scholarly journals Language Complexity in Historical Perspective: The Enduring Tropes of Natural Growth and Abnormal Contact

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McElvenny
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Natural Process ◽  
Natural Growth ◽  
Language Complexity ◽  
Related Notion ◽  
Grammatical Complexity ◽  
Basic Communication

Focusing on the work of John McWhorter and, to a lesser extent, Peter Trudgill, this paper critically examines some common themes in language complexity research from the perspective of intellectual history. The present-day conception that increase in language complexity is somehow a “natural” process which is disturbed under the “abnormal” circumstances of language contact is shown to be a recapitulation of essentially Romantic ideas that go back to the beginnings of disciplinary linguistics. A similar genealogy is demonstrated for the related notion that grammatical complexity is a kind of “ornament” on language, surplus to the needs of “basic communication.” The paper closes by examining the implications of these ideas for linguistic scholarship.

Language contact and multilingualism in Iran

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shahrzad Mahootian
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
General Description ◽  
The Status ◽  
Bilingual Communities ◽  
The Relationship

Throughout its history, Iran has been a richly multilingual nation, with documented evidence reaching back nearly three millennia. Today, estimates of the number of languages spoken in modern Iran vary, with numbers ranging from fifty-four to seventy-six living languages. This chapter presents a general description of societal bilingualism, how bilingual communities come about, the relationship between language and identity in multilingual contexts, and how best to describe the kind(s) of bilingualism found in Iran, including the use of English. The chapter then turns to bilingualism in Iran from a historical perspective, with the goal of understanding why there are so many languages in present-day Iran. Finally, it addresses the status of English in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran and issues of language maintenance.

St. Thomas Aquinas in Historical Perspective: The Modern Period

1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia L. Colish
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Hundredth Anniversary ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Two Generations

Witnessing as it did the seven hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas, the year 1974 was marked by multiple conferences and publications dedicated to his life, his thought and his place in medieval intellectual history. The recently completed septicentennial also provides a useful vantage point from which to examine the current historiographical assessment of St. Thomas' influence in modern intellectual history. Aquinas scholars devoted little systematic attention to this topic in 1974, a fact which, in itself, reflects a striking and persistent imbalance within the field of Aquinas studies. It is a commonplace to state that St. Thomas enjoyed an authority in the period since the thirteenth century far exceeding any he achieved in his own day. Yet, a consideration of the historiography of Thomas' place in modern thought reveals the fact that the Angelic Doctor's substantial post-medieval reputation has not generally been matched by an equally plentiful measure of historical understanding. For two generations, historians of the Middle Ages have made great strides toward the systematic recovery of the historical Thomas Aquinas. But the task of uncovering the historical significance of his thought within the changing contexts of post-medieval culture still awaits its Grabmanns and Chenus.

Ethics of Death and Dying: Historical Perspective

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Gruman
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Death And Dying ◽  
Therapeutic Principle ◽  
The Individual

The ethical dilemmas surrounding dying and death today can be understood more adequately when placed in an historical perspective. The methodology of intellectual history is employed to examine the sequence of cultural stages from prehistory to the contemporary scene, using the concept of the death system (Kastenbaum) as an organizing formulation. It is suggested in conclusion that a modern version of the meliorist ethos can lend support to the on-going modes of biomedical research and the application of the activist therapeutic principle in medical practice. Humanity has labored and suffered too much to abandon hope at this time and either submerge the personality of the individual or turn to a nihilistic “death worship” (Borkenau).

scholarly journals ENGLISH WORD STRESS IN LONG-TERM LANGUAGE CONTACT

2021 ◽  
pp. 160-168
Author(s):  
TATIANA SHEVCHENKO ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
English Word ◽  
French Language ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
Compound Words ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Final Syllable

The paper summarizes the results of recent studies concerned with English accentual patterns dynamics in polysyllabic words, based on English and French language contact. Canadian English reflects the present-day situation of language contact. Intersection of a variety of tendencies is observed which are due to accentual assimilation in lexicon of Romance origin borrowed from French. The recessive and the rhythmical are the major ones in the historical perspective. The data collected in dictionaries are further supplied with sociocultural comments based on corpus and opinion survey cognitive analyses. The presence of rhythmical stress was discovered in British, American and Canadian Englishes with the growing tendency in compound words due to disappearing of the pattern with two equal stresses. The tendency is most vivid in bilingual speakers from the Province of Quebec who accentuate word-final syllable.

The sub-dialects of South-Western Kurzeme from a historical perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-102
Author(s):  
Liene Markus-Narvila
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The South ◽  
Characteristic Features

Abstract This article analyses sub-dialects of the South-Western Kurzeme region in Latvia. The focus is on the most prominent phonetic, morphological and lexical features of these sub-dialects, and their usage in the 21st century. The sub-dialects of South-Western Kurzeme have many characteristic features found in their phonetics and morphology. In the South-Western Kurzeme sub-dialects, there are native lexemes – words from the ancient Curonian language and also borrowed lexemes, as language contact has been an ongoing fact of life in South-Western Kurzeme. This region has been influenced by several languages – both neighbouring and more distant.

scholarly journals The Welfare of Each and Everyone in Russian Legal Theory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexey Dmitriyev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Related Notion ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Veil

The prerequisite for the study was the spread of views in the academic literature that the category of public welfare, without accounting for concretising factors, was a void abstraction, and that in Russia, public welfare was seen as the dominant principle over the individual. The main purpose of the study is to analyse the content of the term ‘the welfare of each and everyone’ in Russian legal theory. The author uses the methods of conceptual history and intellectual history to analyse the concept of ‘the welfare of each and everyone’ in the works of pre-revolutionary authors and the relationship between the concepts of ‘the welfare of each and everyone’ and ‘the common good’. The author determined that: ‘public welfare’ can be classified as fiction, purpose, method, interest and balance, depending on the context of use and semantic scope. The term ‘the welfare of each and every one’ became theoretically meaningful (as an objective, method, and interest), and was enshrined in law in Russian Empire in the XVIII -early XX centuries. The term was understood as achieving the common good, preserving the good of everyone and the reduction of public harm. Twentyfirst century Russian legal theory uses the related notion of ‘public welfare’, understood as a fiction, a goal, a method, an interest, a balance. The main findings of the study suggest that today the ‘public welfare’ is reduced to bringing benefits to anyone and everyone (D. I. Dedov), which is close to the historical understanding of ‘the welfare of each and every one’. The public welfare theory incorporates progressive elements such as the veil of ignorance, the win-win principle, and shapes institutions, resources, practices and formulates the issue of the emergence of a new generation of human rights.

Dispersal patterns shape areal typology

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-43
Author(s):  
Johanna Nichols
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Linguistic Variables ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Dispersal Patterns ◽  
Pilot Studies ◽  
Grammatical Complexity ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Different Levels

The sociolinguistics of language contact is known to effect levels of phonological and grammatical complexity of the languages involved, and linguistic features are known to have different levels of stability and different propensities of borrowing and diffusion. This chapter lays out basic taxonomies of demographic and geographical histories of areas, stability or instability or linguistic variables, and ages of areas, and raises hypotheses about correlations among them. Pilot studies of ten areas worldwide support the expected correlations.

The Beginnings of Radiocarbon Dating in American Antiquity: A Historical Perspective

1985 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Human Species ◽  
American Antiquity ◽  
Profound Influence

Few archaeologists would dispute the suggestion that the introduction of 14C dating into archaeological research has had a profound influence on the way in which prehistoric studies are conducted. Glyn Daniel, for example, has gone so far as to rank the development of the 14C method in the twentieth-century with the discovery of the antiquity of the human species in the nineteenth-century (Daniel 1967:266). Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the significant role played by the 14C method in contemporary archaeological investigations, no comprehensive, critical, historical review of the specific intellectual history and substantive characteristics of this impact, particularly in American archaeology, has been published.

scholarly journals STATUS OF THE KYPCHAK LANGUAGE IN MAMLUK EGYPT: LANGUAGE - BARRIER OR LANGUAGE - CONTACT?

World Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (8(36)) ◽  
pp. 57-61
Author(s):  
Gulnar Nadirova ◽  
Bayan Jubatova ◽  
Kunduzay Aubakirova ◽  
Nazym Konkabayeva
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Main Component ◽  
The Right

The purpose of the study is to determine the status of the Kypchak language in the political, social and intellectual history of Egypt during the period of Mamluks’ rule.To clarify the situation, we have made an overview of the few primary and secondary sources that deal with the functioning of the Turks’ language and the analysis of its role and place in the Egyptian medieval society from the historical, religious and cultural positions. Metaphorically, the Kypchak language was the barrier language separating the social group of former slaves from the local population of Egypt and providing the right to a special position, up to the possibility of occupying the highest office of power. It also helped not to dissolve in a much larger society of Egyptians and to maintain the identity, the main component of which it was. However, the dominance of the military caste of the Mamluks did not engender language conflicts in medieval Egypt. Despite the cultural differences between the social groups - the Turkic military elite and the bulk of the Egyptian population, the devaluation of local dialects and languages has not occurred. Moreover, the Mamluk rulers have even strengthened the status of the Classical Arabic by their strong support of the material and spiritual Islamic culture and infrastructure. However, the Kypchak language did not lose its positions remaining the language of communication not only of the Turks but also of the Türkicized Caucasian and Mongolian ethnic groups.We believe that the study of the language of the medieval Turkic world can be more productive if we include an interdisciplinary approach to the methodology of its study and not only Eastern but European sources as well.

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