Comparative Historical Linguistics

Download or read book Historical and Comparative Linguistics written by Raimo Anttila and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In any course of historical and comparative linguistics there will be students of different language backgrounds, different levels of linguistic training, and different theoretical orientation. This textbook attempts to mitigate the problems raised by this heterogeneity in a number of ways. Since it is impossible to treat the language or language family of special interest to every student, the focus of this book is on English in particular and Indo-European languages in general, with Finnish and its closely related languages for contrast. The tenets of different schools of linguistics, and the controversies among them, are treated eclectically and objectively; the examination of language itself plays the leading role in our efforts to ascertain the comparative value of competing theories. This revised edition (1989) of a standard work for comparative linguists offers an added introduction dealing mainly with a semiotic basis of change, a final chapter on aspects of explanation, particularly in historical and human disciplines, and added sections on comparative syntax and on the semiotic status of the comparative method.

Download or read book Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages written by Gerrit J. Dimmendaal and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-08 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This advanced historical linguistics course book deals with the historical and comparative study of African languages. The first part functions as an elementary introduction to the comparative method, involving the establishment of lexical and grammatical cognates, the reconstruction of their historical development, techniques for the subclassification of related languages, and the use of language-internal evidence, more specifically the application of internal reconstruction. Part II addresses language contact phenomena and the status of language in a wider, cultural-historical and ecological context. Part III deals with the relationship between comparative linguistics and other disciplines. In this rich course book, the author presents valuable views on a number of issues in the comparative study of African languages, more specifically concerning genetic diversity on the African continent, the status of pidginised and creolised languages, language mixing, and grammaticalisation.

Download or read book Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics written by Jared Klein and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-06-11 with total page 1026 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the most comprehensive coverage of the field of Indo-European Linguistics in a century, focusing on the entire Indo-European family and treating each major branch and most minor languages. The collaborative work of 120 scholars from 22 countries, Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics combines the exhaustive coverage of an encyclopedia with the in-depth treatment of individual monographic studies.

Download or read book The Handbook of Historical Linguistics written by Brian Joseph and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 904 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Historical Linguistics provides a detailed account of the numerous issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics, the area of linguistics most directly concerned with language change as well as past language states. Contains an extensive introduction that places the study of historical linguistics in its proper context within linguistics and the historical sciences in general Covers the methodology of historical linguistics and presents sophisticated overviews of the principles governing phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic change Includes contributions from the leading specialists in the field

Download or read book Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics written by Trask R. L. Trask and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical and comparative linguistics has been a major scholarly discipline for 200 years, and yet this is the first dictionary ever devoted to it. With nearly 2400 entries, this dictionary covers every aspect of the subject, from the most venerable work to the exciting advances of the last few years, many of which have not even made it into textbooks yet.All of the traditional terms are here, but so are the terms only introduced recently, in connection with such varied subjects as pidgin and creole languages, the sociolinguistic study of language change, mathematical and computational methods, the novel approaches to linguistic geography, the controversial proposals of new and vast language families, and the attempts at relating the results of the historical linguists to those of the archaeologists, the anthropologists and the geneticists.More than just a dictionary, this book provides genuine linguistic examples of most of the terms entered, detailed explanations of fundamental concepts, critical assessment of controversial ideas, cross-references to related terms, and an abundance of references to the original literature.Features:*The first dictionary in the field.*Comprehensive coverage.*Clearly written and accurate entries.*Covers traditional and contemporary terminology.*Provides linguistic examples of terms defined.*Supplies numerous cross-references to related terms.*Includes hundreds of references to the original literature.

Download or read book Sequence Comparison in Historical Linguistics written by Mattis List and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The comparison of sound sequences (words, morphemes) constitutes the core of many techniques and methods in historical linguistics. With the help of these techniques, corresponding sounds can be determined, historically related words can be identified, and the history of languages can be uncovered. So far, the application of traditional techniques for sequence comparison is very tedious and time-consuming, since scholars have to apply them manually, without computational support. In this study, algorithms from bioinformatics are used to develop computational methods for sequence comparison in historical linguistics. The new methods automatize several steps of the traditional comparative method and can thus help to ease the painstaking work of language comparison. Dissertations in Language and Cognition This series explores issues of mental representation, lingustic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center 'The structure of representations in language, cognition and science' (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts.

Download or read book Comparative Indo-European Linguistics written by Robert S.P. Beekes and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book gives a comprehensive introduction to Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. It starts with a presentation of the languages of the family (from English and the other Germanic languages, the Celtic and Slavic languages, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit through Armenian and Albanian) and a discussion of the culture and origin of the Indo-Europeans, the speakers of the Indo-European proto-language.The reader is introduced into the nature of language change and the methods of reconstruction of older language stages, with many examples (from the Indo-European languages). A full description is given of the sound changes, which makes it possible to follow the origin of the different Indo-European languages step by step. This is followed by a discussion of the development of all the morphological categories of Proto-Indo-European. The book presents the latest in scholarly insights, like the laryngeal and glottalic theory, the accentuation, the ablaut patterns, and these are systematically integrated into the treatment. The text of this second edition has been corrected and updated by Michiel de Vaan. Sixty-six new exercises enable the student to practice the reconstruction of PIE phonology and morphology.