Top Research Papers on Linguistics

The chapter also presents a short history of linguistics to serve as cohesive background to the material presented by other contributors to the Routledge Handbook of Linguistics. This history focuses on the western classical tradition that forms the basis for present day linguistics, but also notes the existence and current relevance of other traditions. It includes assessment of the beliefs of those who have practised linguistic analysis and been enthused by the scholarly investigation of language and languages from ancient times through to today.

This article is going to deliberate the Social Change as a part of Linguistics.

1501. Boden, G. THE DOCUMENTATION OF PLACE NAMES IN AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENT: A CASE STUDY OF THE !XOON IN SOUTHERN OMAHEKE, NAMIBIA. Anthropological Linguistics. 2011, 53(1):34–76. The West !Xoon variety of the Taa language complex is spoken by a small community of former hunter-gatherers in southeastern Namibia whose presence is virtually invisible on official topographical maps. This article presents the results of the documentation of !Xoon place names and describes their semantic sources and grammatical constructions. It further discusses how the high number of alternative names...

The anthropological activity of providing ethnographic descriptions is much like the linguistic activity of providing grammatical descriptions. Both offer rules that account for the occurrence of some phenomena (such as, for instance, particular household types or particular sequences of vocal noises), but at the same time rule others out. How the rules are 'discovered' is irrelevant to their status, and their degree of cognitive reality need not be crucial in judging their significance. The rules stand or fall only by their ability to account for linguistic or cultural behavior.

The equation ON -or is likely to be ultimately due to an analogic spread of the alternant -ur which, by regular phonological development, had arisen in dat.

3001. de Castro Alves, F. EVOLUTION OF ALIGNMENT IN TIMBIRA. International Journal of American Linguistics. 2010, 76(4):439–475. The Northern Jê languages (Macro-Jê stock) do not show clear patterns of splitergativity; however, a better understanding of their alignment pattern is possible, if we examine the earlier stages of these languages. This study reconstructs the ergatively organized nominalization system found in subordinate clauses in Proto-Northern Jê, which occurred as the argument of intransitive verbs of modality. These nominalized clauses were reanalyzed in pre-Timbira as main cla...

Premodification patterns play a central role in the categorization of ofbinominals in general, and particularly in the grammaticalization of the evaluative binominal noun phrase (a beast of a man) into an evaluative modifier (a beast of a Hollywood year), where the first noun functions as an extreme modifier. This paper compares a linear, construction-based account of the premodification patterns of the evaluative binominal noun phrase, evaluative modifier, and other historically related of-binominals to a hierarchical account in Functional Discourse Grammar in order to investigate in what way...

3607. Blust, Robert. LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE FOR SOME EARLY AUSTRONESIAN TABOOS. American Anthropologist. 1981, 83(2):285-319. The author proposes a typology of culture-trait distributions that attempts to reduce the intuitive judgments of actual practice to a binary matrix constructed around linguistic relatedness, the continuousness of distribu tions and the naturalness of traits. It is maintained that where the societies compared are linguistically related, and cognate terms are available for a given culture-trait, the possibilities for historical inference are enhanced in various ways. In acco...

3001. Campbell. L. COAHUILTECAN: A CLOSER LOOK. Anthropological Linguistics. 1996.38(4):620-634. Alexis Manaster Ramer. in a recent issue of Anthropological Linguistics, presented what seems to be very reasonable arguments in favor of a genetic relationship among the so-called Coahuiltecan languages. Here this evidence is reassessed and the various hypotheses of relationship are evaluated. This closer scrutiny shows that the evidence is not sufficiently robust to support the hypotheses. In particular, the known loans among languages of the area require that the role of borrowing be given serio...

3006. Kaye, A. S. SOME REMARKS ON PROTO-SEMITIC PHONOLOGY. Language Sciences. 1986, 8(1):37-48. Research carried out over the past century has revealed that Proto-Semitic (=*S) phonology has changed very little during this period. The aim of this paper is to present a history of some of the important work in this area as well as to discuss, perhaps, the four most intriguing problems in the entire field: (1) Were the *S emphatics pharyngealized-velarized or glottalized? (2) How many *S sibilants can be reconstructed with certainty? (3) Can one reconstruct *S vowels other than a, i, and u, both ...

1220. Arango Montoya, Francisco. LENGUAS Y DIALECTOS INDiGENAS [Indigenous Languages and Dialects]. America Indigena. 1972, 32(4):1169-1176. in Spanish This study enumerates the Indian languages and dialects of Colombia according to the political division and the ecclesiastic jurisdiction of the different Indian groups. Discussed are Aymara, Arawak, Chibcha, Karib or Caribe, Musica, Quechua, Tupi-Guarani and Yurumangui.

1501. Argenter, J. A. CODE-SWITCHING AND DIALOGISM: VERBAL PRACTICES AMONG CATALAN JEWS IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Language in Society. 2001,30:377-402. From a strict linguistic viewpoint, code-switching intertwines with a diverse range of language contact phenomena, from strict interference to several kinds of language mixture. Code-switching has also been addressed as an interactional phenomenon in everyday talk, an approach that implies a synchronic perspective. In this article, however, data are drawn from the records of communicative practices left behind by Catalan Jewish communities of the 14t...

practices everyday

0001. Bryce, T. R. LUKKA REVISITED. Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 1992, 51(2): 121·130. In an article published in Journal ofNear Eastern Studies in 1974, I discussed a number of texts which appear to have a bearing on the location of Lukka, or the Lukka Lands, in Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age. In attempting to explain various references to Lukka which in geographical terms seemed to be inconsistent, I postulated two main groups of Lukka settlements, one in the region of Classical Lykaonia, the other in western Caria, bordering the region of Miletos. Because of additional information ...

3225. Babcock, Susan Scharf. PARAPHRASTIC CONNATIVES. Foundations of Language. 1972,8(1):3043. It is argued that some surface complex sentences are simplex in deep structure. Paraphrastic causatives like "Fear made John tremble" are simplex sentences in deep structure. (The framework is a Fillmorean case grammar.) Their apparent complex structure is to be explained by rules which derive "make" from NP's in the CA USE case. The analysis is also proposed for manner adverbs and their paraphrases: "John learns slowly," "John is a slow learner," etc.

3001. Adams, Douglas Q. INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION IN MUTSUN MORPHOLOGY. International Journal of American Linguistics. 1985,51(4): 329-330. Okrand has served everyone interested in the Costanoan languages once spoken between San Francisco and Monterey by working up of Harrington's data on Mutsun (spoken in the San Juan Bautista area), collected in the twenties from the last native speaker. Okrand's grammar is a substantial and elegant synchronic description of Mutsun. This note attempts to take a few bits and pieces of his description and bring them together to illuminate some possible prehistor...

1251. Adelaar, Willem f. H. GRAMMATICAL VOWEL LENGTH AND THE CLASSIFICATION Of QUECHUA DIALECTS. International Journal of American Linguistics. 1984,50(1): 25-47. Some Quechua dialects have long vowels; others do not. Why this is the case must still be answered. The author interprets long vowels in Quechua I as the result of innovations, while other dialects support the view that vowel length may have been phonemic in Proto Quechua.

0001. Berman, J. GEORGE HUNT AND THE KWAK'WALA TEXTS. Anthropological Linguistics. 1994, 36(4):483-514. The vast majority of the Kwak'wala-language texts published by Franz Boas were composed by George Hunt. The child of a British father and a Tlingit mother, Hunt was born an outsider to the Fort Rupert, British Columbia, native community. His Kwak'wala contains errors, and some modem Kwak'wala speakers cannot understand it. These facts raise questions about the reliability of Hunt's materials. However, investigation into Hunt's family, personal, and linguistic history, and into matters of sty...

4501. Jacobs, 1., and Omeonga, B. LONKUCU: TEXTE ET LEXIQUE (Iwaji, KJ>IE, Kasai Oriental, R. D. Du Congo). Annales iEquatoria. 2004, 25:303-316. The Bankucu (Ankfucu) live in the eastern part of the Territoire de Kole which is situated in the Kasai Oriental Province. Our investigations on the Lonkucu language took place at Iwaji, a village of the Luculu group. The villages of this group are situated near the road between Bena Dibele and KJ> IE. The present study contains text and a word list. The text is the transcription of a tape recording. The word list is composed of substantives end verb...

practices everyday Queer