Kinship terminologies reveal ancient contact zone in the Hindu Kush

The Hindu Kush, or the mountain region of northern Pakistan, north-eastern Afghanistan and the northern-most part of the Indian-administered Kashmir region, is home to approximately 50 languages belonging to six different genera: Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Sino-Tibetan, Turkic and the isolate Burushaski. Areality research on this region is only in its early stages, and while its significance as a convergence area has been suggested by several scholars, only a few, primarily phonological and grammatical, features have been studied in a more systematic fashion. Cross-linguistic research in the realms of semantics and lexical organization has been given considerably less attention. However, preliminary findings indicate that features are geographically bundled with one another, across genera, in significant ways, displaying semantic areality on multiple levels throughout the region or in one or more of its sub-regions. The present study is an areal-typological investigation of kinship terms in the region, in which particular attention is paid to a few notable polysemy patterns and what appears to be a significant geographical clustering of these. Comparisons are made between the geographical distribution of such patterns and those of some other linguistic features as well as with relevant non-linguistic factors related to shared cultural values or identities and a long history of small-scale cross-community interaction in different parts of the region.

On the mythological songs of the “Elder Edda” as a system

This article is a systemic linguistic and stylistic analysis of the corpus of mythological songs of the “Elder Edda” in a wide cultural and historical context: folklore, ritual, literary. This approach made it possible to propose an interpretation of the mythological songs of the “Elder Edda” as a system and take a fresh look at their semantics, composition, structure, style and lexical organization. The most relevant results of the study of the linguistic and stylistic features of the Eddic songs of the mythological cycle can be considered the definition of linguo-stylistic features of various genre structures in their composition, the explanation of their coexistence, the identification of their source and the building of a hierarchy of mythological songs of the “Elder Edda” depending on the degree of representation in them of various genres. For the first time, the study of the mechanism of cultural dynamics makes it possible to use genres, plot, structure, images, motives of the Eddic text in the reconstruction of the mythopoetic model of the world. The author singles out the most representative genres (tula, cosmological and epistemological song, vision, memory, conspiracy, competition in wisdom, travel, afterlife poetry) and markers (the time of creation, the substance that served as material for the creation of the universe, subjects and objects of creation), allowing to evaluate their productivity and give a comparative description. On the basis of a detailed linguostylistic analysis of the mythological cycle of the “Elder Edda”, a different degree of closeness between mythological songs is established and their plot-genre classification is proposed. The author’s scientific hypothesis consists in the assumption of the deduction of linguostylistic methods of the Eddic cycle from the mythological situation of primordial creation, the dominance of the sacred sphere, which determines the strategy of the characters’ behavior and the results of their activities, anthropocentric orientation, which is expressed in the description of cosmogenesis in genealogical terms.

Word Retrieval and Lexical Organization in Children With Hearing Loss and Developmental Language Disorder

Word retrieval and lexical organization were explored in 16 Danish children with slight to severe hearing loss (HL), 11 children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and 25 typically developing (TD) children in the age range of 7 to 12 years. There is a special focus on children with HL with and without language difficulties compared with children with DLD. Word retrieval and lexical organization are assessed with a Semantic Verbal Fluency Task. Background assessment of language comprehension is assessed with Test for Reception of Grammar–Version 2 (TROG-2) and nonverbal IQ is assessed with Block Design from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Fourth Edition (WISC-IV). Main findings show that children with HL without language difficulties did not show any significant word retrieval or lexical organization difficulties compared with TD children. However, there was a resemblance between children with DLD and children with HL with language difficulties in word retrieval and lexical organization.

Croatian Shtokavian grammar books

This paper describes the criteria for the systematic periodization of Croatian grammar books. These criteria are exclusively linguistic and take into account the phonological and morphological structure described in these grammar books; where the grammar books contain a dictionary, the lexical organization has been taken into consideration as well. Based on these criteria, all Croatian grammar books may be systematized into four periods: I. 1604 – 1836 (old Croatian grammars), II. 1836 – 1899 (Croatian grammars from the Illyrian Movement to the end of the 19th century, with two parallel subgroups: grammars by the Zagreb School and Croatian Vukovians), III. 1899 – 1986 (with three successive subgroups: Croatian grammars from the beginning of the 20th century to 1940, Croatian grammars from 1940 to 1945, Croatian grammars from 1945 to the 1970s), IV. contemporary Croatian grammars. All these grammars clearly reveal the continuity of the Croatian literary language. This language is recognizable and comprehensible in all grammars, primarily owing to its Shtokavian stylization – and not to any kind of “organic basis”.

Arguing with “at least” constructions

Based on corpus data from the Hebrew web corpus HeTenTen, I analyze the discourse argumentative functions of constructions associated with superlative minimum modifiers (e. g. at least). I adopt Kay’s (1992. At least. In Adrienne Lehrer & Eva Feder Kittay (eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization, 309–331. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum) distinction between three such sub-constructions: Scalar, Rhetorical and Evaluative, but I offer further distinctions within these constructions. Most importantly, despite the differences between them, I argue that all three constructions are used to construct non-optimal, yet sufficient arguments.

Quechuan terms for internal organs of the torso

This article discusses the terminology for the major internal organs of the torso across the Quechuan language family. From both semasiological and onomasiological points of view, differences in the synchronic organization of the semantic field across individual Quechua varieties as well as the diachronic developments that brought them about are described. Particular attention is also paid to semantic reconstruction within the field at the proto-Quechua level, and, with recourse to recent efforts at internal reconstruction, also beyond. Another recurrent theme is the interrelation between lexical data and the conceptions of anatomy and bodily functions encountered in quechua-speaking communities. A major conclusion is that an engagement with such perspectives allows for a considerably richer understanding of lexical organization in synchrony and diachrony than linguistic data alone could provide.