Linguistics In The Twenty First Century

What is the future of languages in an increasingly globalized world? Are we moving toward the use of a single language for global communication, or are there ways of managing language diversity at the international level? Can we, or should we, maintain a balance between the global need to communicate and the maintenance of local and regional identities and cultures? What is the role of education, of language rights, of language equality in this volatile global linguistic mix? A group of leading scholars in sociolinguistics and language policy examines trends in language use across the world to find answers to these questions and to make predictions about likely outcomes. Highlighted in the discussion are, among other issues, the rapidly changing role of English, the equally rapid decline and death of small languages, the future of the major European languages, the international use of constructed languages like Esperanto, and, not least, the question of what role applied scholarship can and should play in mapping and influencing the future.

This innovative textbook demonstrates the mutual relevance of historical linguistics and contemporary linguistics.

Publisher Description

This collection is the fifth volume of selected papers to emerge from Columbia School (CS) linguistics conferences. A radically functionalist approach, CS shares with Cognitive linguistics the view that grammar is composed of form-meaning correspondences. CS views language as a symbolic tool whose structure is shaped both by its communicative function and by the characteristics of its users. The volume includes papers on methodological issues and innovative analyses on English, Spanish, and Mandarin that illustrate the value of the strict application of clearly spelled out theoretical principles to the execution of linguistic analysis. Four of the volume’s eleven papers are written in Spanish, and all papers have abstracts in both English and Spanish. An introduction highlights the theoretical and analytical premises of CS, and their differences from and similarities with cognitive-functional approaches. The collection will be of interest to researchers and laymen who aim to understand the role of language in human communication.

Psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field, and hence relationships are at its heart. First and foremost is the relationship between its two parent disciplines, psychology and linguistics, a relationship which has changed and advanced over the half century of the field's independent existence. At the beginning of the 21st Century, psycholinguistics forms part of the rapidly developing enterprise known as cognitive neuroscience, in which the relationship between biology and behavior plays a central role. Psycholinguistics is about language in communication, so that the relationship between language production and comprehension has always been important, and as psycholinguistics is an experimental discipline, it is likewise essential to find the right relationship between model and experiment. This book focuses in turn on each of these four cornerstone relationships: Psychology and Linguistics, Biology and Behavior, Production and Comprehension, and Model and Experiment. The authors are from different disciplinary backgrounds, but share a commitment to clarify the ways that their research illuminates the essential nature of the psycholinguistic enterprise.

In Guarani Linguistics in the 21st Century Bruno Estigarribia and Justin Pinta offer a series of state-of-the-art linguistic studies of Guarani, the only indigenous language of the Americas spoken by a non-indigenous majority.

This volume explores and compares linguistic practices among young people in linguistically and culturally diverse urban spaces.

"Appalachian Englishes in the Twenty-First Century provides a complete exploration of English in Appalachia for a broad audience of scholars and educators. Starting from the premise that just as there is no single Appalachia, there is no single Appalachian dialect, Kirk Hazen's essay collection brings together varied perspectives on language variation in this region. They are attentive to the full range of linguistic expression, from everyday spoken grammar to subversive Dale Earnhardt memes"--