Armenian prosody in typology and diachrony

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica DeLisi

AbstractThis paper examines the relationship between typology and historical linguistics through a case study from the history of Armenian, where two different stress systems are found in the modern language. The first is a penult system with no associated secondary stress ([… σ́σ]ω). The other, the so-called hammock pattern, has primary stress on the final syllable and secondary stress on the initial syllable of the prosodic word ([σ̀ … σ́]ω). Although penult stress patterns are by far more typologically common than the hammock pattern in the world’s languages, I will argue that the hammock pattern must be reconstructed for the period of shared innovation, the Proto-Armenian period.

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 1072-1097
Author(s):  
Atina Krajewska

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between reproductive rights, democracy, and the rule of law in transitional societies. As a case study, it examines the development of abortion law in Poland. The article makes three primary claims. First, it argues that the relationship between reproductive rights and the rule of law in Poland came clearly into view through the abortion judgment K 1/20, handed down by the Constitutional Tribunal in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The judgment and the context in which it was issued and published are interpreted as reflections of deep-lying processes and problems in Polish society. Consequently, second, the article argues that analysis of the history of reproductive rights in recent decades in Poland reveals weak institutionalization of the rule of law. This is manifest in the ways in which different professional groups, especially doctors and lawyers, have addressed questions regarding abortion law. Therefore, third, the article argues that any assessment of the rule of law should take into account how powerful professional actors and organizations interact with the law. The Polish case study shows that reproductive rights should be seen as important parts of a “litmus test,” which we can use to examine the efficacy of democratic transitions and the quality of the democracies in which such transitions result.


2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul T. Roberge

As a phenomenon to be explained, convergence in historical linguistics is substantively no different than in creolistics. The general idea is that accommodation by speakers of “established” languages in contact and the formation of new language varieties both involve a process of leveling of different structures that achieve the same referential and nonreferential effects. The relatively short and well-documented history of Afrikaans presents an important case study in the competition and selection of linguistic features during intensive language contact.


Race & Class ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Val Colic-Peisker ◽  
Farida Tilbury

This article presents a case study in Australia's race relations, focusing on tensions between urban Aborigines and recently resettled African refugees, particularly among young people. Both of these groups are of low socio-economic status and are highly visible in the context of a predominantly white Australia. The relationship between them, it is argued, reflects the history of strained race relations in modern Australia and a growing antipathy to multiculturalism. Specific reasons for the tensions between the two populations are suggested, in particular, perceptions of competition for material (housing, welfare, education) and symbolic (position in a racial hierarchy) resources. Finally, it is argued that the phenomenon is deeply embedded in class and race issues, rather than simply in youth violence.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle J. Anderson

AbstractIn this article, I detail the British imperial system of human resource mobilization that recruited workers and peasants from Egypt to serve in the Egyptian Labor Corps in World War I (1914–18). By reconstructing multiple iterations of this network and analyzing the ways that workers and peasants acted within its constraints, this article provides a case study in the relationship between the Anglo-Egyptian colonial state and rural society in Egypt. Rather than seeing these as two separate, autonomous, and mutually antagonistic entities, this history of Egyptian Labor Corps recruitment demonstrates their mutual interdependence, emphasizing the dialectical relationship between state power and political subjectivity.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arne O. Mooers ◽  
Panayiotis A. Pappas

AbstractWe review and assess the different ways in which research in evolutionary-theory-inspired biology has influenced research in historical linguistics, and then focus on an evolutionary-theory inspired claim for language change made by Pagel et al. (2007). They report that the more Swadesh-list lexemes are used, the less likely they are to change across 87 Indo-European languages, and posit that frequency-of-use of a lexical item is a separate and general mechanism of language change. We test a corollary of this conclusion, namely that current frequency-of-use should predict the amount of change within individual languages through time. We devise a scale of lexical change that recognizes sound change, analogical change and lexical replacement and apply it to cognate pairs on the Swadesh list between Homeric and Modern Greek. Current frequency-of-use only weakly predicts the amount of change within the history of Greek, but amount of change does predict the number of forms across Indo-European. Given that current frequency-of-use and past frequency-of-use may be only weakly correlated for many Swadesh-list lexemes, and given previous research that shows that frequency-of-use can both hinder and facilitate lexical change, we conclude that it is premature to claim that a new mechanism of language change has been discovered. However, we call for more in-depth comparative study of general mechanisms of language change, including further tests of the frequency-of-use hypothesis.


1993 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
John Loius Lucaites ◽  
Charles A. Taylor

Prudence has long been an important topic for rhetorical theorists and its place in intellectual history is becoming increasingly well documented. This essay develops a conception of prudence as an ideological construct, a term crafted in the history of its public usages to govern the relationship between common sense and political action as enacted in the name of historically situated social actors. From this perspective, prudence represents the recursive interaction between a rhetoric of judgment and the grounds on which that rhetoric is evaluated by a historically particular community of arguers. A case study of the 1991 U.S. Senate debate regarding the authorization of offensive military action in the Persian Gulf illustrates how competing standards of prudential judgment are crafted and evaluated in discursive controversy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1.4) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Francesco Alberti ◽  
Raffaele Paloscia

The upgrading of riverfronts is a theme that has long played a central role in the renewal programs of large, medium and small cities throughout Europe. The case study presented in this paper is Florence, whose Roman origins and development, from the Middle Ages to today, are closely linked to the Arno River, which runs from east to west. After briefly reviewing some salient moments in the history of the relationship between the city and the river, the paper illustrates some research and projects carried out within the Department of Architecture of the University of Florence, focused on the role that Arno can still play in the future of the Florentine metropolitan area, as a catalyst for interventions aimed at improving urban sustainability, livability and resilience to climate change.


Author(s):  
Naomi Adelson ◽  
Samuel Mickelson ◽  
Joshua J. Kawapit

The Miiyupimatisiiun Research Data Archives Project (MRDAP) is a digitization and data transfer initiative between medical anthropologist Naomi Adelson and the Whapmagoostui First Nation (FN) in the territory of Eeyou Istchee (in northern Quebec). This report provides an overview of phase one of the MRDAP from three distinct perspectives: the researcher, the archivist, and the community. The authors discuss the history of the relationship between Adelson and the Whapmagoostui FN, the digitization process, and the work that is required to transfer the digitized materials to the community for access and safekeeping. The report also foregrounds how the project team is working to ensure that the community has full control over how the data is managed, stored, accessed, and preserved over the long term. The report provides a case study on how Indigenous data sovereignty is being negotiated in the context of one community.


JCSCORE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 40-62
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Jordan Irvine

This article is a family history that supported the relationship between slavery and generational wealth. The research documented the history of two Moffett families who were probably not related biologically—a White one who owned a Black one with the same last name. However, the two family histories revealed a larger and more complicated narrative about the origins and intractable roots of American inequality that follows the trail of my slave ancestors to one of the most well- known and wealthiest international corporations in the world—from cotton to Coca-Cola. This is the account of a set of conditions that, while assisting Whites to acquire generational wealth, prevented Black people from doing the same. The piece discusses how generational wealth is accumulated and maintained and argues that higher education alone has provided limited opportunities for Black families to acquire and maintain generational wealth. Recommendations included attention to individual and institutional racism, particularly the structural factors that White families have used to leverage their income and wealth, notably government programs, political and social contacts, access to financial resources, and privileged information about economic opportunities.


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