The Lingua Franca

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Operstein

Whose name is hidden behind the anonymity of the key publication on Mediterranean Lingua Franca? What linguistic reality does the label 'Lingua Franca' conceal? These and related questions are explored in this new book on an enduringly important topic. The book presents a typologically informed analysis of Mediterranean Lingua Franca, as documented in the Dictionnaire de la langue franque ou petit mauresque, which provides an important historical snapshot of contact-induced language change. Based on a close study of the Dictionnaire in its historical and linguistic context, the book proposes hypotheses concerning its models, authorship and publication history, and examines the place of the Dictionnaire's Lingua Franca in the structural typological space between Romance languages, on the one hand, and pidgins, on the other. It refines our understanding of the typology of contact outcomes while at the same time opening unexpected new avenues for both linguistic and historical research.

Target ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Iribarren

This article explores translational literary Web 2.0 practices and user-generated cultural creations on the Internet, focusing on video poetry that re-creates canonical poets’ bodies of work. It will be argued that the use of for-profit platforms like YouTube and Vimeo by indie creators and translators of video poetry favours the emergence of new translational attitudes, practices and objects that have positive but also contentious effects. One the one hand, these online mediators explore new poetic expressions and tend to make the most of the potential for dissemination of poetic heritage, providing visibility to non-hegemonic literatures. On the other hand, however, these translational digitally-born practices and creations by voluntary and subaltern mediators might reinforce the hegemonic position of large American Internet corporations at the risk of commodifying cultural capital, consolidating English as a lingua franca and perhaps, in the long run, even fostering a potentially monocultural and internationally homogeneous aesthetics.


Author(s):  
Jennifer Jenkins

This article discusses English in terms of its role as a contact language among expanding circle users of English from different first languages. It begins by observing both similarities between English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and other lingua francas, and the difference in scale between them, with ELF involving a far higher number of people and first languages. The article goes on to explore empirical research into ELF, and its key findings: on the one hand, that certain “nonstandard” English forms are regularly preferred to “standard” (i.e. native) ones, and on the other, that ELF is far more affected by context and accommodation processes, and, therefore, far more diverse, than native Englishes. The notion of “community of practice,” it is argued, is, thus, more appropriate to ELF than that of “speech community.” The article concludes by considering three key areas of ELF research that need to be tackled.


1941 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
John Glendower Westover

"Only the first year of Jeff Thompson's account of his Civil War experiences is included in this study. His reminiscences, however, run from January 1, 1861, to June 6, 1865, covering his military career in considerable detail. The year 1861 was selected for detailed study because by checking the accuracy of one section against the official record, the validity of the whole document can likely be determined. Also by close study of a part, an estimate can be made of the value of the whole document as an instrument of historical research. While Thompson's reminiscences check very well with the official records, they still contribute material which cannot be located in the official records. The official records concentrate on operations, orders, and correspondence but usually omit organization, discipline of troops, elections of officers, and "off the record" material of various types. The entire manuscript is divided into five parts, each covering a single year of the war. 1861 is the one best suited for a detailed study because it is the most self-contained unit, includes more material on the organization and administration of irregular Confederate troops, and is the year when Thompson was most active from a military standpoint... "--Page [1].


Author(s):  
Marcello Barbato

Several attempts have been made to classify Romance languages. The subgroups created can be posited as intermediate entities in diachrony between a mother language and daughter languages. This diachronic perspective can be structured using a rigid model, such as that of the family tree, or more flexible ones. In general, this perspective yields a bipartite division between Western Romance languages (Ibero-Romance, Gallo-Romance, Alpine-, and Cisalpine-Romance) and Eastern Romance languages (Italian and Romanian), or a tripartite split between Sardinian, Romanian, and other languages. The subgroups can, however, be considered synchronic groupings based on the analysis of the characteristics internal to the varieties. Naturally, the groupings change depending on which features are used and which theoretic model is adopted. Still, this type of approach signals the individuality of French and Romanian with respect to the Romània continua, or contrasts northern and southern Romània, highlighting, on the one hand, the shared features in Gallo-Romance and Gallo-Italian and, on the other, those common to Ibero-Romance, southern Italian, and Sardinian. The task of classifying Romance languages includes thorny issues such as distinguishing between synchrony and diachrony, language and dialect, and monothetic and polythetic classification. Moreover, ideological and political matters often complicate the theme of classification. Many problems stand as yet unresolved, and they will probably remain unresolvable.


1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kobus Labuschagne

On the existence of God and on nothingness The views of Karl Barth and the 'Heilsgeschichte'-tradition on the one hand, and those of Rudolf Bultmann and the 'Formkritik'-tradition on the other hand, do not differ so much on the method of objective historical research. The real differences start to appear on the hermeneutical front, where facts and events referred to in the Scriptures are evaluated and explained. The 'Heilsgeschichte' -tradition is consistent in maintaining an objective point of departure, whilst Bultmann and the 'Form-kritik'-tradition, influenced by existentialist philosophy, reveals a subjective approach. For Bultmann the kerygma cannot be verified historically but only subjectively or existentially. For Barth the kerygma cannot be separated from its true basis of historical events, in and through the person of Jesus Christ. These two different approaches have enormous con-sequences for the question of the existence of God.


2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Somers

This article seeks to explain the synchronic variation found in the second person singular inflectional ending (attested both as -s and -st) in the Old High German Evangelienbuch, while at the same time pro-viding a diachronic account of the introduction and extension of the -st ending in German. In order to achieve these goals, in my analysis I rely on the notions of cliticization and formal analogy, arguing that the innovative and original endings correlate with different syntactic environments (V1/V2 versus Vfinal), on the one hand, and different formal shapes (is versus ôs/ês), on the other. After presenting an account of the development of -st in OHG, I draw conclusions regarding the broader question of how clitics become (part of) inflection, a discussion which in turn has implications for the theories scholars use to describe and explain language change, specifically that of grammaticalization.*


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Alice Leal

The tension between unity versus multiplicity seems to be at the heart of the European Union (EU) and of translation studies (TS). Indeed, a significant parallel between the two is the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). The EU appears to be torn between a notion of language as a crucial element of one’s identity on the one hand, and a predominantly instrumental, Lockean view of language, on the other. A similar dynamic appears to take place in TS, an area that is par excellence heterogeneous and in which the notion of difference plays a paramount role. Indeed, at times TS appears to be afflicted by a sense of self-consciousness regarding its lack of unity and homogeneity. According to some, the solution is to foster the standardisation of its methods and terminology. But would proposing standardised terminology in a standardised language for the area not inevitably entail repressing different approaches in different languages? The paper explores this question in the context of the use of English as a lingua franca, and proposes various ways out of the dilemma both for the EU and TS.


2014 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 115-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Ottner

During the nineteenth century, history developed into an independent discipline with important cultural and intellectual functions in both the academic world, as well as in society at large. Specific circumstances contributed to the rise in importance of this discipline: On the one hand, the emergence of an educated bourgeoisie and rising nationalist movements influenced the study of history; whereas on the other hand, public demands for assurances of continuity, as well as conservative efforts for restoration, also played an important role in history's growth in importance. Historicism, which began to establish itself in late-eighteenth-century Germany, had its forerunners in research approaches that grew out of the late Enlightenment. Concepts of cultural science [Kulturwissenschaft] developed by scholars of the late Enlightenment paved the way for the rise of the historical discipline during the first half of the nineteenth century.


Author(s):  
Anne Carlier ◽  
Béatrice Lamiroy

AbstractThis article is devoted to the emergence of a new paradigm in French and Romance: that of nominal determiners. Latin had no articles, and although possessives, demonstratives and indefinites could determine the noun, they could also be used as pronouns or adjectives, so that the morpho-syntactic category of nominal determiners did not exist as such. We first examine the diachronic evolution of French, where a far-reaching grammaticalization process took place. Syntagmatically, all determiners end up in the NP-initial position as the only available syntactic slot, contributing to the highly configurational NP pattern characteristic of Modern French. From a paradigmatic viewpoint, determiners no longer correspond to a syntactic function, but to a separate morpho-syntactic category. We also evaluate to what extent this evolution took place in two other Romance languages, Italian and Spanish. Through the analysis of this particular evolution, based on parallel corpora consisting of a Latin text and its translations in Old, Middle, and Modern French on the one hand, and in Spanish and Italian on the other, our study also provides evidence for more general mechanisms, analogy in particular, at work in the creation of new paradigms.


2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Béatrice Lamiroy ◽  
Anna Pineda

Abstract Grammaticalization across Romance languages and the pace of language change. The position of Catalan. In several works on grammaticalization, one of the authors of this paper has established a grammaticalization cline which posits three major Romance languages: French at one extreme, Spanish at the other, and Italian in between (Lamiroy, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2011, Lamiroy & De Mulder, 2011, De Mulder & Lamiroy, 2012, Van de Velde & Lamiroy, 2017). Our purpose is to place Catalan on this cline. To achieve our goal, we use data of Catalan related to several topics, viz. auxiliaries, past tense, existential sentences, mood and demonstratives. Catalan shows contradictory evidence: whereas the grammaticalization process in certain domains suggests that it parallels Spanish and Italian, in many others, it patterns with French. Thus the hypothesis for which we provide evidence here is the following cline : French > Catalan > Italian > Spanish.


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