Syntactic Change In Akkadian

Author : Guy Deutscher
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN 13 : 0198299885
Total Pages : 221 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Change in Akkadian written by Guy Deutscher and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2000 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language spoken in Assyria and Babylonia, is one of the earliest known languages, with a surviving written history from 2500BC to 500BC. Guy Deutscher investigates its development over these two millennia. He shows that changes in the language can be linked to the emergence of complex patterns of communication required by an increasingly sophisticated civilization.

Author : Guy Deutscher
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191544833
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Change in Akkadian written by Guy Deutscher and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Akkadian is one of the earliest attested languages and the oldest recorded Semitic language. It exists in written record between 2500BC and 500BC, much of it in letters and reports concerned with domestic and business matters, and written in colloquial language. It provides a unique and valuable source for the study of linguistic change but which, perhaps because of the impenetrability of its writing system, has rarely been exploited by linguists. In this book, Guy Deutscher examines the historical development of subordinate structures in Akkadian. A case study comprises the first two parts of the book, presenting an historical grammar of sentential complementation. Part I traces the emergence of new structures and describes how the finite complements first emerged in Babylonian. It also explains the grammaticalization of the quotative construction. Part II is a functional history which examines the changes in the functional roles of different structures. It shows how, during the history of the language, finite complements and embedded questions became more widespread, whereas other structures (e.g. infinite complements, parataxis, etc.) receded. Part III seeks to explain the historical developments in a theoretical light, showing how the development in Akkadian is mirrored in many other languages. It goes on to suggest that the emergence of finite complementation may be seen as 'adaptive' and related to the development of more complex communication patterns. This book will be of interest to both specialists and general linguists alike. For specialists it offers a contribution towards a badly-needed historical grammar of the Akkadian language. For general linguists this book will be of interest not only for the questions which it raises about the nature of complementation, but also for the window which it provides on to this little-known language.

Author : Dr. Guy Deutscher
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789062583171
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book PIHANS written by Dr. Guy Deutscher and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Robert Rezetko
Publisher : Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN 13 : 1628370467
Total Pages : 721 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Historical Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew written by Robert Rezetko and published by Society of Biblical Lit. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" html meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="content-type" body A philologically robust approach to the history of ancient Hebrew In this book the authors work toward constructing an approach to the history of ancient Hebrew that overcomes the chasm of academic specialization. The authors illustrate how cross-textual variable analysis and variation analysis advance research on Biblical Hebrew and correct theories based on extra-linguistic assumptions, intuitions, and ideologies by focusing on variation of forms/uses in the Masoretic text and variation between the Masoretic text and other textual traditions. Features: A unique approach that examines the nature of the sources and the description of their language together Extensive bibliography for further research Tables of linguistic variables and parallels

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004508872
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Variation, Contact, and Reconstruction in the Ancient Indo-European Languages written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-05-20 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reflects the vibrancy of historical linguistics, showing how research on ancient Indo-European languages contributes to the understanding of the principles and patterns of language organization and change, including studies on typologically natural tendencies and cognitive universals.

Author : N. J. C. Kouwenberg
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 1575066246
Total Pages : 689 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Akkadian Verb and Its Semitic Background written by N. J. C. Kouwenberg and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-06-23 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this magnum opus, N. J. C. Kouwenberg presents a thoroughgoing, modern analysis of the Akkadian verbal system, taking into account all of the currently available evidence for the language during the course of the long period of its attestation. The book achieves this goal through two strategies: (1) to describe the Akkadian verbal system, as comprehensively as the data permit; and (2) to reconstruct its prehistory on the basis of internal evidence and reconstruction, comparison with cognate languages, and typological evidence. Akkadian has one of the longest documented histories of any language: data from nearly two-and-one-half millennia are available, even if the stream of data is sometimes interrupted and not always as copious as we would like. During the course of this history, numerous developments took place, illustrating how languages change over time and offering parallels for reconstruction of changes that occurred in poorly documented periods. As a result, this book will be of great interest, in the first place, for all students of Akkadian, both the language and the literature that is documented in that language; and in the second place, for all students of language and linguistics who are interested in the study of how languages are shaped, develop, and change during the course of a long history.

Author : Anna Mauranen
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108492851
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Change written by Anna Mauranen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through integrating different perspectives on language change, this book explores the enormous on-going linguistic upheavals in the wake of the global dominance of English. Combining empirical research with theoretical approaches, it will appeal to researchers and graduate students of English, and also of other languages studying language change.

Author : Talmy Givón
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027229996
Total Pages : 561 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Complexity written by Talmy Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complex hierarchic syntax is considered one of the hallmarks of human language. The highest level of syntactic complexity, recursive-embedded clauses, has been singled out by some for a special status as the apex of the uniquely-human language faculty – evolutionary but somehow immune to adaptive selection. This volume, coming out of a symposium held at Rice University in March 2008, tackles syntactic complexity from multiple developmental perspectives. We take it for granted that grammar is an adaptive instrument of communication, assembled upon the pre-existing platform of pre-linguistic cognition. Most of the papers in the volume deal with the two grand developmental trends of human language: diachrony, the communal enterprise directly responsible for fashioning synchronic morpho-syntax; and ontogeny, the individual endeavor directly responsible for the acquisition of competent grammatical performance. The genesis of syntactic complexity along these two developmental trends is considered alongside with the cognition and neurology of grammar and of syntactic complexity, and the evolutionary relevance of diachrony, ontogeny and pidginization is argued on general bio-evolutionary grounds. Lastly, several of the contributions to the volume suggest that recursive embedding is not in itself an adaptive target, but rather the by-product of two distinct adaptive gambits: the recruitment of conjoined clauses as modal operators on other clauses and the subsequent condensation of paratactic into syntactic structures.

Author : Peter W. Culicover
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192634739
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Change, Variation, and Universals written by Peter W. Culicover and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores how human languages become what they are, why they differ from one another in certain ways but not in others, and why they change in the ways that they do. Given that language is a universal creation of the human mind, the puzzle is why there are different languages at all: why do we not all speak the same language? Moreover, while there is considerable variation, in some ways grammars do show consistent patterns: why are languages similar in those respects, and why are those particular patterns preferred? Peter Culicover proposes that the solution to these puzzles is a constructional one. Grammars consist of constructions that carry out the function of expressing universal conceptual structure. While there are in principle many different ways of accomplishing this task, languages are under press to reduce constructional complexity. The result is that there is constructional change in the direction of less complexity, and grammatical patterns emerge that more efficiently reflect conceptual universals. The volume is divided into three parts: the first establishes the theoretical foundations; the second explores variation in argument structure, grammatical functions, and A-bar constructions, drawing on data from a variety of languages including English and Plains Cree; and the third examines constructional change, focusing primarily on Germanic. The study ends with observations and speculations on parameter theory, analogy, the origins of typological patterns, and Greenbergian 'universals'.

Author : Simone E. Pfenninger
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN 13 : 9027269939
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Contact, Variation, and Change in the History of English written by Simone E. Pfenninger and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume aim at facilitating exchange between three fields of inquiry that are of great importance in historical linguistics: language change, (socio)linguistic research on variation, and contact linguistics. Drawing on a range of recently-developed methodological innovations, such as methods for quantifying the linguistic variation (that is a prerequisite for language change) or new corpus-based methods for investigating text-type variation, the contributors are able to trace linguistic change in different periods and contact situations, demonstrate how variation occurs, and in how far language change results out of this variation. Thus, the chapters go beyond core issues of language variation and change, focusing on the boundary between word and grammar, discourse and ideology in the history of the English language.