Categorization In The History Of English

The papers in this volume are linked by a common concern, which is at the centre of current linguistic enquiry: how do we classify and categorize linguistic data, and how does this process add to our understanding of linguistic change? The scene is set by Aitchison’s paper on the development of linguistic categorization over the past few decades, followed by Biggam’s critical overview of theoretical developments in colour semantics. Lexical classification in action is discussed in papers by Fischer, Kay and Sylvester on the structures of thesauruses, while detailed treatments of particular semantic areas are offered by Kleparski, Mikołajczuk, O’Hare and Peters. Papers by Lass, Laing and Williamson, and Smith are concerned with the nature of linguistic evidence in the context of the historical record, offering new insights into text typology, scribal language and vowel classification. Much of the data discussed is new and original.

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A Social History of English is the first history of the English language to utilize the techniques, insights and concerns of sociolinguistics. Written in a non-technical way, it takes into account standardization, pidginization, bi- and multilingualism, the issues of language maintenance and language loyalty, and linguistic variation. This new edition has been fully revised. Additions include: * new material about 'New Englishes' across the world * a new chapter entitled 'A Critical Linguistic History of English Texts' * a discussion of problems involved in writing a history of English All terms and concepts are explained as they are introduced, and linguistic examples are chosen for their accessibility and intelligibility to the general reader. It will be of interest to students of Sociolinguistics, English Language, History and Cultural Studies.

Examines how pre-modernist conceptions and social organizations of pleasure have impacted post-WWII film.

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This book offers the first comprehensive survey of the study of gender and classifiers throughout the history of Western linguistics. Based on an analysis of over 200 genetically and typologically diverse languages, the author shows that these seemingly arbitrary and redundant categories play in fact a central role in the lexicon, grammar and the organization of discourse. As a result, the often contradictory approaches to their functionality and semantic motivation encapsulate the evolving conceptions of such issues as cognitive and cultural correlates of linguistic structure, the diverse functions of grammatical categories, linguistic complexity, agreement phenomena and the interplay between lexicon and grammar. The combination of a typological and historiographic perspective adopted here allows the reader to appreciate the detail and insight of earlier, supposedly ‘prescientific’ accounts in light of the data now available and to examine contemporary discussions in the context of prevailing conceptions in the study of language at different points in its history since antiquity.

This volume consists of 19 papers presented at the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, which was held in August 2003 in Copenhagen and drew the largest number of participants and the widest array of languages that this important biannual conference has ever had. As with previous volumes, the papers selected cover a wide range of subjects besides the core areas of historical linguistics, and this time include studies on ethnolinguistics, grammaticalisation, language contact, sociolinguistics, and typology. The individual languages treated include Brazilian Portuguese, Chukchi, Korean, Danish, English, German, Greek, Japanese, Kok-Papónk, Latin, Newar, Old Norse, Romanian, Seneca, Spanish, and Swedish. The volume reflects the state of the art both empirical and theoretical — in Historical Linguistics today, and shows the discipline to be as flourishing and capable of new advances as ever.