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642 books match the query 'Linguistics' and 12 start with n

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Naming the World

Language and Power Among the Northern Arapaho

Andrew Cowell

University of Arizona Press, 2018

Naming the World examines language shift among the Northern Arapaho of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, and the community’s diverse responses as it seeks social continuity. Andrew Cowell argues that, rather than a single “Arapaho culture,” we find five distinctive communities of practice on the reservation, each with differing perspectives on social and more-than-human power and the human relationships that enact power.

As the Arapaho people resist Euro-American assimilation or domination, the Arapaho language and the idea that the language is sacred are key rallying points—but also key points of contestation. Cowell finds that while many at Wind River see the language as crucial for maintaining access to more-than-human power, others primarily view the language in terms of peer-oriented identities as Arapaho, Indian, or non-White. These different views lead to quite different language usage and attitudes in relation to place naming, personal naming, cultural metaphors, new word formation, and the understudied practice of folk etymology.

Cowell presents data from conversations and other natural discourse to show the diversity of everyday speech and attitudes, and he links these data to broader debates at Wind River and globally about the future organization of indigenous societies and the nature of Arapaho and indigenous identity.

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Native American Place Names of Indiana

Michael McCafferty

University of Illinois Press, 2007

A linguistic history of Native American place-names in Indiana

In tracing the roots of Indiana place names, Michael McCafferty focuses on those created and used by local Native Americans. Drawing from exciting new sources that include three Illinois dictionaries from the eighteenth century, the author documents the language used to describe landmarks essential to fur traders in Les Pays d’en Haut and settlers of the Old Northwest territory. Impeccably researched, this study details who created each name, as well as when, where, how and why they were used. The result is a detailed linguistic history of lakes, streams, cities, counties, and other Indiana names. Each entry includes native language forms, translations, and pronunciation guides, offering fresh historical insight into the state of Indiana.

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Native Studies Keywords

Edited by Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle Raheja

University of Arizona Press, 2015

Native Studies Keywords explores selected concepts in Native studies and the words commonly used to describe them, words whose meanings have been insufficiently examined. This edited volume focuses on the following eight concepts: sovereignty, land, indigeneity, nation, blood, tradition, colonialism, and indigenous knowledge. Each section includes three or four essays and provides definitions, meanings, and significance to the concept, lending a historical, social, and political context.

Take sovereignty, for example. The word has served as the battle cry for social justice in Indian Country. But what is the meaning of sovereignty? Native peoples with diverse political beliefs all might say they support sovereignty—without understanding fully the meaning and implications packed in the word.

The field of Native studies is filled with many such words whose meanings are presumed, rather than articulated or debated. Consequently, the foundational terms within Native studies always have multiple and conflicting meanings. These terms carry the colonial baggage that has accrued from centuries of contested words.

Native Studies Keywords is a genealogical project that looks at the history of words that claim to have no history. It is the first book to examine the foundational concepts of Native American studies, offering multiple perspectives and opening a critical new conversation.

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New Perspectives on Case Theory

Edited by Ellen Brandner and Heike Zinsmeister

CSLI, 2003

Case is one of the central concepts in modern generative syntax, doing the work of linking arguments to predicates, moving nominal expressions, and in some languages connecting the referential properties of nominal expressions. Different languages, however, make use of overt case distinctions to very different degrees, leaving the principles of case with many open questions. This volume offers analyses of case phenomena in a broad range of languages and frameworks, including some novel approaches to case that will invite much discussion.

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New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South

Historical and Contemporary Approaches

Michael D. Picone

University of Alabama Press, 2015

The third installment in the landmark LAVIS (Language Variety in the South) series, New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Approaches brings together essays devoted to the careful examination and elucidation of the rich linguistic diversity of the American South, updating and broadening the work of the earlier volumes by more fully capturing the multifaceted configuration of languages and dialects in the South.

Beginning with an introduction to American Indian languages of the Southeast, five fascinating essays discuss indigenous languages, including Caddo, Ofo, and Timucua, and evidence for the connection between the Pre-Columbian Southeast and the Caribbean.

Five essays explore the earlier Englishes of the South, covering topics such as the eighteenth century as the key period in the differentiation of Southern American English and the use of new quantitative methods to trace the transfer of linguistic features from England to America. They examine a range of linguistic resources, such as plantation overseers’ writings, modern blues lyrics, linguistic databases, and lexical and locutional compilations that reveal the region’s distinctive dialectal traditions.

New Perspectives on Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Approaches widens the scope of inquiry into the linguistic influences of the African diaspora as evidenced in primary sources and records. A comprehensive essay redefines the varieties of French in Louisiana, tracing the pathway from Colonial Louisiana to the emergence of Plantation Society French in a diglossic relationship with Louisiana Creole. A further essay maps the shift from French to English in family documents.

An assortment of essays on English in the contemporary South touch on an array of compelling topics from discourse strategies to dialectal emblems of identity to stereotypes in popular perception.

Essays about recent Latino immigrants to the South bring the collection into the twenty-first century, taking into account the dramatic increase in the population of Spanish speakers and illuminating the purported role of “Spanglish,” the bilingual lives of Spanish-speaking Latinos in Mississippi, and the existence of regional Spanish dialectal diversity.

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Nineteenth-Century English

Richard W. Bailey

University of Michigan Press, 1998

Jane Austen's English is far different from Virginia Woolf's, but historians of the English language have given scant attention to the ways in which English changed over the course of the nineteenth century. In Nineteenth-Century English, Richard W. Bailey treads new ground by showing the extent to which the language changed as cultural and economic transformations brought us into the modern world.

Six aspects of nineteenth-century English are treated in separate chapters: writing, sounds, words, slang, grammar, and "voices." In each domain, innovation and obsolescence are discussed as they were observed by contemporary writers. Thus Bailey shows how linguistic details gained powerful social meaning in the emergent stratification by class, region, race, and gender of the anglophone community.

At the beginning of the century, the "Italian" sound of a in dance was thought to be an intolerable vulgarity; by the end, it was a sign of the highest refinement. At the beginning, OK had yet to be invented; by the end, it was being used in nearly all varieties of English and had appeared as a loanword in many languages touched by English. At the beginning, mixed forms of English--pidgins and creoles--were little known and thoroughly despised; by the end some of them had become vehicles for Bible translation. As English became a global language, it took on the local color of its surroundings, and proper usage became ever more important as an index of social worth, as a measure of intelligence, and as a gauge to a person's suitability for employment, often resulting in painful consequences. What the language was like changed dramatically. What people thought about the language changed even more.

"The tale that Bailey has to tell . . . is little short of enthralling. Drawing on previously neglected material--novels, magazines, letters and diaries--he shows how the language came into the century a Georgian popinjay and left it a sober-suited man of business, purged of quirks and flashy curiosities. Along the way, Bailey uncovers a language which, while it seems familiar enough on the printed page of a Jane Austen novel, was actually quite different from the English we use today. . . ." --Robert McCrum, Observer (London)

Language changes as time goes by. Modern listeners can barely comprehend Old and Middle English. Although we are able to understand nineteenth-century English, the language changed with the effects of industrialization, urbanization, bilingualism, and growing literacy. In this book, Richard Bailey uses numerous examples and illustrations to demonstrate the changes in English. Furthermore, he identifies the connections between social events and linguistic transformation.

". . . a highly engaging study of a broad and difficult subject. Bailey is an excellent writer--the chapters are well-organized and written in a vigorous style that is buoyed by a wry sense of humor. . . ." --Lexicographia

". . . entertaining, lucid, packed with detail, and refreshingly alert to the arresting quotation. If it is unusual to associate pleasurable reading with the scholarly analysis of language, Bailey also makes clear the serious philological and political implications of his study." -- Times Literary Supplement

Richard Bailey is Professor of English, University of Michigan, and is known internationally as an expert on social and regional varieties of English.

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Nivaclé Grammar

Lyle Campbell, Luis Díaz, and Fernando Ángel

University of Utah Press, 2020

This book offers an extensive description of Nivaclé, an indigenous language spoken in the Gran Chaco region of Argentina and Paraguay. Nivaclé’s phonology, morphology, and syntax are complex; the language has no tenses marked on verbs, essentially no prepositions, and a sizable number of lexical suffixes whose content is so concrete they would be expected to be independent words in most other languages. Nivaclé has a unique speech sound, /k͡ l/, known nowhere else. In some locations where it is spoken, multilingual conversations are the norm. These and other rare traits make Nivaclé an especially fascinating language for linguists, with many implications for language typology and linguistic theory. The book is based on dozens of audio and video recordings of narratives and on hundreds of hours of elicitation and analysis with native speakers. Four lengthy texts are included here to demonstrate the language in action. Scholars—whether in anthropology, folklore, geography, history, or language—will find value in the narratives included here and in the insights into Nivaclé life and culture found throughout the book.

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