scholarly journals Testing the Semantic Homogeneity Constraint

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tore Nesset ◽  
Anastasia Makarova
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Semantic Factor ◽  
Homogeneous Domains ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
Shed Light

Although it has been widely assumed in historical linguistics that semantics plays a crucial role in analogical change, it is difficult to pinpoint the contribution of the semantic factor, since meaning and form work closely together in bringing about language change. The purpose of the present article is to shed light on the issue by means of two case studies from Russian, which enable us to isolate the role of semantics. The hypothesis we test is that analogical change is restricted to semantically homogeneous domains. We call this the Semantic Homogeneity Constraint. Two phenomena from Russian conjugation are explored: suffix shift and NU-drop. Although they seem parallel, analogical change occurs in the former, but not in the latter. It is argued that this is because the verbs involved in suffix shift constitute a semantically homogeneous domain, within which analogical change can take place. By contrast, NU-verbs are semantically diverse, and these semantic differences create boundaries which block analogical change. The findings have implications both for Russian and general linguistics. While suffix shift and NU-drop are well-known phenomena in Russian conjugation, they have not been juxtaposed and compared before. Our comparison provides new insights about the differences and similarities of the two phenomena. From the perspective of historical linguistics, the present article contributes to the theory of analogy, insofar as we provide empirical evidence for the Semantic Homogeneity Constraint, which places restrictions on semantic domains where analogical change can take place.

Root lexical features and inflectional marking of tense in Proto-Indo-European

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNAMARIA BARTOLOTTA
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
Lexical Feature ◽  
General Linguistic ◽  
Linguistic Approaches ◽  
Shed Light

This paper examines early inflectional morphology related to the tense-aspect system of Proto-Indo-European. It will be argued that historical linguistics can shed light on the long-standing debate over the emergence of tense-aspect morphology in language acquisition. The dispute over this issue is well-known; it has been pursued mostly by scholars following various general linguistic approaches, from typology to acquisition, but also by historical linguists and Indo-Europeanists, who have long debated about the precedence of aspect or tense from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. However, so far Indo-Europeanists have rarely confronted their results in a successful way with recent research in other fields such as acquisition or neurolinguistics. The aim of this paper is to put forward evidence from the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system concerning the prominent role of root lexical aspect features in the emergence of grammatical marking of tense in the proto-language. More precisely, by means of a comparison between the residual archaic verbal forms of theinjunctivein Vedic Sanskrit and the corresponding augmentless preterites in Homeric Greek, it will be argued that the [±telic] lexical feature of the inherited verbal root is responsible for a non-random distribution of past tense inflected forms in an earlier verbal paradigm.

scholarly journals “Old Church Women”: An Insight into the Less Understood and Their Contribution to the Life of the Orthodox Church

Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Lavinia Țânculescu
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Spiritual Identity ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Romanian Orthodox Church ◽  
Romanian Orthodox ◽  
Insight Into

In this study, I aim to explore the role of old women in the life of the Christian Orthodox Church in the Romanian space. The analysis is based on empirical evidence (qualitative fieldwork and case studies) gathered between 2017 and 2019, and it mainly employs the framework of theory of tradition, and theories of attachment and of parent–infant relationship. I will show that old women going to church have a double role: To educate the community in keeping the religious tradition, and to initiate other members, especially the very young ones (blood-related or not), in the Romanian Orthodox faith. The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages offered by both aforementioned roles, putting forth possible explanations for the tensions arising between generations. I conclude by underlining the crucial role that old women have in today’s struggle for survival of the Romanian Orthodox Church and in its spiritual identity.

scholarly journals ‘Volunteering is like any other business’: Civic participation and social media

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 2186-2207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kaun ◽  
Julie Uldam
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Civic Participation ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Technological Affordances ◽  
Shed Light

The increased influx of refugees in 2015 has led to challenges in transition and destination countries such as Germany, Sweden and Denmark. Volunteer-led initiatives providing urgent relief played a crucial role in meeting the needs of arriving refugees. The work of the volunteers in central stations and transition shelters was mainly organised with the help of Facebook, in terms of both inward and outward communications. This article examines the role of social media for civic participation drawing on Swedish volunteer initiatives that emerged in the context of the migration crisis in 2015 as a case study. Theoretically, this article provides an analytical framework, including power relations, technological affordances, practices and discourses, which helps shed light on the interrelation between social media and civic participation.

The Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and Language

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Forensic Linguistics ◽  
Anthropological Linguistics ◽  
Sociocultural Attitudes ◽  
Legal Sanction ◽  
Taboo Words ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
Cultural Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and Language defines taboo as a proscription of behaviour for a specifiable community of one or more persons at a specifiable time in specifiable contexts. What is in fact tabooed is the use of those words and language in certain contexts; in short, the taboo applies to instances of language behaviour. For behaviour to be proscribed it must be perceived as in some way harmful to an individual or their community but the degree of harm can fall anywhere on a scale from a breach of etiquette to out-and-out fatality. All tabooed behaviours are deprecated and they lead to social if not legal sanction. Taboos are described and the reasons and beliefs behind them are investigated. Tabooed words are typically dysphemistic, think of insults and swearing; tabooed language is avoided through various kinds of euphemism. In twenty chapters, the volume offers comprehensive coverage of tabooed language as perceived by experts in general linguistics, cultural linguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, historical linguistics, linguistic philosophy, forensic linguistics, politeness research, publishing, advertising, and theology. Although the principal focus is the English language, reference is occasionally made to linguistic taboos in other languages in order to compare sociocultural attitudes. The existence of taboos and the need to manage taboo lead not only to the censoring of behaviour and the imposition of censorship but also to language change and language development.

scholarly journals Islamization, Gentrification and Domestication: ‘A Girls’ Islamic Course' and Rural Muslims in Western Uttar Pradesh

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Jeffery ◽  
Roger Jeffery ◽  
Craig Jeffrey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
North India ◽  
September 11Th ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Shed Light

Girls' education has been enduringly controversial in north India, and the disputes of the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century still echo in debates about girls' education in contemporary India. In this paper, we reflect on the education of rural Muslim girls in contemporary western Uttar Pradesh (UP), by examining an Islamic course for girls [Larkiyon kā Islālmī Course], written in Urdu and widely used in madrasahs there. First, we summarize the central themes in the Course: purifying religious practice; distancing demure, self-controlled, respectable woman from the lower orders; and the crucial role of women as competent homemakers. Having noted the conspicuous similarities between these themes and those in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century textbooks and advice manuals for girls and women, the second section examines the context in which the earlier genre emerged. Finally, we return to the present day. Particularly since September 11th 2001, madrasahs have found themselves the focus of hostile allegations that bear little or no relationship to the activities of the madrasahs that we studied. Nevertheless, madrasah education does have problematic implications. The special curricula for girls exemplifies how a particular kind of élite project has been sustained and transformed, and we aim to shed light on contemporary communal and class issues as well as on gender politics.

What can historical linguistics and experimental pragmatics offer each other?

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eitan Grossman ◽  
Ira Noveck
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Short Version ◽  
Potential Explanation ◽  
Experimental Pragmatics ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
New Research ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Way

AbstractLanguage change is a central concern for any linguistic theory. For one thing, it is often assumed that language change is explanatory, in that it provides a reasonable answer to what Haspelmath dubbed ‘Greenberg’s Problem’ in 2014: why are languages the way they are? A short version of the Greenbergian answer is: ‘Because they became that way through processes of language change.’ However, this sort of answer throws into focus the fact that language change is not only a potential explanation for language structures. Rather, it is a set of problems that itself calls for explanation. In fact, this could be called ‘Greenberg’s Second Question’: why do languages change the way they do? In this article, we explore some ways in which the field of experimental pragmatics might shed light on the second question, by providing a set of methods that could investigate existing hypotheses about language change by developing falsifiable predictions to be evaluated in experimental settings. Moreover, these hypotheses can provide new research questions and data for experimentalists to work on, beyond the rather restricted set of questions that experimental pragmatics has confronted to date.

Methodological challenges in historical linguistics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gard B. Jenset ◽  
Barbara McGillivray
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Quantitative Research Methods ◽  
The Core ◽  
Qualitative Models ◽  
General Linguistics

Chapter 1 sets out the aims of the book, and introduces the core topics of models in historical linguistics, and the role of quantitative vs. qualitative methods in historical linguistics. The importance of use of both quantitative and qualitative models simultaneously is discussed. The chapter also introduces the ‘chasm’ metaphor for the current situation in historical linguistics, where quantitative methods are still confined to a minority of researchers in the field, but a methodological ‘chasm’ seems to separate them from the majority. A meta study of current research in historical linguistics is presented to substantiate this claim. The meta study shows that, compared to the leading general linguistics journal, historical linguistics is lagging behind in adopting quantitative research methods.

scholarly journals A dual role of the ribosome-bound chaperones RAC/Ssb in maintaining the fidelity of translation termination

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (13) ◽  
pp. 7018-7034 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Sophie Gribling-Burrer ◽  
Marco Chiabudini ◽  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Zonghao Qiu ◽  
Mario Scazzari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Ribosome Biogenesis ◽  
Translation Termination ◽  
Peptidyl Transferase ◽  
Ribosome Stalling ◽  
High Affinity ◽  
Nascent Chain ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Combined Data

Abstract The yeast ribosome-associated complex RAC and the Hsp70 homolog Ssb are anchored to the ribosome and together act as chaperones for the folding and co-translational assembly of nascent polypeptides. In addition, the RAC/Ssb system plays a crucial role in maintaining the fidelity of translation termination; however, the latter function is poorly understood. Here we show that the RAC/Ssb system promotes the fidelity of translation termination via two distinct mechanisms. First, via direct contacts with the ribosome and the nascent chain, RAC/Ssb facilitates the translation of stalling-prone poly-AAG/A sequences encoding for polylysine segments. Impairment of this function leads to enhanced ribosome stalling and to premature nascent polypeptide release at AAG/A codons. Second, RAC/Ssb is required for the assembly of fully functional ribosomes. When RAC/Ssb is absent, ribosome biogenesis is hampered such that core ribosomal particles are structurally altered at the decoding and peptidyl transferase centers. As a result, ribosomes assembled in the absence of RAC/Ssb bind to the aminoglycoside paromomycin with high affinity (KD = 76.6 nM) and display impaired discrimination between stop codons and sense codons. The combined data shed light on the multiple mechanisms by which the RAC/Ssb system promotes unimpeded biogenesis of newly synthesized polypeptides.

The Place of Subjectivity

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-373
Author(s):  
Christoph Halbig
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Good For

Abstract The modern debate on the theory of prudential values is largely structured around the issue of how to accommodate the role of subjectivity: a prudentially good life (unlike, say, a morally good life) seems to be necessarily a life that is good for the person living it. The present article aims at clarifying this crucial role of subjectivity in the ontology of prudential values. It tries to show that this role, rightly understood, can be fully and satisfactorily accounted for by a strong realism in the theory of prudential value. Subjectivist intuitions that prove incompatible with such a realist framework, it is argued, can be convincingly rejected on independent grounds.

scholarly journals Modeling change in contact settings

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Katia Chirkova ◽  
Tao Gong
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
Promising Tool ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
Systematic Understanding

Abstract Convergence is an oft-used notion in contact linguistics and historical linguistics. Yet it is problematic as an explanatory account for the changes it represents. In this study, we model one specific case of convergence (Duoxu, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language with 9 remaining speakers) to contribute to a more systematic understanding of the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. The goals are (1) to address the role of some linguistic and social factors assumed to have an effect on the process of convergence, and (2) to test the following explanations of empirical observations related to phonological convergence: (a) the loss of phonological segments in a language that has undergone convergence is correlated with the relative frequency and markedness of these segments in the combined bilingual repertoire, and (b) widespread bilingualism is a prerequisite for convergence. The results of our agent-based simulation affirm the importance of frequency and markedness of phonological segments in the process of convergence. At the same time, they suggest that the explanation related to widespread bilingualism may not be valid. Our study suggests computer simulations as a promising tool for investigation of complex cases of language change in contact settings.

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