On the elasticity of centres and the possibility of multiple roofs: revisiting some of Ulrich Ammon’s views on language variation and pluricentricity

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-27
Author(s):  
Jeroen Darquennes
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Contact Zones ◽  
Concise Overview ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Critical Account

Abstract Against the background of a concise overview of Ulrich Ammon’s oeuvre this article first of all provides a constructive-critical account of some of the key concepts and questions that guided his macrosociolinguistic work on pluricentric languages and variation in German. In what follows, an attempt is made to further develop some of Ammon’s thoughts through emphasising the elasticity of the concept of pluricentricity and arguing for a creative use of the concept of “roofing” when describing the intricate interplay of standard and nonstandard varieties especially in language contact zones.

Hypersubjectivity

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kira Hall
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Linguistic Capital ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Linguistic Practice ◽  
Contact Zones ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
Temporal And Spatial

This commentary responds to papers in a special issue on “Anxiety, Insecurity, and Border Crossing: Language Contact in a Globalizing World.” The discussion considers how anxiety emerges as transnational subjects seek semiotic stability in the global economy’s shifting terrain of indexical relations. Although contact zones informed by neoliberalism valorize linguistic flexibility, they also hierarchize certain kinds of communicative competence as more flexible than others. When linguistic practice is divorced from its temporal and spatial roots, it is readily essentialized as indexical of particular kinds of personhood, only some of which are viewed as appropriately global. The ambiguity of what counts as linguistic capital in the global economy leads speakers to defend their behaviors through appeals to authenticity, often confirming the very ideology that positions them as linguistically inflexible.

Outsourcing Issues in Web Development

2010 ◽  
pp. 217-238
Author(s):  
Clif Kussmaul ◽  
Roger Jack
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Future Trends ◽  
Web Development ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Upper Management ◽  
Strategic Issues ◽  
Concise Overview ◽  
Development Teams ◽  
Key Concepts

This chapter addresses issues, alternatives, and best practices that apply when outsourcing Web development. The chapter’s primary objective is to provide a concise overview of key concepts and best practices for practitioners and students, as well as other audiences. First, we introduce and motivate the chapter, provide background, and present three key ideas that are expanded and developed in the two subsequent sections. The first describes four steps to help executives and upper management address strategic issues and decisions in outsourcing. The second describes four more steps to help managers, team leaders, and development teams address more tactical issues. We conclude with future trends and implications, and a summary of the best practices.

From Language Contact to Language Variation

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Cerruti
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Italian Region ◽  
The North ◽  
North Western ◽  
Insight Into

This paper falls within the line of research dealing with the role of intralinguistic variation in contact-induced language change. Two constructions are compared in terms of their respective degrees of grammaticalization: the progressive periphrasis ese lì c/a+Verb, which is widespread in some Northern Italo-Romance dialects, and the corresponding Italian construction essere lì che/a+Verb. The study focuses on the presence of such constructions in Turin, the capital of the north-western Italian region of Piedmont, in which the former periphrasis is less grammaticalized than the latter. It contends that the grammaticalization process of essere lì che/a+Verb was triggered by the contact between Piedmontese dialect and Italian, whereas the pace of grammaticalization of this periphrasis is affected by the contact between different varieties of Italian. The paper points out that the case study may provide insight into more general issues concerning not only the interplay of contact and variation in language change but also the role of sociolinguistic factors in shaping contact-induced grammaticalization phenomena.

scholarly journals Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Christel Annemieke Romein
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Research Question ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Concise Overview ◽  
Key Concepts

AbstractIn this general introduction to the book, I discuss the key-concepts of my research on the use of fatherland-terminology. First, I introduce the problems that the current historiography on state-building poses, discuss the research question and clarify its essential parts. Second, I give a concise overview of the state-of-the-art in research on terminology and key-concepts. Third, I discuss the methodological framework and provide more information on the primary sources.

Prototyping in Web Development

2011 ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
Clif Kussmaul ◽  
Roger Jack
Keyword(s):  
User Interface ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Software Development ◽  
Graphical User Interface ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Future Trends ◽  
Web Development ◽  
Concise Overview ◽  
Key Concepts

This chapter addresses issues, alternatives, and best practices for prototyping in Web development. The chapter’s primary objective is to provide a clear and concise overview of key concepts and best practices for practitioners and students, as well as other audiences. The chapter focuses on graphical user interface (UI) prototyping for Web development, but many of the principles apply to non-UI prototyping and other sorts of software development. First, we introduce and motivate the chapter, and review the major objectives, benefits and risks, and classifications of prototypes. Second, we describe the major approaches to prototyping. Finally, we conclude with future trends and a summary of best practices.

Variation

2020 ◽  
pp. 304-309
Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Structural Variation ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
And Diffusion

This chapter discusses how the Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model explains language variation. It sifts the various contributions of the components of the model for elements that are conducive to onomasiological and semasiological structural variation, to situational, social, and regional variation, and to individual differences. Not only the conventionalization processes of usualization and diffusion, but also the entrenchment process of routinization make a strong contribution to the emergence and change of variation on all levels. Numerous forces promote variation, e.g. economy, extravagance, solidarity, prestige, mobility, and language contact. The dynamic, changeable nature of variation is emphasized and the various sources of this malleability are identified. It is also highlighted that the existence of individual differences is one of the central predictions of the EC-Model.

UNDERSTANDING LANGUAGE CHANGE.April M. S. McMahon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xi + 361. $17.95 cloth, $14.36 paper.

1997 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 412-412
Author(s):  
Robert Bayley
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Language Attrition ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Contact Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Linguistic Evolution

This book, based on an undergraduate course at Cambridge University, provides a comprehensive introduction to language change. Chapter 1 sets forth the history of the study of language change and the basic questions in the field. The remainder of the book is divided into two parts. Chapters 2–7 examine internally motivated change at the phonological, syntactic, semantic, and lexical levels. Within each chapter, the author outlines important theoretical positions, from the Neogrammarians to the generative work of Lightfoot and more recent studies of grammaticalization. Although, as McMahon notes, the separation of types of language change by levels involves considerable idealization, the result is greater clarity of organization. The second part (Chapters 8–12), which is concerned with language contact, language variation, pidgins and creoles, language attrition and death, and linguistic evolution, is organized topically. It is this section that is perhaps of most interest to students of SLA. As in the first section, McMahon reviews the perspectives on language change that emerge from a wide variety of classic studies, including Bickerton's work on Guyanese Creole and Dorian's studies of East Sutherland Gaelic. Although specialists might be disappointed to see their favorite studies missing, the examples provide an effective introduction for the intended audience of undergraduates.

De Sociolinguïstiek in Het Nederlandse Taalgebied Anno 1999

1999 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Erica Huls ◽  
Guust Meijers ◽  
Hans van de Velde
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Classification Scheme ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Language Minorities ◽  
Thematic Unity

This article provides an overview of the Third Sociolinguistics Conference, which was held in Lunteren (The Netherlands) on 8 and 9 March 1999. In particular, attention is focussed on the topics and theories that turned out to play ah important role at this conference. The article begins with a comparison between the contents of the First and Second Sociolinguistics Conferences (1991; 1995) and those of the third conference (1999). The papers presented are classified according to the topics they dealt with. The categories adopted in this overview are those used on earlier occasions by Muysken (1984) to assess developments in sociolinguistic research and by Van Hout, Huls & Verhallen (1992) and Cucchiarini & Huls (1995) in their presentation of the First and Second Sociolinguistics Conferences. Since any classification scheme is likely to be somewhat arbitrary, the same categorisation as in the above-mentioned three papers was used for the sake of comparability. When analysing the content of all the papers presented at the third conference, it appears that four main topics can be distinguished. Two of them are the same as four years ago: 'multilingualism and language contact' and 'pragmatics, interaction and conversation analysis'. Two of them are new: language acquisition and socialisation' and language variation and language change'. The growing interest in the process of language acquisition by members of language minorities in the Netherlands and Flanders, appears to be structural. In 1999, almost half of the contributions are related to this subject. More so than four years ago, the research presented at the conference is embedded in theories or conceptual frameworks. However, they are so diverse that they do not lead to thematic unity. We may perhaps conclude that it is this diversification that gives sociolinguistics its force and vitality

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