scholarly journals Dụ̈ysenȧlị Ȧbdịlȧšịm. Eskị Ḳazaḳ ǰazba tịlị [The Old Kazakh written language]

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-76
Author(s):  
Uldanay Jumabay ◽  
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Linguistic Description ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
And Function ◽  
Nominal Morphology

The paper presents a review of Düysen ̣ ȧlị Ȧbdịlȧšịm’s monograph “The Old Kazakh Written Language” (“Eskị Ḳazaḳ J̌ azba Tịlị”), which is written in Kazakh and published in Beijing in 2014. The monograph is a linguistic description of the documents of the Kazakh Khanates written in the period from the first half of the 18th century until the early 19th century. The Old Kazakh documents were mostly written by Kazakh Khans and Sultans and sent to Chinese emperors of the Qing dynasty and to officials in charge of the border. Currently all the documents are preserved in the First Historical Archives of China in Beijing. The monograph is designed as a manual for university students studying Kazakh philology. The significance of the book lies in its being the first and only book providing a comprehensive linguistic description of the Old Kazakh historical documents. The monograph is divided into three chapters. The phonetics and writing system of the Old Kazakh documents are studied in the first chapter. Chapter 2 investigates the nominal morphology, in which five word classes: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, and function words have been discussed. The last chapter presents lexical terms for temporal units. The review provides a short description of all chapters and points out that the usage of the term “Turki” is more appropriate for defining the language of the presented documents than the term “Old Kazakh Written Language”, since it manifests prevalence of non-Kazakh features.

scholarly journals The company that words keep: comparing the statistical structure of child- versus adult-directed language

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 586-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS HILLS
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Statistical Structure ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Contextual Diversity ◽  
Associative Structure ◽  
Word Acquisition ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Language Statistics ◽  
And Function

ABSTRACTDoes child-directed language differ from adult-directed language in ways that might facilitate word learning? Associative structure (the probability that a word appears with its free associates), contextual diversity, word repetitions and frequency were compared longitudinally across six language corpora, with four corpora of language directed at children aged 1 ; 0 to 5 ; 0, and two adult-directed corpora representing spoken and written language. Statistics were adjusted relative to shuffled corpora. Child-directed language was found to be more associative, repetitive and consistent than adult-directed language. Moreover, these statistical properties of child-directed language better predicted word acquisition than the same statistics in adult-directed language. Word frequency and repetitions were the best predictors within word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives and function words). For all word classes combined, associative structure, contextual diversity and word repetitions best predicted language acquisition. These results support the hypothesis that child-directed language is structured in ways that facilitate language acquisition.

Affixes and function words in the written language of deaf children

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Traute Taeschner ◽  
Antonella Devescovi ◽  
Virginia Volterra
Keyword(s):  
Written Language ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Deaf Students ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Grammatical Aspect ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
And Function ◽  
Age Range

ABSTRACTThe goal of this article is to investigate whether the acquisition of some morpho-syntactic aspects in Italian deaf adolescents is simply delayed with respect to hearing children, or whether it follows significantly different developmental patterns. Twenty-five deaf students (age range: 11–15 years) and a group of 125 hearing controls (age range: 6–16 years) performed four tests, administered in written form, relative to different grammatical aspects: plurals, articles, and clitic pronouns. Results showed three different patterns of development depending on the grammatical aspect considered. Deaf children compared to hearing controls showed normal development in the pluralization task, delayed development in the pronoun task, and a qualitatively different pattern in the article task.

scholarly journals Speech Production of Trilingual Children: A Study on Their Transfers in Terms of Content and Function Words and the Effect of Their L1

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Fotini Anastassiou ◽  
Georgia Andreou
Keyword(s):  
Transfer Function ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Picture Story ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
And Function ◽  
L1 And L2

The present study investigated the speech production of trilingual children whose L1 was either Greek or Albanian and their L3 was English. Since this specific combination of languages has not been widely studied in current literature this study can contribute to our knowledge and the teaching of these children. Moreover, research into transfers from content and function words could help us comprehend the different roles word classes have in trilingual speakers since Paradis (2009) has suggested that the tendency to transfer function words from L2, rather than from L1, into L3 supports the idea that content words and function words have the same status in an L2 but not in L1. Also, although content words are often transferred from both L1 and L2 into L3, studies have indicated that function words are mainly transferred from the L2 and not from the L1 (Ringbom, 1987; Sjögren, 2000; Stedje, 1977). The aim of this study was to find out the source language of our participants’ transfers, whether there would be any influence of our speakers’ L1 or L2 on Content and Function words, as well as whether cross-linguistic influence had any effect on Content and Function words, following Cenoz (2001).The participants of our study were asked to narrate a picture story in their third language and the main source of their transfers was surveyed. Also, the ratio of Content to Function words and the effect of the children’s L1 was investigated since former research showed function words are mainly transferred from the L2 and not from the L1. The results of this study showed that the main source of transfer was Greek (whether as an L1 or an L2) and that the children’s transfers were mainly from content words. Finally, the ratio of Greek content/ function words was found to be greater for those children whose L1 is Greek compared to the children whose L1 is Albanian.

Word Identification: Imageability, Semantics, and the Content-Functor Distinction

1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 789-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Davelaar ◽  
Derek Besner
Keyword(s):  
Word Processing ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Function Word ◽  
Word Class ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Sensory Impression ◽  
And Function ◽  
Processing Differences ◽  
Processing Mechanisms

It has often been suggested that different special-purpose mechanisms underlie the processing of content words and function words. The received view is that processing differences in various tasks arise because of differences between these word classes in terms of their semantic/syntactic function, despite the fact that these tasks often involve word processing in the absence of any sentence context. It is also well known that the ease with which a word arouses a sensory impression is often a good predictor of word-processing performance, yet the literature largely ignores the fact that, typically, imageability and word class are confounded factors. A series of three experiments shows that in the context of a Stroop task, the typical content-function word difference can be obtained, but that this word class difference disappears completely when the items are matched on the dimension of imageability. It is suggested that the processing of decontextualized content and function words does not necessarily engage distinct special purpose processing mechanisms. Implications for understanding previously published work on word class effects in other paradigms are briefly noted.

Morphology in Quechuan Languages

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem F. H. Adelaar
Keyword(s):  
Central Place ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
Verbal Morphology ◽  
Verbal Inflection ◽  
Personal Reference ◽  
Genealogical Relationship ◽  
Word Classes ◽  
Case Markers ◽  
And Function ◽  
Nominal Morphology

Quechuan is a family of closely related indigenous languages spoken in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, in the central part of the Andean cordilleras, in what used to be the Empire of the Incas and adjacent areas. It is divided into two main branches, commonly denominated Quechua I and II, and comprises 15 or more spoken varieties and several extinct ones that can be considered separate languages, although an exact number cannot easily be established. Quechuan shares a long and intense contact history with the neighboring Aymaran languages, but a genealogical relationship between the two families has never been demonstrated, nor a relationship with any other language family in the area. Quechuan languages are mainly agglutinative. All grammatical categories are indicated by suffixes with very few exceptions. The order in which these suffixes occur within a word form is governed by rules and combinatory restrictions that can be rigid but not always explicable on a basis of scope and function. Portmanteau suffixes play a role in verbal inflection and in mutually interrelated domains of aspect and number in the Quechua I branch. In Quechuan verbal derivation affixes may be semantically polyvalent, depending on the combinations in which they occur, pragmatic considerations, the nature of the root to which they are attached, their position in the affix order, and so on. Verbal derivational affixes often combine with specific verbal roots to denote meanings that are not fully predictable on the basis of the meaning of the components. Other verbal affixes never occur in such combinations. Verbal morphology and nominal morphology tend to overlap in the domain of personal reference, where subject and possessor markers are largely similar. Otherwise, the two morphological domains are almost completely separate. Not only the morphological inventories but also the formal constraints underlying the structure of verbs and nouns differ. Nominal expressions feature an elaborate but relatively instable system of case markers, some of which appear to be of recent formation. Transposition from one class to another, nominalization in particular, is indicated morphologically and occupies a central place in Quechuan grammar, particularly in interaction with case. Finally, there is a class of Independent suffixes that can be attached to members of all word classes, including adverbial elements that cannot be classified as verbs or nominals. These suffixes play a role at the organizational level of larger syntactic units, such as clauses, nominal phrases, and sentences.

A Guide to Old Spanish

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven N. Dworkin
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Standard Language ◽  
Function Words ◽  
Sound System ◽  
Old Spanish ◽  
And Function ◽  
Linguistic Structures ◽  
Verb Tense ◽  
Modern Standard

This book describes the linguistic structures that constitute Medieval or Old Spanish as preserved in texts written prior to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It emphasizes those structures that contrast with the modern standard language. Chapter 1 presents methodological issues raised by the study of a language preserved only in written sources. Chapter 2 examines questions involved in reconstructing the sound system of Old Spanish before discussing relevant phonetic and phonological details. The chapter ends with an overview of Old Spanish spelling practices. Chapter 3 presents in some detail the nominal, verbal, and pronominal morphology of the language, with attention to regional variants. Chapter 4 describes selected syntactic structures, with emphasis on the noun phrase, verb phrase, object pronoun placement, subject-verb-object word order, verb tense, aspect, and mood. Chapter 5 begins with an extensive list of Old Spanish nouns, adjectives, verbs, and function words that have not survived into the modern standard language. It then presents examples of coexisting variants (doublets) and changes of meaning, and finishes with an overview of the creation of neologisms in the medieval language through derivational morphology (prefixation, suffixation, compounding). The book concludes with an anthology composed of three extracts from Spanish prose texts, one each from the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The extracts contain footnotes that highlight relevant morphological, syntactic, and lexical features, with cross references to the relevant sections in the body of the book.

"Itzt kommen die Soldaten"

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilman Venzl
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Military History ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Military ◽  
First Time

In the 18th century, as many as 300 German-language plays were produced with the military and its contact and friction with civil society serving as focus of the dramatic events. The immense public interest these plays attracted feeds not least on the fundamental social structural change that was brought about by the establishment of standing armies. In his historico-cultural literary study, Tilman Venzl shows how these military dramas literarily depict complex social processes and discuss the new problems in an affirmative or critical manner. For the first time, the findings of the New Military History are comprehensively included in the literary history of the 18th century. Thus, the example of selected military dramas – including Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm and Lenz's Die Soldaten – reveals the entire range of variety characterizing the history of both form and function of the subject.

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