Review of (2020): Historical Linguistics: A Cognitive Grammar Introduction

Author(s):  
Isabeau De Smet
Author(s):  
Youssef A. Haddad

This chapter defines attitude datives as evaluative and relational pragmatic markers that allow the speaker to present material from a specific perspective and to invite the hearer to view the material from the same perspective. It identifies three types of context that are pertinent to the analysis of these datives. These are the sociocultural context (e.g., values, beliefs), the situational context (i.e., identities, activity types), and the co-textual context (e.g., contextualization cues). The chapter draws on Cognitive Grammar and Theory of Stance and puts forth a sociocognitive model called the stancetaking stage model. In this model, when a speaker uses an attitude dative construction, she directs her hearer’s attention to the main content of her message and instructs him to view this content through the attitude dative as a filter. In this sense, the attitude dative functions as a perspectivizer and the main content becomes a perspectivized thought.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Zaidan Ali Jassem

The purpose of this paper is to provide a radical critical review of Lyle Campbell’s (2013) Historical linguistics: An introduction, (3nd edn.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. More precisely, it gives an overview,  survey, and critique of the main topics, principles, and theories which the work covers. My review is based on using it as the main textbook for ENGL 358 Historical Linguistics  for over 5 years where the students say ‘it’s frightening’.  


2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 572-580
Author(s):  
Irena Stramljič Breznik

Abstract The paper focuses on new verbal formations in Slovene coined from borrowed nouns ending in -ing with the Slovenian morpheme -irati (e.g. šoping-irati) on the basis of analogous phonological and semantic structures in the language, and examines their spread in the sphere of informal language use. The word­formational potential of such verbs is further examined with the basic categories of cognitive grammar, such as morphemic transparency, schematicity of the word­formational pattern and the established status of the phonemic sequence *ingira* in the previously existing lexical units of the Slovene language.


Author(s):  
Kathryn M. de Luna

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.


Author(s):  
Derek Nurse

The focus of this chapter is on how languages move and change over time and space. The perceptions of historical linguists have been shaped by what they were observing. During the flowering of comparative linguistics, from the late 19th into the 20th century, the dominant view was that in earlier times when people moved, their languages moved with them, often over long distances, sometimes fast, and that language change was largely internal. That changed in the second half of the 20th century. We now recognize that in recent centuries and millennia, most movements of communities and individuals have been local and shorter. Constant contact between communities resulted in features flowing across language boundaries, especially in crowded and long-settled locations such as most of Central and West Africa. Although communities did mix and people did cross borders, it became clear that language and linguistic features could also move without communities moving.


2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 621-632
Author(s):  
Todd B. Krause

Author(s):  
María Guijarro Sanz

Abstract This article demonstrates how Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar can prevent Chinese students learning Spanish from fossilizing mistakes in restrictive relative clauses at the A2-B1 level of the European Framework of Reference for Languages. To address this issue, first, relative clauses in Spanish and Chinese were contrasted and, second, tailored solutions based on Cognitive Grammar were proposed. Among the cognitive based tailored solutions, certain geometry forms, colours and basic mathematics metaphors were compared with syntactic characteristics such as noun order, subordination hierarchy or resumption. To elucidate the impact of such teaching methods, an experiment with 74 Chinese students was performed. The results indicate that the efficacy of the proposed materials is statistically significant and as such, the Chinese students avoid fossilized mistakes while producing subject, object and locative relative clauses in Spanish.


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