Historical linguistics, language change and the history of French

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Posner
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
French Language ◽  
Time Dimension ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language History ◽  
Linguistic History ◽  
Modern Methods ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis is a personal delineation of part of a methodology for the History of the French Language, aiming to combine the methodology of linguistics with that of history proper. Both traditional and modern methods of ‘historical linguistics’ fail to take account of a real time dimension, whereas ‘language history’ often resembles institutional, cultural and social history. We ask how we identify the ‘event’ and the ‘object’ of linguistic history, and how we distinguish variation, innovation, shift and change. We ask also what the linguist can contribute to the historian's reconstruction of the past.

PIG, TONE SANDHI AND WUMIN

1989 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-182
Author(s):  
William L. Ballard
Keyword(s):  
Potential Role ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Dialects ◽  
Historical Relationship

Several scholars have made various remarks about the language history of the Wu and Min areas. Some of these remarks concern non-Chinese languages that may have been spoken in the area(s) and that may have left some traces in the forms of Chinese spoken there now (substrata). Other remarks concern the possible prehistory of what appear now to be transitional or mixed forms, or features that may be present due to some ancient influence or borrowing. In considering such matters it is important to keep in mind the basic principles (and biases) of historical linguistics, and of the potential role of philological materials in the discussion. My fieldwork in China this spring, as well as my research in the past, point to some special historical relationship between southern Wu and northern Min. This appears to mean that the boundaries between the northern and southern types of each of the two dialect groups are stronger than they have been portrayed in the past, and that the traditional boundary between Wu and Min is considerably weaker than has been supposed. The total sum of dialect facts cannot be ignored in trying to ascertain the language history of this area; it would appear that various elements of the traditional view of the history of the southern dialects are in error in various ways. In particular, it is at least possible that Wu and Min, in some sense, share a common ancestor not common to any other Chinese dialects.

A Social History of Language Change in Highland East Java

1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy J. Smith-Hefner
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Language History ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
East And Southeast Asia ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Languages ◽  
Regional Languages

Throughout east and southeast asia multilingual speech communities are the norm rather than the exception. In most countries in the region, nonstandard dialects and ethnic languages survive and even thrive despite the introduction of national languages and their utilization in government, business, and education. Where communicative isolation is not the cause of their survival, the persistence of such regional languages often signals the continuing importance of distinctive infranational identities, operating within (and sometimes across) the boundaries of the modern nation state. Although surely not the only important marker of ethnic or social distinctiveness, language is a particularly rich medium for the expression of social identity. Conversely, the adoption of a new linguistic standard often requires the resolution of what are perceived as competing social identities. In much of developing Asia, therefore, researchers on language history regularly encounter some variant of the same question: what social and historical conditions determine the ways that speakers in multilingual communities resolve problems of language and identity? More specifically, what mix of cultural and political forces ensures that some linguistic varieties persist while others decline or even disappear?

Scales and Units

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn M. de Luna
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
The North ◽  
First Case ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
River Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Approaches

This chapter uses two case studies to explore how historians study language movement and change through comparative historical linguistics. The first case study stands as a short chapter in the larger history of the expansion of Bantu languages across eastern, central, and southern Africa. It focuses on the expansion of proto-Kafue, ca. 950–1250, from a linguistic homeland in the middle Kafue River region to lands beyond the Lukanga swamps to the north and the Zambezi River to the south. This expansion was made possible by a dramatic reconfiguration of ties of kinship. The second case study explores linguistic evidence for ridicule along the Lozi-Botatwe frontier in the mid- to late 19th century. Significantly, the units and scales of language movement and change in precolonial periods rendered visible through comparative historical linguistics bring to our attention alternative approaches to language change and movement in contemporary Africa.

Madhouse

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-363
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Tilley ◽  
Paul Christian ◽  
Susan Ledger ◽  
Jan Walmsley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Learning Disability ◽  
Social History ◽  
Learning Difficulties ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Immersive Theatre ◽  
Disability Research ◽  
History Of Institutions

Until the very end of the twentieth century the history of learning difficulties was subsumed into other histories, of psychiatry, of special education and, indeed, of disability. Initiatives to enable people with learning difficulties and their families to record their own histories and contribute to the historical record are both recent and powerful. Much of this work has been led or supported by The Open University’s Social History of Learning Disability Research (SHLD) group and its commitment to developing “inclusive history.” The article tells the story of the Madhouse Project in which actors with learning difficulties, stimulated by the story of historian activist Mabel Cooper and supported by the SHLD group, learned about and then offered their own interpretations of that history, including its present-day resonances. Through a museum exhibition they curated, and through an immersive theatre performance, the actors used the history of institutions to alert a wider public to the abuses of the past, and the continuing marginalization and exclusion of people with learning difficulties. This is an outstanding example of history’s potential to stimulate activism.

Sino-Vietnamese sources for the Nguyễn Period: an Introduction

1967 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. B. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Viet Nam ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Methods ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Remains

‘Les livres historiques sont rares en pays annamite: le climat et les guerres ont concouru a les de truire.’ When he wrote those words in 1904 Pelliot no doubt hoped that they would be true only of the past; but the troubled history of Việt-Nam in the middle decades of the twentieth century has made them also prophetic. Before modern methods for combating the climate could be brought to bear on the problem of archive preservation further wars occurred to destroy even more of the country's historical remains, as well as to disperse many of those which survived.

Canada's Two Solitudes: Constitutional and International Law in Reference re Secession of Quebec

1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 65-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
French Language ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Pierre Trudeau ◽  
The Past ◽  
French And English ◽  
History Of ◽  
Varied Range

AbstractThis article begins by examining two different perspectives on the accommodation of Quebec and the French fact in Canada. The first, exemplified by Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, emphasised equality of the French and English languages across Canada. The second approach, adopted by Trudeau's contemporary René Lévesque, Prime Minister of Quebec, focused on the province of Quebec, and the state of the French language there. The second part of the article recounts the history of Quebec in Canada, emphasising throughout the varied range of legal and political accommodation that has occurred over the years. This section concludes with a brief description of the constitutional falling out between Quebec and Canada which has occurred over the past twenty or so years. The article concludes with a detailed analysis of the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in Reference re Secession of Quebec. This case is especially important for the way in which it mixes cons iderations of international law and domestic constitutional law. The author concludes by asserting that the survival and strength of the French fact in Canada is dependent upon a strong Quebec; and that a strong Quebec must show corresponding respect and recognition for its own minorities: aboriginal, anglophone and other.

Communication as source and motivator of language evolution

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vilmos Benczik
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Language emerges and changes primarily through communication; therefore communication technologies play a key role in the history of language change. The most powerful communication technology from this point of view is phonetic writing, which has a double effect on language: on the one hand it impoverishes suprasegmental linguistic resources; on the other hand it evokes in language a profound and sophisticated semantic precision, and also syntactic complexity. The huge progress in abstract human thought that has taken place over the past three or four centuries has come about on the basis of these linguistic changes. Today, when writing seems to be losing its earlier hegemony over communication, the question arises as to whether this will lead to the erosion of human language, and also of human thought.

scholarly journals The refuge of a dying variant within the grammar: Patterns of change and continuity in the Spanish verbal periphrasishaber de + infinitive over the past two centuries

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Blas Arroyo ◽  
Javier Vellón Lahoz
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractBased on a corpus of ego-documents (private letters, diaries, memoirs) from the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, this paper presents a variationist comparative study to determine the fate of the modal periphrasishaber de + infinitive in the history of modern Spanish. Detailed analysis of the envelope of variation enables us to show that, despite an abrupt decline in the selection ofhaber derelative totener que, both ‘to have to’, grammatical environments that favor its use remain in the mid-20th century. Many of the factor groups and the hierarchy of constraints during this period are similar to those that operated in previous periods. Nevertheless, a generalized decrease in the explanatory power of these factor groups, as well as some divergent patterns within several of these groups are also observed, mainly as a result of the fact thathaber de + infinitive is increasingly relegated to some restricted areas of the grammar and lexicon. Based on these results, some theoretical implications for changing rates and constraints in language change and grammaticalization are discussed.

History

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Owens
Keyword(s):  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
General Study ◽  
Linguistic History ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This article discusses the history of the Arabic language. It argues that Arabic should have a privileged place within historical linguistics. It is one of the few languages in the world for which a wealth of data exists both in the far-flung contemporary Arabic-speaking world and in a rich Classical tradition attested beginning 1400 years ago. Issues of maintenance and change, central concepts in historical linguistics, can be interpreted against a rich set of data. That they have not resides in the fact that basic concepts of historical linguistics have rarely been systematically applied to the language. Doing so will not only open new vistas to understanding the rich linguistic history of the language but also promises to contribute to the general study of historical linguistics.

Criminal Justice in Medieval Perugia and Bologna

1983 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah R. Blanshei
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Social History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Approach ◽  
Crime And Criminal Justice ◽  
Power And Authority

During the past twenty years historical investigations of crime and criminal justice have increased considerably. This new subfield has been hailed enthusiastically by many of its practitioners: Douglas Hay considers it one that offers a key to ‘unlocking the meanings of eighteenth century social history.’ John Styles and John Brewer view the study of crime and law as a ‘point d'appui for a social history approach that embraces both the history of society and the issues of power and authority, an approach, in other words, that resolves the “crisis of social history.”’ Moreover, Marzio Romani describes this research as one that utilizes crime as a 'symptom,’ as a link between ‘conjuncture’ and ‘structure.’

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