Speak: A Short History of Languages

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191622907
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Speak: A Short History of Languages by : Tore Janson

Download or read book Speak: A Short History of Languages written by Tore Janson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-03-14 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a history of human speech from prehistory to the present. It charts the rise of some languages and the fall of others, explaining why some survive and others die. It shows how languages change their sounds and meanings, and how the history of languages is closely linked to the history of peoples. Writing in a lively, readable style, distinguished Swedish scholar Tore Janson makes no assumptions about previous knowledge. He takes the reader on a voyage of exploration through the changing patterns of the world's languages, from ancient China to ancient Egypt, imperial Rome to imperial Britain, Sappho's Lesbos to contemporary Africa. He discovers the links between the histories of societies and their languages; he shows how language evolved from primitive calls; he considers the question of whether one language can be more advanced than another. The author describes the history of writing and looks at the impact of changing technology. He ends by assessing the prospects for English world domination and predicting the languages of the distant future. Five historical maps illustrate this fascinating history of our defining characteristic and most valuable asset.

The History of Languages

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Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199604282
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (996 download)

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Book Synopsis The History of Languages by : Tore Janson

Download or read book The History of Languages written by Tore Janson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does not discuss the Semitic languages.

Speak : a Short History of Languages

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis Speak : a Short History of Languages by :

Download or read book Speak : a Short History of Languages written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speak is a life history of humankind's defining characteristic and most valuable asset." "Distinguished Swedish scholar Tore Janson takes the reader on a voyage of exploration through the changing patterns of the world's languages, from prehistory to the first civilizations, ancient Egypt to ancient China, imperial Rome to imperial Britain, Sappho's Lesbos to contemporary Africa. He shows how language evolved from primitive calls, and discovers the links between the histories of societies and their languages.

The Study of Language

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139486764
Total Pages : 339 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis The Study of Language by : George Yule

Download or read book The Study of Language written by George Yule and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This best-selling textbook provides an engaging and user-friendly introduction to the study of language. Assuming no prior knowledge in the subject, Yule presents information in short, bite-sized sections, introducing the major concepts in language study – from how children learn language to why men and women speak differently, through all the key elements of language. This fourth edition has been revised and updated with twenty new sections, covering new accounts of language origins, the key properties of language, text messaging, kinship terms and more than twenty new word etymologies. To increase student engagement with the text, Yule has also included more than fifty new tasks, including thirty involving data analysis, enabling students to apply what they have learned. The online study guide offers students further resources when working on the tasks, while encouraging lively and proactive learning. This is the most fundamental and easy-to-use introduction to the study of language.

A Short History of the International Language Movement

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Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330397695
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (976 download)

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Book Synopsis A Short History of the International Language Movement by : Albert Léon Guérard

Download or read book A Short History of the International Language Movement written by Albert Léon Guérard and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from A Short History of the International Language Movement The world, in this third decade of the twentieth century, offers a tragic contrast. On the one hand, material obstacles between the remotest parts of the earth are fast crumbling down. On the other, there have never been deeper chasms between race and race, or between nation and nation. Science is universal in its principles and in its results, cosmopolitan in its personnel, international in its activities. It would be ludicrous to speak of "French astronomy" or "American mathematics." The applications of science to industry have radically transformed the conditions of life. The world is larger to-day than it was a hundred years ago, and infinitely more complex; but it is also infinitely more cohesive. The heart of Asia, Africa, South America, can now be reached in a railroad car; intelligence is flashed from continent to continent in less time than, a century ago, news could be carried by the swiftest messenger to a neighbouring city. Thus the interdependence or solidarity of nations has become an actual fact rather than an ideal. Railroads, steamships, telegraphs, wireless stations, have made the whole world immediately sensitive to everything that happens anywhere on its surface: they have created a universal consciousness - the inevitable forerunner of a universal conscience. These considerations are commonplace enough: we trust that their natural consequences will seem no less obvious. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A Short History of the International Language Movement

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (321 download)

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Book Synopsis A Short History of the International Language Movement by : Albert Léon Guérard

Download or read book A Short History of the International Language Movement written by Albert Léon Guérard and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

A Little Book of Language

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300158750
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis A Little Book of Language by : David Crystal

Download or read book A Little Book of Language written by David Crystal and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a language disappearing every two weeks and neologisms springing up almost daily, an understanding of the origins and currency of language has never seemed more relevant. In this charming volume, a narrative history written explicitly for a young audience, expert linguist David Crystal proves why the story of language deserves retelling. From the first words of an infant to the peculiar modern dialect of text messaging, A Little Book of Language ranges widely, revealing language's myriad intricacies and quirks.

On the Origins of Speaking

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Publisher : New Generation Publishing
ISBN 13 : 178719101X
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (871 download)

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Book Synopsis On the Origins of Speaking by : Lord Walsingham

Download or read book On the Origins of Speaking written by Lord Walsingham and published by New Generation Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-22 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a serious book examining the original sounds and meanings of languages right back to the Stone Age - up until now believed to be impossible. But it can also be seen as tracing the overwhelming sexual orientation of human thinking for the last six hundred thousand years or more - when we were only hominids, squatting round the camp fires at the mouths of our caves - to keep the sabre toothed tigers out. It was here that our original bare bottomed language committees first got to grips with meanings and their audible representation. The committees were convened as a result of the taming of fire, the high tech of the day. It was a cosy environment in a cold and hostile world, and the unaccustomed warmth led to an outburst of amorous inclinations, and the need to express them in words. Ka they thought echoic of the strike of flint on flint, and so striking, and so the tenderising of raw meat for which they had already been making "e;hand axes"e; for at least half a million years. It is from ka-ka for tenderising with a hand axe that our cooking comes! The flame did it for you. Flint knapping left a lot of "e;debetage"e; or waste flakes, whence ka-ka also came to mean waste - including today human waste. Metaphor led to odd bedfellows. All this evidence is decoded from an exhaustive forty year research into over a hundred languages, many of them dead ones, where like flies in amber our original Lithic (Stone Age) language roots are still embedded. There is nothing salacious in the tale. It simply tells it as it is and was, and it is not going to go away. This short version is abstracted from a major work of over 600 pages, and there is nothing in it which the ordinary man in the street (and his sister) can not easily follow. It ranks quite highly in the order of useless information, but it has its indirect usage. If you understand how all our languages have actually come about - the product of human whimsy - you will be that much less likely to believe some of the sillier alternative views put forward by ideologically inclined placemen. Lastly, how has Lithic Language been cracked? The answer lies in "e;semantic triangulation"e;. Believe it or not, all our languages today (over 6000) bear traces of the original meanings given to the sounds as we first learned to articulate them, and it is possible to work backwards using the current meanings in numerous languages to home in on the original source meanings which are common to the current ones. Then we can see if they make sense as a first guess by our Stone Age (hominid) forebears of what they thought of as the "e;natural"e; meanings of the sounds. They didn't do thinking very much. That is how they all guessed the same, or nearly the same. So we are probably on the right track: language was all spun by human whimsy, (over a few hundred millennia), from only a baker's dozen original articulated sounds. The English language alone reached a million words last year.

Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages

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Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9027211787
Total Pages : 440 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (272 download)

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Book Synopsis Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages by : Gerrit Jan Dimmendaal

Download or read book Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages written by Gerrit Jan Dimmendaal and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This advanced historical linguistics course book deals with the historical and comparative study of African languages. The first part functions as an elementary introduction to the comparative method, involving the establishment of lexical and grammatical cognates, the reconstruction of their historical development, techniques for the subclassification of related languages, and the use of language-internal evidence, more specifically the application of internal reconstruction. Part II addresses language contact phenomena and the status of language in a wider, cultural-historical and ecological context. Part III deals with the relationship between comparative linguistics and other disciplines. In this rich course book, the author presents valuable views on a number of issues in the comparative study of African languages, more specifically concerning genetic diversity on the African continent, the status of pidginised and creolised languages, language mixing, and grammaticalisation.

Globally Speaking

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Publisher : Multilingual Matters
ISBN 13 : 1783091533
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis Globally Speaking by : Judith Rosenhouse

Download or read book Globally Speaking written by Judith Rosenhouse and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2008-05-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume accounts for the motives for contemporary lexical borrowing from English, using a comparative approach and a broad cross-cultural perspective. It investigates the processes involved in the penetration of English vocabulary into new environments and the extent of their integration into twelve languages representing several language families, including Icelandic, Dutch, French, Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic, Persian, Japanese, Taiwan Chinese, and several languages spoken in southern India. Some of these languages are studied here in the context of borrowing for the first time ever. All in all, this volume suggests that the English lexical 'invasion', as it is often referred to, is a natural and inevitable process. It is driven by psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and socio-historical factors, of which the primary determinants of variability are associated with ethnic and linguistic diversity.

Speaking American: A History of English in the United States

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199913404
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis Speaking American: A History of English in the United States by : Richard W. Bailey

Download or read book Speaking American: A History of English in the United States written by Richard W. Bailey and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011-12-26 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When did English become American? What distinctive qualities made it American? What role have America's democratizing impulses, and its vibrantly heterogeneous speakers, played in shaping our language and separating it from the mother tongue? A wide-ranging account of American English, Richard Bailey's Speaking American investigates the history and continuing evolution of our language from the sixteenth century to the present. The book is organized in half-century segments around influential centers: Chesapeake Bay (1600-1650), Boston (1650-1700), Charleston (1700-1750), Philadelphia (1750-1800), New Orleans (1800-1850), New York (1850-1900), Chicago (1900-1950), Los Angeles (1950-2000), and Cyberspace (2000-present). Each of these places has added new words, new inflections, new ways of speaking to the elusive, boisterous, ever-changing linguistic experiment that is American English. Freed from British constraints of unity and propriety, swept up in rapid social change, restless movement, and a thirst for innovation, Americans have always been eager to invent new words, from earthy frontier expressions like "catawampously" (vigorously) and "bung-nipper" (pickpocket), to West African words introduced by slaves such as "goober" (peanut) and "gumbo" (okra), to urban slang such as "tagging" (spraying graffiti) and "crew" (gang). Throughout, Bailey focuses on how people speak and how speakers change the language. The book is filled with transcripts of arresting voices, precisely situated in time and space: two justices of the peace sitting in a pumpkin patch trying an Indian for theft; a crowd of Africans lounging on the waterfront in Philadelphia discussing the newly independent nation in their home languages; a Chicago gangster complaining that his pocket had been picked; Valley Girls chattering; Crips and Bloods negotiating their gang identities in LA; and more. Speaking American explores--and celebrates--the endless variety and remarkable inventiveness that have always been at the heart of American English.

Language And Linguistic Introduction To History

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136890262
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (368 download)

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Book Synopsis Language And Linguistic Introduction To History by : Vendryes,

Download or read book Language And Linguistic Introduction To History written by Vendryes, and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Stories of Linguistics

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1137095636
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis The Stories of Linguistics by : Kim Ballard

Download or read book The Stories of Linguistics written by Kim Ballard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the nature of human language? How did it originate? How are different languages connected? Exploring over two thousand years of human enquiry, The Stories of Linguistics is an accessible introduction to the individuals, ideas and events that have shaped the field of linguistics. From Herodotus to Chomsky, and from philosophy to neuroscience, Kim Ballard presents a fascinating narrative that brings to life a dynamic subject with a rich history. The Stories of Linguistics: - Uses a thematic rather than a traditional chronological approach to explore the complex development of Western linguistics - Offers an accessible introduction to a field of linguistics which is attracting more and more interest - Guides readers seamlessly through linguistic history, supported by timelines and suggestions for further reading and research With its broad scope and conversational style, The Stories of Linguistics is an ideal introductory text for students at every level, as well as anyone else with an interest in the history and development of language.

The Miracle of Language

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439139407
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis The Miracle of Language by : Richard Lederer

Download or read book The Miracle of Language written by Richard Lederer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master verbalist Richard Lederer, America's "Wizard of Idiom" (Denver Post), presents a love letter to the most glorious of human achievements... Welcome to Richard Lederer's beguiling celebration of language -- of our ability to utter, write, and receive words. No purists need stop here. Mr. Lederer is no linguistic sheriff organizing posses to hunt down and string up language offenders. Instead, join him "In Praise of English," and discover why the tongue described in Shakespeare's day as "of small reatch" has become the most widely spoken language in history: English never rejects a word because of race, creed, or national origin. Did you know that jukebox comes from Gullah and canoe from Haitian Creole? Many of our greatest writers have invented words and bequeathed new expressions to our eveyday conversations. Can you imagine making up almost ten percent of our written vocabulary? Scholars now know that William Shakespeare did just that! He also points out the pitfalls and pratfalls of English. If a man mans a station, what does a woman do? In the "The Department of Redundancy Department," "Is English Prejudiced?" and other essays, Richard Lederer urges us not to abandon that which makes us human: the capacity to distinguish, discriminate, compare, and evaluate.

Dante's Plurilingualism

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351570196
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (515 download)

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Book Synopsis Dante's Plurilingualism by : Sara Fortuna

Download or read book Dante's Plurilingualism written by Sara Fortuna and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dante's conception of language is encompassed in all his works and can be understood in terms of a strenuous defence of the volgare in tension with the prestige of Latin. By bringing together different approaches, from literary studies to philosophy and history, from aesthetics to queer studies, from psychoanalysis to linguistics, this volume offers new critical insights on the question of Dantes language, engaging with both the philosophical works characterized by an original project of vulgarization, and the poetic works, which perform a new language in an innovative and self-reflexive way. In particular, Dantes Plurilingualism explores the rich and complex way in which Dantes linguistic theory and praxis both informs and reflects an original configuration of the relationship between authority, knowledge and identity that continues to be fascinated by an ideal of unity but is also imbued with a strong element of subjectivity and opens up towards multiplicity and modernity.

Historical Linguistics

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 9780262532679
Total Pages : 478 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (326 download)

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Book Synopsis Historical Linguistics by : Lyle Campbell

Download or read book Historical Linguistics written by Lyle Campbell and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible, hands-on text not only introduces students to the important topicsin historical linguistics but also shows them how to apply the methods described and how to thinkabout the issues; abundant examples and exercises allow students to focus on how to do historicallinguistics. Distinctive to this text is its integration of the standard topics with others nowconsidered important to the field, including syntactic change, grammaticalization, sociolinguisticcontributions to linguistic change, distant genetic relationships, areal linguistics, and linguisticprehistory. Examples are taken from a broad range of languages; those from the more familiarEnglish, French, German, and Spanish make the topics more accessible, while those fromnon-Indo-European languages show the depth and range of the concepts they illustrate.This secondedition features expanded explanations and examples as well as updates in light of recent work inlinguistics, including a defense of the family tree model, a response to recent claims on lexicaldiffusion/frequency, and a section on why languages diversify and spread.

The English Language

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 76 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (555 download)

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Book Synopsis The English Language by : Thomas Pyles

Download or read book The English Language written by Thomas Pyles and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: