Tracing the origins of a set of discourse particles

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan K. Lindström ◽  
Camilla Wide
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Discourse Particles ◽  
Functional Differences ◽  
Old Swedish ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Large Corpus ◽  
Historical Origins

This paper investigates the historical origins, both syntactic and functional, of a set of discourse particles commonly used in present-day spoken Swedish: hör du ‘(you) listen’, vet du ‘you know’, ser du ‘you see’, and förstår du ‘you understand’. From a synchronic perspective, the particles seem to be a morpho-syntactically unified phenomenon, and have been treated as such in earlier linguistic works. However, there is no diachronic account of these particles. This paper presents a number of hypotheses concerning the syntactic and functional sources of the discourse particles; we also evaluate the hypotheses against the background of historical linguistic data collected from Old Swedish, Middle Swedish, and Modern Swedish sources. The Modern Swedish period is covered by a large corpus of plays from the 1700s to the late 1900s. Comparisons are also made to Old and Modern Icelandic data. The historical data show that the particle hör du is of imperative, functionally directive origin, while the rest of the particles include a verb in present tense indicative, thus presumably originating from minimal clauses with a declarative or an interrogative function. Hence, historical formal and functional differences are hidden behind the apparent uniform present-day forms and functions of the discourse particles.

scholarly journals Le Peuplement des Grassfields: Recherches Archeologiquesdans L’ouest du Cameroun

Afrika Focus ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Philippe Lavachery
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
The West ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Rock Shelter ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Late Stone Age ◽  
Metal Age

The Settlement of the Grassfields: Archeological Research in the West of Cameroon Until recently the Grassfields (Western Cameroon), cradle of the Bantu languages, were an unknown zone from an archaeological point of view. The excavations of Shum Laka rock shelter offer the first chrono-cultural sequence for the area. After 20 millenniums of microlithic (Late Stone Age) traditions of hunter-gatherers, a new culture with macrolithic tools, pottery and arboriculture (Stone to Metal Age) slowly developed from 6000 BC onwards. Correlation with palaeo-climatic and historical linguistic data suggests that proto-Benue-Congo and, later, proto-Bantu speakers could have been involved in these industries.

Amalgamating Knowledge, Translating Empire

2020 ◽  
pp. 229-258
Author(s):  
Allison Margaret Bigelow
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Technology Transfer ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
New Method ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Central Mexico ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Silver Mining ◽  
The Rich

This chapter introduces the final section of the book, silver, by outlining the development of silver mining and refining in colonial Mexico and Perú. It pays special attention to the sixteenth-century technology transfer of amalgamation methods from central Mexico to Alto Perú, especially the rich deposits of the Cerro Rico of Potosí. By combining historical linguistic data and case studies of the translation and mistranslation of key technical terms used in seventeenth-century Andean metallurgy, as written in colonial sources that denied the sophistication of Indigenous science and technology, this chapter proposes a new method to document Indigenous knowledge production.

A Matter of Metals: Finno-Ugric and Northern Iranian

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-215
Author(s):  
Paolo Ognibene
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
First Century ◽  
Northern Caucasus ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Way

Vsevolod Miller in the third part of his Ossetic Studies considered the names of the metals both in Iron and Digoron, with particular reference to those of Finno-Ugric origin, in order to determine the way followed by the Alans to reach the Northern Caucasus in the first century A.D. In this paper Miller's theory is examined in the light of the historical linguistic data currently available.

Sociolinguistic-ethnohistorical observations on Maritime Polynesian Pidgin in Herman Melville’s two major semi-autobiographical novels of the Pacific

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel J. Drechsel
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Structural Consistency ◽  
Critical Interpretation ◽  
Source Of Information

Notwithstanding limited micro-sociolinguistic information on who spoke what, how, when, where, and in what other relevant circumstances, Melville’s two major semi-autobiographical novels of the Pacific, Typee and Omoo, invite an analysis in terms of an ethnohistory of speaking, i.e. the restoration of historical linguistic attestations by triangulation with comparative evidence following philological principles and the critical interpretation of extralinguistic, sociohistorical factors by ethnological criteria. In spite of their Anglophone spellings, Melville’s attestations of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin are reconstitutable by comparative evidence from Polynesian source languages, especially Hawaiian, Marquesan, and Tahitian. These recordings deserve recognition for their accuracy on grounds of their overall structural consistency with independent historical data. While the novelist did not explain how he had obtained these recordings, linguistic contrasts suggest that Hawaiian served as a prime (although not exclusive) source of information in full or pidginized form.

A Pipeline for Computational Historical Linguistics

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Steiner ◽  
Michael Cysouw ◽  
Peter Stadler
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
South America ◽  
Molecular Phylogenetics ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Lexical Data

AbstractThere are many parallels between historical linguistics and molecular phylogenetics. In this paper we describe an algorithmic pipeline that mimics, as closely as possible, the traditional workflow of language reconstruction known as the comparative method. The pipeline consists of suitably modified algorithms based on recent research in bioinformatics, which are adapted to the specifics of linguistic data. This approach can alleviate much of the laborious research needed to establish proof of historical relationships between languages. Equally important to our proposal is that each step in the workflow of the comparative method is implemented independently, so language specialists have the possibility to scrutinize intermediate results. We have used our pipeline to investigate two groups of languages, the Tsezic languages of the Caucasus and the Mataco-Guaicuruan languages of South America, based on the lexical data from the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS). The results of these tests show that the current approach is a viable and useful extension to historical linguistic research.

Romanization and Latinization of the Roman Empire in the light of data in the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Béla Adamik
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
Positive Outcomes ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Gallia Narbonensis ◽  
Level Analysis ◽  
Over Time

Abstract The present study demonstrates that the process of linguistic Romanization, i.e. Latinization of the Roman Empire, is traceable by the data of the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age (LLDB). A multi-level analysis of linguistic and non-linguistic data in the LLDB has shown that Latinization, i.e. the spread of spoken or vulgar Latin, became more and more intensive over time in all concerned provinces (i.e. Lusitania, Gallia Narbonensis, Venetia et Histria, Dalmatia, Moesia, Pannonia, and Britannia), although to a varying degree in each. What is more, in many aspects of the investigation, it was possible to find differences between the selected provinces of the Roman Empire corresponding mostly to the future Romance (both negative and positive) outcomes of the respective areas. All in all, the analysis of data of the LLDB database can contribute to solving the complex problem of Latinization, and is a lot more appropriate for this purpose than a simple comparative analysis of epigraphic corpora of the selected provinces.

scholarly journals SuperTCM: A biocultural database combining biological pathways and historical linguistic data of Chinese Materia Medica for drug development

2021 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 112315
Author(s):  
Qiaofeng Chen ◽  
Lena Springer ◽  
Björn Oliver Gohlke ◽  
Andrean Goede ◽  
Mathias Dunkel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Drug Development ◽  
Biological Pathways ◽  
Chinese Materia Medica ◽  
Materia Medica ◽  
Linguistic Data

scholarly journals The aggregate and the individual: thoughts on what non-alternating authors reveal about linguistic alternations – a response to Petré

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-262
Author(s):  
LAUREN FONTEYN
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistic ◽  
Aggregate Data ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
The Individual

In one way or another, historical linguists have always been aware of the limitations inherent to working with linguistic data from bygone ages. One of the most substantial limitations, as Petré points out, is that all speakers of a historical variant of a language are unavailable for psycholinguistic study, essentially leaving researchers with their written records as the sole data source. As such, historical linguists often find themselves taking the role of corpus linguists, trying to understand the workings of a language ‘by studying aggregate data that pools the productions of many speakers and writers – often across different media, genres, registers, and even across different time periods’ (Arppeet al.2010: 3). As Petré points out, the practice of studying language on this aggregate level has dominated the methodologies in historical linguistic studies, and very little attention is paid to the individual level.

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