Typological Approaches and Dialects

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Dabir-Moghaddam
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Morphological Type ◽  
Order Parameters ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Old Persian ◽  
Middle Persian

Modern Persian reveals interesting typological properties. In terms of word order parameters, it has grammaticalized a number of OV-type and a number of VO-type parameters. As this mixed typological behaviour can be attested in Old Persian and Middle Persian, the implications of this observation for typology, formal linguistics, and theories of language change are worth pursuing. The agreement system of Modern Persian is Nominative-Accusative. However, the majority of Modern Iranian languages are split in this respect. Morphologically, Modern Persian is analytic. This morphological type can be observed in Middle Persian as well. This two-millennium-old typological property gives Persian a distinct place within the Indo-European languages. As Persian is spoken in a widespread geographical area, there are many Persian dialects currently in use. A number of grammatical features of Tajik Persian, Afghan (Dari) Persian, Isfahani Persian, and Gha’eni Persian are briefly mentioned.

scholarly journals Explorative Journey Through Hadith Collections

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Orhan Elmaz
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Comparative Linguistics ◽  
Concrete Objects ◽  
Middle Persian ◽  
Southern Arabia ◽  
Early Islamic

The article offers insight into a fresh way to utilise hadith collections beyond criticising their material in terms of their authenticity or discussing their implications for Islamic law. It builds on a digital corpus of collections to represent the wealth of canonical Sunni, Shia and Ibadite traditions. In this first exploration of this corpus, the interconnectedness of early Islamic Arabia with other parts of world is highlighted through an analysis of travelling words, proper names, and concrete objects in a few case studies organised into five sections by geographical area. These include translation, a Wanderwort, and contact through commerce and trade. The methods applied to analyse the material are those of historical and comparative linguistics. The results indicate that exploring linguistic aspects of hadith collections—notwithstanding editorial revision and their canonisation—can inform studies of language change in Arabic and set the course to research the standardisation of Arabic. Key words:      Hadith Studies, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, Middle Persian, Southern Arabia, Late Antiquity

Isoglosses and language change: Evidence of the rise and loss of isoglosses from a comparison of early Greek and early English

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-575
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Lavidas
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Considerable Distance ◽  
Causative Constructions ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
Early English ◽  
Aspectual Verbs

Abstract We analyze the rise and loss of isoglosses in two Indo-European languages, early Greek and early English, which, however, show considerable distance between their structures in many other domains. We follow Keidan’s approach (2013), that has drawn the attention on the fact that the study of isoglosses (i.e., linguistic features common to two or more languages) is connected with common innovations of particular languages after the split into sub-groups of Indo-European: this type of approach aims at collecting isoglosses that appear across the branches of Indo-European. We examine the rise of the isogloss of labile verbs and the loss of the isogloss of the two classes of aspectual verbs in early Greek and early English. Our study shows that the rise of labile verbs in both languages is related to the innovative use of intransitives in causative constructions. On the other hand, the innovations in voice morphology follow different directions in Greek and English and are unrelated to the rise of labile verbs. In contrast to labile verbs, which are still predominant for causative-anticausative constructions in both languages, the two classes of aspectual verbs are lost in the later stages of Greek but are predominant even in Present-day English. Again, a “prerequisite” change for the isogloss can be easily located in a structural ambiguity that is relevant for aspectual verbs in early Greek and early English. However, another independent development, the changes in verbal complementation (the development of infinitival and participial complements) in Greek and English, determined the loss of this isogloss.

scholarly journals The Evolution of Ergativity in Iranian Languages

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yadgar KARIMI
Keyword(s):  
Past Participle ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Bottom Line ◽  
Transitive Verb ◽  
Old Persian ◽  
Middle Persian

This paper presents an attempt to investigate the origins of ergativity in Iranian languages, drawing upon diachronic and synchronic analyses. In so doing, I will trace the development of the ergative structure back to Old and Middle Persian where, it is argued, the roots of ergativity lie. I will specifically show that the ergative pattern as currently obtained in the grammatical structure of some Iranian languages has evolved from a periphrastic past participle construction, the analogue of which is attested in Old Persian. It will further be argued that the predecessor past participle construction imparted a resultative construal in Old Persian and, subsequently, in the transition to Middle Persian, has assumed a simple past reading. The bottom-line of the analysis will be represented as a proposal regarding the nature of the ergative verb, to the effect that an ergative verb, as opposed to a regular (non-ergative) transitive verb, is semantically transitive, but syntactically intransitive.

scholarly journals Word-Order Issues in English-to-Urdu Statistical Machine Translation

2011 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bushra Jawaid ◽  
Daniel Zeman
Keyword(s):  
Machine Translation ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Statistical Machine Translation ◽  
Parse Tree ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
English Sentence ◽  
European Languages

Word-Order Issues in English-to-Urdu Statistical Machine Translation We investigate phrase-based statistical machine translation between English and Urdu, two Indo-European languages that differ significantly in their word-order preferences. Reordering of words and phrases is thus a necessary part of the translation process. While local reordering is modeled nicely by phrase-based systems, long-distance reordering is known to be a hard problem. We perform experiments using the Moses SMT system and discuss reordering models available in Moses. We then present our novel, Urdu-aware, yet generalizable approach based on reordering phrases in syntactic parse tree of the source English sentence. Our technique significantly improves quality of English-Urdu translation with Moses, both in terms of BLEU score and of subjective human judgments.

Satzspaltung im Avestischen und Altpersischen (mit einem Ausblick auf das Mittelpersische)

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-137
Author(s):  
Paul Widmer
Keyword(s):  
Functional Properties ◽  
Principal Function ◽  
Old Persian ◽  
Middle Persian

AbstractThis paper investigates the formal and functional properties of cleft sentences in Avestan and Old Persian, a construction whose existence has not been recognised in these languages hitherto. In Avestan, cleft sentences mainly function as focussing device, whereas in Old Persian, their principal function consists in the structuring of information on a text level. It is, furthermore, pointed to the fact that the usage of cleft sentences increases considerably in Middle Persian where this construction developed a much wider range of formal and functional properties as compared to the older stages of Iranian.

Modality and Mood in Standard Average European

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniël Van Olmen ◽  
Johan Van Der Auwera
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
European Languages

The chapter discusses the research on the features of the mood and modality systems of European languages that stand a chance of being due to some measure of the areal convergence captured with the term “Standard Average European.” These features are: (i) the compositional nature of the prohibitive, (ii) the number of non-indicative non-imperative moods, (iii) the relation between canonical and non-canonical imperatives, (iv) the use of word order for the interrogative, the (v) multifunctionality, (vi) verbiness, and (vii) grammaticalization of modal markers. While all of these characterize European languages, only features (i), (v), (vi), and (vii) are potential Standard Average European features.

Historical Linguistics

Anthropology ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Tavárez
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
European Languages ◽  
The Impact

Historical linguistics is a discipline with strong interdisciplinary connections to sociocultural anthropology, ethnohistory, and archaeology. While the study of language change and etymology can be traced back to ancient societies in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Asia, a number of important methodological approaches emerged in the late 18th century, when European scholars who were engaged in colonial administration set the foundations for research in Indo-European languages. Contemporary historical linguistics has maintained a focus on several large-scale questions, such as the origins of the language faculty; the classification and typology of the world’s languages; the time depth of major language changes; ancient writing systems; the impact of linguistic and cultural contacts on language change; the emergence of pidgins and creoles; the influence of colonial expansion and evangelization projects on language change; and the interface among literacy practices, language change, and the social order. This article outlines all of these important inquiries, with a particular stress on the sustained interaction among historical linguistics, anthropology, and ethnohistory. This survey has two focii: the first one is languages of the Americas, and the second one is ethnohistorical and philological methodology. This choice in focus conveys existing historical strengths and showcases our current knowledge about language contact and language change in the Americas.

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