front cover of The Medieval Life of Language
The Medieval Life of Language
Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe
Mark Amsler
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication are revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon's sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer's poetry, inquisitors' accounts of heretic speech, and life writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.
[more]

front cover of Mismatch
Mismatch
Form-Function Incongruity and the Architecture of Grammar
Edited by Elaine J. Francis and Laura A. Michaelis
CSLI, 2002
Linguistic mismatch phenomena involve semiotic functions that attach to forms in defiance of grammatical design features. Noun phrases, when used as predicates, provide one example: how do predicate nominals correspond to our theories of what nouns mean? How do such phenomena challenge traditional conceptions of grammar? How do competing theories of the syntax-semantics interface stand up when confronted with mismatch phenomena? Mismatch addresses these questions through the efforts of some of the most original thinkers in syntactic and semantic theory, exploring a wide variety of mismatch phenomena in a broad sampling of languages.
[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
Modern Iraqi Arabic with MP3 Files
A Textbook, Second Edition
Yasin M. Alkalesi
Georgetown University Press, 2006

Modern Iraqi Arabic with MP3 Files is an introductory textbook—suitable for classroom or self-study—for those with no previous knowledge of Arabic or those who know Arabic but want to learn the Iraqi dialect. A detailed discussion of the consonants, vowels, and other characteristics of Iraqi phonetics—including pronunciation exercises on the CD—serves the needs of travelers, businesspeople, diplomats, archaeologists, and scholars who want to learn to speak the language quickly and efficiently.

Using the dialect of middle-class Baghdad, twenty lessons are arranged in a story-like format and are based on everyday travel situations. From arriving at the airport to getting to the hotel, students will learn proper greetings and introductions; how to ask for directions, take a taxi, and tell time; and prepare for daily activities like visiting the bank, museum, post office, and restaurants. The book contains basic dialogue, grammar, vocabulary, drills, and an extensive glossary. A section of idiomatic phrases, accompanied by their cultural, religious, or proverbial explanations, offers insight into current Iraqi culture.

NEW TO THIS EDITION: • Arabic script has been added so the reader has a choice of following the Arabic writing or the transcription in the Roman alphabet. • Four entirely new lessons cover medical care, media (radio, television, and journalism), telephone conversations, and cultural and folkloric tales. • All audio materials from the first edition—plus new audio materials for the new lessons—are included as MP3 files on a CD bound into the book.

[more]

logo for Georgetown University Press
Modern Russian I
Clayton L. Dawson, Vesna Cicin-Sain, and Assya A. Humesky
Georgetown University Press

Stressing the fundamental structural features of contemporary spoken Russian, these eighteen audio-lingual lessons primarily employ imitation and repetition exercises. Also included are reading selections, a pronunciation guide, a Russian-English vocabulary, and an index—all keyed to the first-year studies of a two-year speaking proficiency program.

[more]

front cover of Mopan Maya-Spanish-English Dictionary
Mopan Maya-Spanish-English Dictionary
Charles A Hofling
University of Utah Press, 2011

Charles Andrew Hofling

Smithsonian-Utah Publications in American Indian Languages

Lyle Campbell and Ives Goddard

Linguistics

This is highly valuable dictionary of the Mopan (Mayan) language. In addition to its many entries, it also provides an introductory grammatical description, as well as general dictionary features such as parts of speech, examples, cross-references, variant forms, homophones, and indexes. The book also contains special sections on orthography and pronunciation unique to this important Mayan language, as well as translations into English and Spanish.

The dictionary has the merits well known from other dictionaries of indigenous languages of the Americas, preserving knowledge systems as they are encoded in vocabulary and providing valuable information for numerous fields, including Mayanists, Mesoamericanists, American Indian scholars, anthropologists, historians, linguists, students of Mayan hieroglyphic writing, and members of modern Mayan communities, among others.

This is the second book in the new Smithsonian-Utah Publications in American Indian Languages (SUPAIL) series, a joint venture of the University of Utah Press and the Smithsonian Institution.

[more]

front cover of Morphology and the Web of Grammar
Morphology and the Web of Grammar
Essays in Memory of Steven G. Lapointe
Edited by C. Orhan Orgun and Peter Sells
CSLI, 2003
This collection presents papers in memory of Steven G. Lapointe, a distinguished professor of linguistics at the University of California, Davis, at the time of his death in 1999. Lapointe's work on morphology and its connection to other linguistic subfields was the basis of a workshop held at UC Davis in 2000. This selection of papers from that workshop discusses the relationship of morphology to phonology, syntax, and semantics, as well as the details of modern morphological theory—forming a natural continuation of the intellectual developments in Lapointe et al.'s Morphology and Its Relation to Phonology and Syntax.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter