Suchergebnisse

This study focuses on a previously untapped interface between discourse and areal linguistics. It assigns a different primary status to usage at the stage of theory development. Using actual discourse data from Northern Germany, it provides an integrated comparative description of areal linguistic variations in terms of their linguistic structure and discursive function.

AbstractRetroflexion in South Asia has been the subject of at least two previous typological studies: Ramanujan and Masica (1969. Toward a phonological typology of the Indian linguistic area. In T. A. Sebeok (ed.),Current trends in linguistics, volume 5: Linguistics in South Asia, 543–577. Paris: Mouton) and Tikkanen (1999. Archaeological-linguistic correlations in the formation of retroflex typologies and correlating areal features in South Asia. In Roger Blench & Matthew Spriggs (eds.),Archaeology and language IV: Language change and cultural transformation, 138–148. London & New York: Routledge). Despite their many virtues, these studies are limited by the size of their data samples, their dependence on qualitative data without quantitative analysis, and their use of hand-drawn maps. This paper presents the results of an entirely new survey of retroflexion in South Asia – one that incorporates a larger language sample, quantitative analysis, and computer-generated maps. The study focuses on the genetic and geographic distribution of various retroflex subsystems, including retroflex obstruents, nasals, liquids, approximants and vowels. While it is possible to establish broad statistical correlations between specific types of contrast and individual language families (or sub-families), the study finds that the distribution of most retroflex systems is more geographic in nature than genetic. Thus, while retroflexion is characteristic of South Asia as a whole, each type of retroflex system tends to cut across genetic lines, marking out its own space within the broader linguistic area.

With forty-two extensively annotated maps, this atlas offers novel insights into the history and mechanics of how Central Europe's languages have been made, unmade, and deployed for political action. The innovative combination of linguistics, history, and cartography makes a wealth of hard-to-reach knowledge readily available to both specialist and general readers. It combines information on languages, dialects, alphabets, religions, mass violence, or migrations over an extended period of time.

The story first focuses on Central Europe's dialect continua, the emergence of states, and the spread of writing technology from the tenth century onward. Most maps concentrate on the last two centuries. The main storyline opens with the emergence of the Western European concept of the nation, in accord with which the ethnolinguistic nation-states of Italy and Germany were founded. In the Central European view, a "proper" nation is none other than the speech community of a single language. The Atlas aspires to help users make the intellectual leap of perceiving languages as products of human history and part of culture. Like states, nations, universities, towns, associations, art, beauty, religions, injustice, or atheism—languages are artefacts invented and shaped by individuals and their groups.

International audience ; Clause-final negation markers (CFNMs), although typologically rare, can be found in a very wide range of languages of Northern Sub-Saharan Africa. Based on a sample of 618 African languages, this paper provides an analysis of spatio-temporal language dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa with respect to the feature CFNM. I argue that it is important to consider together both the languages that have the feature under investigation and the languages that do not have it. Furthermore, in order to better capture the diversity of the languages that have CFNMs, I increase the degree of granularity of my data by taking into account two parameters, viz., obligatoriness of CFNMs and possible restrictions on the freedom to use CFNMs in different constructions. For spatial analysis and visualiza-tion, I use the methods of spatial interpolation and generalized additive model-ing. Both methods converge on the need to distinguish two focal areas of the feature CFNM. The first one, the Central Focal Area, is the most prominent of the two and spans the east of West Africa and parts of Central Africa. The second one, the Western Focal Area, is less prominent and is restricted to West Africa. The two focal areas are separated by a major discontinuity around Ghana, Togo and Be-nin. In order to better calibrate the results of the spatial analysis and to identify the historical core of the Central Focal Area, I call onto other types of data available. Finally, I address the distribution of optional and/or restricted CFNMs in Africa, with a particular focus on the spread of CFNMs among Bantu languages to the south of the Central Focal Area, primarily in the Congo River corridor and the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

International audience ; Clause-final negation markers (CFNMs), although typologically rare, can be found in a very wide range of languages of Northern Sub-Saharan Africa. Based on a sample of 618 African languages, this paper provides an analysis of spatio-temporal language dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa with respect to the feature CFNM. I argue that it is important to consider together both the languages that have the feature under investigation and the languages that do not have it. Furthermore, in order to better capture the diversity of the languages that have CFNMs, I increase the degree of granularity of my data by taking into account two parameters, viz., obligatoriness of CFNMs and possible restrictions on the freedom to use CFNMs in different constructions. For spatial analysis and visualiza-tion, I use the methods of spatial interpolation and generalized additive model-ing. Both methods converge on the need to distinguish two focal areas of the feature CFNM. The first one, the Central Focal Area, is the most prominent of the two and spans the east of West Africa and parts of Central Africa. The second one, the Western Focal Area, is less prominent and is restricted to West Africa. The two focal areas are separated by a major discontinuity around Ghana, Togo and Be-nin. In order to better calibrate the results of the spatial analysis and to identify the historical core of the Central Focal Area, I call onto other types of data available. Finally, I address the distribution of optional and/or restricted CFNMs in Africa, with a particular focus on the spread of CFNMs among Bantu languages to the south of the Central Focal Area, primarily in the Congo River corridor and the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Introduction / Luka Szuscich, Agnes Kim, Uliana Yazhinova -- Does Verb Valency Pattern Areally in Central Europe? A First Look / Jerzy Gaszewski -- Central European Languages as a Complex Research Issue: Summarising and Broadening the Research Foci / Jiří Januška -- Prepositions in the Melting Pot: High Risk of Infection : Language Contact of German in Austria with Slavic Languages and Its Linguistic and Extra-Linguistic Description / Agnes Kim -- Variation in Case Government of the Equivalent for the Cognitive Verb to Forget in German in Austria and Czech / Agnes Kim, Sebastian Scharf, Ivan Šimko -- Remarks on the Development of the Czech Modality System in Contact with German / František Martínek -- Linguistic Areas in East-Central Europe as the Result of Pluridimensional, Polycentric Convergence Phenomena / Stefan Michael Newerkla -- Loanwords in Bulgarian Core Vocabulary - a Pilot Study / Ivan Šimko & Emmerich Kelih -- On Different Ways of Belonging in Europe / Thomas Stolz & Nataliya Levkovych -- Burgenland Croatian as a Contact Language / Luka Szucsich -- Variation im Spracherwerb von Verben bei bilingualen Kindern (Russisch - Deutsch) / Anna Tetereva, Viktoria Naukhatskaia -- Hungarismen im Gemeindeutschen, österreichischen Deutsch, ostösterreichischen Dialekt und im Slawischen / Tamás Tölgyesi -- List of Figures -- List of Tables.

Abstract
This paper focuses on two language clusters in the region comprising the Hindu Kush mountains; Swat, Dir and Indus Kohistan (Pakistan); and the Himalayan foothills (HKKH region). The languages considered are Kalasha, Khowar, Palula, Dameli, Torwali, Kohistani, Shina, Kashmiri, Pashai and some of the Nuristani languages. One cluster of languages shares the expression of non-volitional semantics by derived transitive/causative verb forms, previously discussed as "causative involuntatives" or "impersonal causative expressions". Two apparent subtypes are identified and mapped. A second, partially overlapping, cluster shares the use of a grammaticized conjunctive participle of a causative form of a reflex of the OIA √sañj as a postposition marking the secondary agent in causative constructions. The paper presents data illustrating these features, delimits the regions in which they appear, and characterizes these two microareas. The data indicate a clear geographical split between those languages in which reflexes of √sañj express this cluster of meanings, which seem to share descent from Gāndhārī Prakrit and possibly other unrecorded MIA varieties, and those which have developed words with similar meanings from √lag.

AbstractWe present initial exploratory work on illuminating the long-standing question of areal versus genealogical connections in South Asia using computational data visualization tools. With respect to genealogy, we focus on the subclassification of Indo-Aryan, the most ubiquitous language family of South Asia. The intent here is methodological: we explore computational methods for visualizing large datasets of linguistic features, in our case 63 features from 200 languages representing four language families of South Asia, coming out of a digitized version of Grierson'sLinguistic Survey of India. To this dataset we apply phylogenetic software originally developed in the context of computational biology for clustering the languages and displaying the clusters in the form of networks. We further exploremultiple correspondence analysisas a way of illustrating how linguistic feature bundles correlate with extrinsically defined groupings of languages (genealogical and geographical). Finally, map visualization of combinations of linguistic features and language genealogy is suggested as an aid in distinguishing genealogical and areal features. On the whole, our results are in line with the conclusions of earlier studies: Areality and genealogy are strongly intertwined in South Asia, the traditional lower-level subclassification of Indo-Aryan is largely upheld, and there is a clearly discernible areal east–west divide cutting across language families.