Ancient Afghanistan and its invaders: Linguistic evidence from the Bactrian documents and inscriptions

2003 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
The Many

During the last ten years the corpus of Bactrian texts has increased dramatically. The dates of the Bactrian documents range from 342 to 781 a.d., a span of more than four centuries extending through the Kushano-Sasanian, Kidarite, Hephthalite, and Turkish periods, well into Islamic times. Apart from a few unidentifiable fragments and texts of uncertain type, the new Bactrian documents may be divided into four groups: (i) legal documents such as contracts and receipts; (ii) lists and accounts; (iii) letters; and (iv) Buddhist texts. As a result of these new finds, the corpus of Bactrian available for study is now much larger-perhaps as much as a hundred times larger—than it was ten years ago. Our knowledge of the Bactrian lexicon has increased correspondingly, perhaps by three or four times. This chapter examines this enlarged Bactrian vocabulary for linguistic data in the form of names and titles, loanwords and calques, in which one may hope to identify traces of the languages of the many peoples who held sway in Bactria during the course of its long and turbulent history.

scholarly journals Cross-Linguistic Evidence and the Licensing of Implicit Arguments

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gergely Pethő ◽  
Eva Kardos
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Implicit Argument ◽  
Implicit Arguments

This paper discusses the occurrence and the licensing of implicit object arguments, also referred to in the literature as null complements or understood arguments. Functionalist accounts (such as those by Groefsema and Németh T. which are couched in a relevance-theoretic framework) have repeatedly claimed that this phenomenon is fundamentally dependent on dis\-course-interpretational factors. In particular, it has been stated that implicit arguments can be used in Hungarian in a rather unrestricted way, and their occurrence is only limited by considerations of interpretability. We argue against both of these positions and try to show that cross-linguistic data can assist in revealing the circular nature and ultimate inadequacy of existing functional accounts of implicit argument licensing.

Linguistic Evidence for the Influence of the kanuri on the Hausa

1960 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph H. Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Linguistic Classification ◽  
Historical Contribution

The present study is intended both as a substantive historical contribution, and as an illustration of the possibilities and the limitations of one particular type of historical inferences that can be drawn from language, namely, the study of words borrowed from one language into another. Two other basic linguistic sources for culture-historical conclusions are not considered here, those based on the relationships and distribution of languages as such, and those based on the reconstructed vocabularies of particular Ursprachen, that is, the ancestral speech-forms of specific groups of genetically related languages. These latter two methods are not excluded either for dogmatic or methodological reasons, but simply because they do not yield relevant results for the particular problems being considered, although they are very useful in other connexions. It should, however, be mentioned that, as will appear at a number of points in the discussion, a valid linguistic classification furnishes an indispensible framework for nearly all inferences drawn from linguistic data including the interlinguistic contact phenomena which are the subject of the present study.

Return Rates and Intensity of Resource Use in Numic and Prenumic Adaptive Strategies

1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 830-834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. Bettinger ◽  
Martin A. Baumhoff
Keyword(s):  
Great Basin ◽  
Resource Use ◽  
Adaptive Strategies ◽  
Return Rates ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Subsistence Patterns

Criticisms of our model of the recent spread of Numic speakers into the Great Basin center on the ambiguity of linguistic evidence and apparent similarities between Numic and Prenumic settlement and subsistence patterns. We argue that the linguistic data are only one part of a larger body of ethnographic data that support the hypothesized spread of Numic speakers and that the adaptive similarities noted between Numic and Prenumic are only of the broadest sort and do not vitiate the assumptions of our model. In particular, we suggest that it is the intensity with which a resource is used, not the mere use of that resource, which is important in understanding competitive replacement among adaptive strategies.

Phylogenetic linguistic evidence and the Dene-Yeniseian homeland

Diachronica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 410-446
Author(s):  
Igor Yanovich
Keyword(s):  
Best Practice ◽  
Phylogenetic Analyses ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Folklore Studies ◽  
Northeastern Siberia ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Computational Phylogenetics

Abstract Sicoli & Holton (2014) (PLoS ONE 9:3, e91722) use computational phylogenetics to argue that linguistic data from the putative, but likely, Dene-Yeniseian macro-family are better compatible with a homeland in Beringia (i.e., northeastern Siberia plus northwestern Alaska) than with one in central Siberia or deeper Asia. I show that a more careful examination of the data invalidates this conclusion: in fact, linguistic data do not support Beringia as the homeland. In the course of showing this, I discuss, without requiring a deep mathematical background, a number of methodological issues concerning computational phylogenetic analyses of linguistic data and drawing inferences from them. The aim is to contribute to making computational phylogenetics less of a black box for historical linguists. I conclude with a brief overview of the current evidence bearing on the Dene-Yeniseian homeland from linguistics, archaeology, folklore studies and genetics, and suggest current best practice for linguistic phylogenetics, the use of which would have helped to avoid some of the problems in Sicoli and Holton’s Dene-Yeniseian study, and in turn the percolation of those problems into subsequent synthetic interdisciplinary research.

Notes on the Temple ‘Restorations’ of Jehoash and Josiah

2013 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 640-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadav Na’aman
Keyword(s):  
Building Projects ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Internal Affairs ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Temple

Abstract The article discusses the descriptions of Jehoash’s and Josiah’s restorations of the temple in the Book of Kings. Two Neo-Babylonian legal documents are examined in order to demonstrate how ideological the descriptions of the repair works undertaken by the two kings are. The comparison further shows the cooperation of the royal and temple administrations in Babylonia and Judah in supervising the internal affairs of temples. Epigraphic Judahite documents shed some light on the management of workers in the kingdom. However, in spite of the many cuneiform and epigraphic documents published so far, fundamental elements in the administration of building projects in the First Temple Judah remain practically unknown.

scholarly journals An Assessment of methods and techniques used in Forensic Linguistics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raed Toghuj
Keyword(s):  
Review Literature ◽  
Forensic Linguistics ◽  
Fourth Section ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
The Third ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Methods And Techniques

The following paper aimed to evaluate the techniques and methods adopted in forensic linguistics. The paper is divided to 5 sections the first section discussed a brief background of the topic while the second chapter aimed to review literature from previous studies. The third section depicted the methods and techniques incorporated in carrying out this research. The fourth section analysed the data gathered for this paper while the last section concluded the paper. It is seen in this research that Courtroom speech, courtroom translation and interpretation, comprehensibility of texts and legal documents, including police cautions issued to offenders or suspects, and the use of linguistic evidence in court procedures are all part of forensic linguistics.

On projecting grammatical persons into social neurocognition: A view from linguistics

2013 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Evans
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Time Interaction ◽  
Grammatical Metaphor ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Orthogonal Line ◽  
The Many

AbstractThough it draws on the grammatical metaphor of person (first, third, second) in terms of representations, Schilbach et al.'s target article does not consider an orthogonal line of evidence for the centrality of interaction to social cognition: the many grammatical phenomena, some widespread cross-linguistically and some only being discovered, which are geared to supporting real-time interaction. My commentary reviews these, and the contribution linguistic evidence can make to a fuller account of social cognition.

Making a difference

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
Malcolm Coulthard
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Geographical Origin ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Making A Difference ◽  
Murder Trials ◽  
The Many

One of the major problems for Critical Discourse Analysts is how to move on from their insightful critical analyses to successfully ‘acting on the world in order to transform it’. This paper discusses, with detailed exemplification, some of the areas where linguists have moved beyond description to acting on and changing the world. Examples from three murder trials show how essential it is, in order to protect the rights of witnesses and defendants, to have audio records of significant interviews with police officers. The article moves on to discuss the potentially serious consequences of the many communicative problems inherent in legal/lay interaction and illustrates a few of the linguist-led improvements to important texts. Finally, the article turns to the problems of using linguistic data to try to determine the geographical origin of asylum seekers. The intention of the article is to act as a call to arms to linguists; it concludes with the observation that ‘innumerable mountains remain for those with a critical linguistic perspective who would like to try to move one’.

scholarly journals Various Forms and Meanings of Diminutive in Classical and Modern Arabic

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-339
Author(s):  
Abdul Aziz ◽  
Riski Gunawan ◽  
Saepul Anwar
Keyword(s):  
Research Data ◽  
Small Form ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
The Many ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

Diminutive (isim tasgĩr) is often interpreted in Arabic as a word that means 'little'. In fact, linguistic data shows the many meanings denoted and connoted by this diminutive form and meaning. Hence, this study aims to describe various forms and meanings of diminutive lexemes in Arabic. Diminutive is a small form of a word which in Arabic is often referred to as isim tasgĩr. The method which is used is descriptive-qualitative. The source of research data are Arabic dictionaries, poetry collections and novels. The results of this study indicate: first, diminutive in Arabic if it is seen in its form has one morpheme, namely u ay, with three different realizations depending on the number of consonants of a word, i.e. when the lingual unit (adjective or noun) is minimized consists of three consonants, u ay i when the lingual unit (adjective or noun) is divided consisting of four consonants and u ay iy, with several omissions of several consonants when the lingual unit both the noun and the adjective are divided into five consonants or more; secondly, it is diminutive in Arabic if it is seen as the meaning that shows affection, closeness, intimacy, insulting or looking down, praising and others. The significance of this research based on the presentation of other meanings which are not only of 'smallness' or 'littleness' of its meaning. This study at least has a novelty about adding other meanings that is broader than just a small meaning in Arabic.

Identifying suboptimalities with factorial model comparison

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Ji Ma
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Model Comparison ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Factorial Experimental Design ◽  
Factorial Model ◽  
Multiple Components ◽  
The Many

AbstractGiven the many types of suboptimality in perception, I ask how one should test for multiple forms of suboptimality at the same time – or, more generally, how one should compare process models that can differ in any or all of the multiple components. In analogy to factorial experimental design, I advocate for factorial model comparison.

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