This collection is dedicated to the notions of 'norms' and 'standards' in connection with the English language. Its chapters cover topics such as the norms we orient to in social interaction, the ...benchmark employed in teaching, or the development of English dialects and varieties over time and space and their relation to the standard language. The notions of standards and norms are equally important concepts for historical linguists, sociolinguists with a variationist background, applied linguists, pragmaticians and discourse analysts.
Romani is a language of Indo-Aryan origin which is spoken in Europe by the people known as 'Gypsies' (who usually refer to themselves as Rom). There are upwards of 3.5 million speakers, and their ...language has attracted increasing interest both from scholars and from policy-makers in governments and other organizations during the past ten years. This 2002 book is the first comprehensive overview in English of Romani. It provides a historical linguistic introduction to the structures of Romani and its dialects, as well as surveying the phonology, morphology, syntactic typology and patterns of grammatical borrowing in the language. This book provides an essential reference for anyone interested in this fascinating language.
In what ways can dialectologists and language typologists profit from each others' work when looking across the fence? This is the guiding question of this volume, which involves follow-up questions ...such as: How can dialectologists profit from adopting the large body of insights in and hypotheses on language variation and language universals familiar from work in language typology, notably functional typology? Vice versa, what can typologists learn from the study of non-standard varieties? What are possible contributions of dialectology to areal typologies and the study of grammaticalization? What are important theoretical and methodological implications of this new type of collaboration in the study of language variation? The 18 contributors, among them many distinguished dialectologists, sociolinguists and typologists, address these and other novel questions on the basis of analyses of the morphology and syntax of a broad range of dialects (Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Aryan).
Paul Videsott examines the fate of the vernacular non-literary written language in Northern Italy from its first appearance up to 1525 (the year of publication of P. Bembos Prose della volgar ...lingua). For this, he undertakes a scriptological and scriptometric analysis of 1165 non-literary Old North Italian texts with a total of 558,892 words from 35 writing centres. Overall, one result is that the North Italian dialects displayed a far greater autonomy towards the emerging Tuscan norm than was the case in France for the Northern French dialects vis-à-vis the imperial Parisian standard language.
Tone Sandhi Chen, Matthew Y.
08/2000, Letnik:
v.Series Number 92
eBook
Matthew Chen's study, first published in 2000, offers a most comprehensive analysis of the rich and complex patterns of tone used in Chinese languages. Chinese has a wide repertoire of tones which ...undergo often surprising changes when they are connected in speech flow. The term tone sandhi refers to this tonal alternation. Chen examines tone sandhi phenomena in detail across a variety of Chinese dialects. He explores a range of important theoretical issues such as the nature of tonal representation, the relation of tone to accent, the prosodic domain of sandhi rules, and the interface between syntax and phonology. His book is the culmination of a ten-year research project and offers a wealth of empirical data not previously accessible to linguists. Extensive references and a bibliography on tone sandhi complete this invaluable resource which will be welcomed as a standard reference on Chinese tone.
The Spanish language and Hispanic culture have left indelible impressions on the landscape of the southwestern United States. The role of cultural and geographical influence has had dramatic effects ...on the sustainability of the Spanish language and also its development and change. In a linguistic exploration that delves into a language as it is spoken by the Hispanic population of New Mexico and southern Colorado, historical substantiation shows the condition of New Mexican Spanish and what the future holds for its speakers. With two major dialect regions, one in the north and one in the south, detailed maps illustrate the geography of linguistic variation for the Spanish spoken in the region, whose generations of speakers were not only influenced by other languages, but also developed their own variations of words and structure out of need or innovation. This diverse language has evolved since its origin in Spain with influences that include Native American languages, exposure to English, and Mexican immigration in the twentieth century. Snippets of New Mexican folklore and folk etymology give voice to that evolution. Though this work doesn't attempt to save the New Mexican Spanish language, Bills and Vigil detail the effects of inevitable encroachment that intensified during the twentieth century and seriously threaten the continued viability of this unique dialect.
This volume is the first comprehensive and systematic description of the dialect geography of the Arabic language which discusses on the basis of 112 maps topics such as types and interpretation of ...maps, areal norms and their significance for Arabic and the delimitation of dialect borders.
