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 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.
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.
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.
This paper contains a description of the Bistriţa toponymic field: a set of names formed from the Bistriţa hydronym through structural processes called by Dragoş Moldovanu polarization and ...differentiation. In order to identify the core - the main element of the field from which the other toponyms have been formed-, it was necessary to clarify the etymology of the word Bistrita. At the origin of this place name is the Ukrainian bystrica, a derivative of the adjective bystr- “fast; crystal clear”. The meaning of this adjective must therefore be associated with a watercourse, so the geographical object that it initially designated is the river. This river, attested since the beginning of the fifteenth century, is the largest Romanian river, crossing areas, villages and towns of historical, social and economic importance. That is why an important toponymic field has been developed around its name. This field, characterized by the diversity of place-names, contains toponyms which designate different geographical objects (springs, watercourses and parts thereof, mountains, a gorge, a depression, abridge, a meadow, communication ways, and large administrative units) or localities in the vicinity of this river. Only one name (Bistricioara) is obtained from the Bistriţa name by derivation with the diminutive suffix -ioara; the rest of the toponymic field is represented by syntagms formed of the term Bistriţa and various constituents (nouns, adjectives or prepositions). We can see a presence of homonymy cases and a variety of forms attested by documents. The diachronic depiction of the toponymic fields is an important step for the lexicographical approach of place names because it reflects the dynamic reality discovered on the field.
Due to its accelerated modernization that raises special problems, challenges and discussions (among others, the intergenerational stratification, the way the speakers are reporting themselves to the ...norm, the linguistic homogeneity, etc.), the situation of the Romanian language spoken in Rotunda and Săbăoani is a continuous process. Since the change seems to be oriented in the direction of diminishing regional “roughness”, with significant consequences concerning the very profile of the local variety of the Romanian language, it appears as legitimate to verify, based on certain features (typical: absolute or relative, in terms of Ion Gheție), to what extent it falls within the dialectal unit of higher rank. The observation that the set of Moldavian distinctive elements (diagnostic features) is partially respected, especially by the more conservative generation, cannot, however, generate definitive conclusions regarding the position of the Rotunda and Săbăoani idioms in the area of Moldavian speeches. Beyond the assumption that, considering its conditions, the investigation could have at least partially distorted the results (through self-control practiced by speakers while communicating with outsiders), there is a possibility that this modernization process may have affected other Moldavian idiomatic varieties to a similar extent. However, as long as our reference for the Moldavian dialectal ensemble is given by a 50 years old geolinguistic research, only the issue of a new Romanian linguistic atlas, by regions, could compensate this shortcoming.
Most linguistic theories consider language essentially as a means of communication between ontological individuals. Society is nothing but a voluntary social grouping which happened at some point in ...the history of our species. Language is then considered a communication tool which helps us encode concepts for the benefit of other individuals and linguistics concentrates on the processes which allow this feat in the speakers’ brains. Intercomprehension is quite often explained in terms of genetic endowment. For example, Chomsky’s universal grammar explains syntax and semantic primes explain the construction of meaning. The hypothetical even metaphysical aspect of this point of view is quite often overlooked and language becomes a “code” which can be described in terms of logic and mathematics. And as thought precedes formulation, linguistic form and meaning are ontologically separated and this leads to the deeply ingrained mind/body dualism which lurches in the background of most theories. In this text, we aim to show that language is one of the three environments (« milieus ») in which we live, the two others being society and nature, both humanised by and through language and constantly altered by human activity. Three dimensions can be distinguished in language. The first and foremost is anthropological. People speak to create links between themselves and language is then the locus of small talk, human relations, education, politics, ethics, values, gossip, etc. Language is also used for collective work and action when it makes use of its referential dimension: many words refer to elements of our experience and language is then the locus of work, the economy and collective action. Finally, language is also the locus of personal thought, creativity and individualisation. Yet this cognitive dimension of language can only develop when the anthropological and referential dimensions have been acquired: it is not cause but consequence.Linguistic communities tend to fall back on themselves in what can be termed “ubuntus”, a Bantu word which names a community speaking a language within a culture. Becoming locked up inside ubuntus can be effectively avoided by language learning because languages open doors to others and allow for the offsetting of one’s own ubuntu. Multilingualism conditions knowledge and tolerance of the other.
The contribution opens with an overview about the position of French in the repertory of Valle d’Aosta, a small bilingual region of Italy, where, despite of its historical grounding as heritage ...language, this language appears nowadays in a very critical situation, in particular at the level of spoken use. Against this background stands the focus of the contribution, that is to discuss the process of language shift occurred in Valle d’Aosta between the 19th and the 20th centuries. This process led to the substitution of French with Italian as “roofing language” and it tends to be regarded as a typical case of “language murder”, in literature but namely in the regional inner perspective, that identifies its starting point in the national unification of Italy (1861).A re-reading of some evidences, both from historical sources and sociolinguistic more recent inquiries, permits although to shed new light on this process, on both plans of the role played in it by sectors of the local speech community and of the parallel construction of an internal identitary story-telling that assumes the Valle d’Aosta community’s integral francophonie of the past as an unquestionable matter of fact.The discussion of a series of issues (i.e. the correct interpretation of the instances of written French in Valle d’Aosta since the Middle Ages; the consideration of the results of the sociolinguistic survey conducted by the Fondation Chanoux in 2001, with particular regard to the spoken use of languages in the generation born at the end of 19th century; the historiographical testimony, for the same century, about the early presence of Italian within the region) thus lead to depict on one side the historical linguistic repertory of Valle d’Aosta as a typical situation of “diglossia” and, on the other, the process of penetration of Italian as a gradual and long-lasting phenomenon, which begins several decades before 1861.On this bases, new considerations about the active role of Valle d’Aosta 19th century speech community in the above mentioned process of language shift are finally proposed, which may lead to consider it rather an instance of “linguistic suicide” (Denison 1977) than an actual “language murder”.
This paper is meant as a contribution to the Spanish historical pragmatics. It consists of a pragmalinguistic analysis of directive speech acts from five plays of the so-called bourgeois comedy of ...customs introduced in Spain by Enlightenment authors in the second half of the 18th century. The different linguistic expressions of these acts, their illocutionary values and their conditions of use are studied in detail.
