Language sources and the reconstruction of early languages

Diachronica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-317
Author(s):  
Brigitte L. M. Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Old French ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Dialectal Variation ◽  
Social Variation ◽  
Original Emphasis ◽  
French Grammar ◽  
Incomplete Picture

Abstract This article argues that with the original emphasis on dialectal variation, using primarily literary texts from various regions, analysis of Old French has routinely neglected social variation, providing an incomplete picture of its grammar. Accordingly, Old French has been identified as typically featuring e.g. “pro-drop”, brace constructions, and single negation. Yet examination of these features in informal texts, as opposed to the formal texts typically dealt with, demonstrates that these documents do not corroborate the picture of Old French that is commonly presented in the linguistic literature. Our reconstruction of Old French grammar therefore needs adjustment and further refinement, in particular by implementing sociolinguistic data. With a broader scope, the call for inclusion of sociolinguistic variation may resonate in the investigation of other early languages, resulting in the reassessment of the sources used, and reopening the debate about social variation in dead languages and its role in language evolution.

Cross-dialectal variation in Arabic: Competing prestigious forms

1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hassan R. Abd-El-Jawad
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Standard Variety ◽  
Adequate Description ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Dialectal Variation ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Arabic Sociolinguistics ◽  
Informal Settings ◽  
Spoken Arabic ◽  
Modern Standard

ABSTRACTMost researchers of Arabic sociolinguistics assume the existence of a sociolinguistic continuum with a local vernacular at the bottom and the standard variety at the top. Those researchers seem to equate the terms “prestige” and “standard”; consequently, they tend to consider Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as the only prestige variety in all settings. This article presents evidence showing that if an adequate description of sociolinguistic variation of spoken Arabic is to be met, it is necessary to posit not only one standard speech variety, MSA, but also other prestigious local or regional varieties which act as local spoken standards competing with MSA in informal settings. It will be shown in the reported cases that in certain contexts speakers tend to switch from their local forms – though these latter may be identical to MSA – to other local features characteristic of other dominant social groups and that happen to be marked [–MSA], These local prestigious norms act like the standard spoken norms in informal settings. (Diglossic model, prestigious varieties, stereotypes, dominant social groups, competing standards, spoken Arabic).

scholarly journals Networks uncover hidden lexical borrowing in Indo-European language evolution

2010 ◽  
Vol 278 (1713) ◽  
pp. 1794-1803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shijulal Nelson-Sathi ◽  
Johann-Mattis List ◽  
Hans Geisler ◽  
Heiner Fangerau ◽  
Russell D. Gray ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Trees ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Old French ◽  
Phylogenetic Networks ◽  
European Language ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Basic Vocabulary ◽  
The Impact

Language evolution is traditionally described in terms of family trees with ancestral languages splitting into descendent languages. However, it has long been recognized that language evolution also entails horizontal components, most commonly through lexical borrowing. For example, the English language was heavily influenced by Old Norse and Old French; eight per cent of its basic vocabulary is borrowed. Borrowing is a distinctly non-tree-like process—akin to horizontal gene transfer in genome evolution—that cannot be recovered by phylogenetic trees. Here, we infer the frequency of hidden borrowing among 2346 cognates (etymologically related words) of basic vocabulary distributed across 84 Indo-European languages. The dataset includes 124 (5%) known borrowings. Applying the uniformitarian principle to inventory dynamics in past and present basic vocabularies, we find that 1373 (61%) of the cognates have been affected by borrowing during their history. Our approach correctly identified 117 (94%) known borrowings. Reconstructed phylogenetic networks that capture both vertical and horizontal components of evolutionary history reveal that, on average, eight per cent of the words of basic vocabulary in each Indo-European language were involved in borrowing during evolution. Basic vocabulary is often assumed to be relatively resistant to borrowing. Our results indicate that the impact of borrowing is far more widespread than previously thought.

Psycholinguistic Approaches

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brandon C. Loudermilk
Keyword(s):  
Speech Processing ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Cognitive Representations ◽  
Dialectal Variation ◽  
Fundamental Goal

The fundamental goal of the study of sociolinguistic cognition is to characterize the computational stages and cognitive representations underlying the perception and production of sociolinguistic variation. This chapter discusses psycholinguistic approaches in four sections. The first section discusses different methods for examining how dialectal variation is represented, perceived, and learned. The second section reviews studies investigating the role of sociolinguistic stereotypes in speech processing. The third section explores the attitudinal aspects of language variation by presenting two recent studies using innovative variations of the matched-guise technique. It concludes by introducing the implicit association test, which may be able to address some of the limitations of alternative methods. The fourth section reports on studies that use eye tracking and event-related brain potentials to investigate sociolinguistic cognition.

scholarly journals Reconstructing sociolinguistic variation

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Jessica Kantarovich ◽  
Lenore A. Grenoble
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
Linguistic Material

In this paper we illustrate a methodology for reconstructing language ininteraction from literary texts, demonstrating how they can serve as documentation ofspeech when primary linguistic material is unavailable. A careful incorporation offacts from literary dialect not only informs grammatical reconstruction in situationswith little to no documentation, but also allows for the reconstruction of thesociolinguistic use of a language, an oft-overlooked aspect of linguisticreconstruction. Literary dialogue is often one of the only attestations of regionalvarieties of a language with a very salient standard dialect, where no primary sourcesare available. Odessan Russian (OdR), a moribund dialect of Russian, serves as a casestudy. OdR grew out of intensive language contact and differs from most othervarieties of Russian, with substrate influences from Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Polish,and lexical borrowing from other languages. The only records of "spoken" OdR arefound in fictional narrative. An analysis of works from several prominent Odessanwriters, including Isaak Babel and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, reveals considerable variationamong speakers of OdR; careful tracking of this variation shows how it wasdistributed among different social groups, and suggests how it may have beendeployed to index and acknowledge different social roles.

Black southern signing,,

1976 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Woodward
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Visual Modality ◽  
Theoretical Problem ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Phonological Variation ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Linguistic Change ◽  
Social Variation

ABSTRACTRecent research in American Sign Language (ASL) has concentrated on demonstrating that ASL, a language channelled through the manual—visual modality, has linguistic properties similar to those of oral languages, except for physical sound. The absence of sound, however, really presents no theoretical problem since ASL has a formational level of structure analogous to, but not dependent on, the phonological component of oral languages (Stokoe 1960; Battison 1974).This paper will discuss a relatively new area of research in Sign linguistics, ethnic—social variation. Because of attitudes and educational policy, Black signers in the South have developed different varieties of signing from Whites. Concentrating primarily on Black signs in Georgia, this paper will discuss some of the lexical and formational (phonological) variation observed in old and young Black signers. (Sociolinguistic variation; sign languages; linguistic change; minority group languages.)

scholarly journals Complexity, variation and meaning: an integrated view on language and cognition

Gragoatá ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 210-243
Author(s):  
Augusto Soares da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic System ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Sociolinguistic Variation ◽  
Complex Dynamic System ◽  
Social Variation ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Language And Cognition

The complexity of the linguistic system, the variability of meaning and the interindividuality of human cognition are intimately related. By examining language in its effective usage, we cannot help but recognize its great variability and heterogeneity, and one must correlate social variation with conceptual variation. When investigating the variability of meaning, one cannot neglect sociolinguistic variation as one of the factors of this variability, and it becomes inevitable to meet the multidimensionality of meaning in the confluence of its social and conceptual dimensions and in the correlation among perception, action and interaction. Understanding cognition as socioculturally situated makes it inevitable to integrate the social, cultural and interactional aspects in the analysis not only of cognitive capacities in general but also of language. In this study, we attempt to articulate the idea of language as a complex dynamic system with the ascertainment of the intrinsic flexibility of linguistic meaning, which has prototypicality as one of its greater manifestations, and we identify the need for the integration of conceptual and social aspects of language and cognition. We follow the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics, and we argue for the need of advanced multivariate methods that can adequately approach language as a complex dynamic system and a multidimensionality of linguistic meaning.---Original in English.

Old French Grammar.

1894 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
John E. Matzke ◽  
Eduard Schwan
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
French Grammar

Old French Grammar.

1900 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver M. Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Old French ◽  
French Grammar

scholarly journals The Semantic and Syntactic Evolution of Conjunctions in French: The Case of ains

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Swietłana Niewzorowa
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Old French ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
French Academy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Functional Analyses

The present study is part of the current of diachronic research on conjunctions. All linguists confirm that in Old French two opposing conjunctions were used: ains / mais. However, in modern French, only one contrast conjunction provides an opposing connection, namely mais. The reasons for the rapid decline of the ains conjunction are not clear, and the time of its disappearance is not precise. In this article, the author focuses on the semantic analysis of ains from Old French until the 17th century, i.e. until the time where this conjunction passed into archaism and when the Academy declared: “it is old” (Dictionary of the French Academy 1694). The study deals with the specific syntactic uses of the conjunction in question in various literary texts. By referring to descriptive, semantic and functional analyses, it is possible to identify specific features of the ains conjunction, as well as to reveal the conditions under which its disappearance took place. The study is also trying to answer the question why this Old French conjunction, very common in the past, disappeared.

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