competence represents a relevant component within the global communicative competence. Our objective is to demonstrate that this theory is even more relevant in the case of related languages, which also share a cultural idiosyncrasy.
Associated with the historiographical debate around the “Romanian imperial idea”, the introduction of Romanian simultaneously as state and Church language in the two Romanian Principalities plays the ...role of a political proclamation, which affirms for both Moldavia and Wallachia the vocation to incarnate a res publica romana or a Roman political idea. In the 17th century’s context, marked by political and ecclesiastical entities competing for European supremacy and particularly for the domination of South-Eastern Europe in the confrontation with the Ottoman Empire, Basil Lupu of Moldavia and Matthew Basarab of Wallachia chose to express their aspiration to sovereignty over their territory, or even simultaneously over the two Principalities, by creating a new official language: “Romanian, which means Latin” (by the words of the Miron Costin). To this purpose they started in the 4th and 5th decades of the 17th c. a thorough program of translations and printings of legal and religious literature. The effort to create a new cultural language was renewed in the 8th and 9th decades of the same century by Șerban Cantacuzino, Constantine Brâncoveanu and Gheorghe Duca. The conjunction of legal and religious literature corresponds to the definition of a diarchy of princely and ecclesiastical power prescribed by the Byzantine Nomocanon (Syntagma of Matthew Blastares). The prince governs the body of society by law; the high priest is in charge of its soul. Thus, both state and Church were deeply engaged in this project and when the successors of Basil Lupu abandoned for a short period the project, the metropolitan Dosoftei carried it on. The entire effort of linguistic promotion was started by a small number of connected individuals, of which half were not native Romanians. Ultimately, Romanian became a state-building factor, which allowed the formation of the largest Nation-state in South-Eastern Europe.
Taking as a starting point some of my previous researches (Preda Bodoc 2015 and Preda Bodoc, Ardeleanu Gomoescu 2016), the present paper represents a small contribution to the current diachronic ...research by analyzing all the complex sentences in which cum was involved either as a simple connector, or as an element of a compound. So, based on a corpus of Old Romanian texts, covering the period 1500-1640, the primary objective of the article is to bring evidence for the multifunctional status of the simple sentence connective cum ‘that/as’ (used as a complementizer, a relative, a relative-interrogative, or as a subordinator), and also for the heterogeneity of the structures constructed with this element (complex complementizers: cum că ‘that’, cum să ‘so that’, and prepositional structures: de cum ‘about how’, pe cum/precum ‘that/as’, pănă în atîta cum ‘so that’ etc.). Most of these complex connectors have been replaced or disappeared from the Present-day Romanian, and this is why we need to go back in time, and to follow the grammaticalization process of these adverbs (cum and oricum), as they become complementizers, subordinators, and, finally, expletives or discourse markers. Some of the formal observations have been confronted and confirmed by the quantitative analyses of the corpus. In the end, I believe that, by clarifying the use and the evolution of this element, it’s frequency and variability, the present study may provide valuable insights into the proper characterization of the inventory of sentence connectors, but also into the historical development of the Romanian language.
J. Bleiweis’ newspaper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice (Agricultural and Artisanal News), also known simply as Novice (News), played a key role in the creation of a unified Standard Slovenian language ...by bringing together all Slovenian writers and providing readers with a means to learn about writing and encouraged the reading of Slovenian texts. The newspaper built on the sense of Slovenian affiliation and the idea of the United Slovenia by reinforcing the unified Standard Slovenian language and unified Slovenian writing called slovenica, rejecting the Illyrian movement and Pan-Slavicism, later somewhat less convincingly with the adoption of new forms that Bleiweis initially established as a defiance against “our pure” and “comprehensible” Slovenian language. Bleiweis’ efforts to establish the use of the Slovenian language in schools and public life made it possible for the Slovenian language to achieve four-part perfection regarding its functional varieties, i.e. expanding from its basic practical and communicative “home environment” to the public sphere, where it functioned easily in journalism, took on the fully-fledged role of a specialist language in the translation of Državni zakonik (the official collection of national rules and regulations) and that of an artistic language also used in Prešeren’s poems published in Novice. As a result of Bleiweis’ Novice, schools, newspapers, and books in Slovenia were able to gain public acclaim. Despite the editor maintaining that Novice was an “educational journal for a simple people”, it was in fact also a political newspaper that suited intellectuals; it was at the heart of the Slovenian national revival and, as such, opened a public discussion about all the important issues of Slovenism, particularly regarding language, culture, politics, and literature.
