Historical and comparative linguistics Books

This volume illustrates how language revival movements in Russia and elsewhere have often followed a specific pattern of literacy bias in the promotion of a minority's heritage language, partly neglecting the social and relational aspects of orality...

A delightfully unconventional tale of a people, their place in the world, and the fascinating language that held them together.Yiddish is an unlikely survivor of the ages, much like the Jews themselves. Incorporating antique German dialects and elements...

This volume provides a comprehensive reference grammar of Gothic, the earliest attested language of the Germanic family (apart from runic inscriptions), dating to the fourth century. The bulk of the extant Gothic corpus is a translation of the Bible, of...

This monograph is a detailed linguistic analysis of the discourse of German nationalism, colonialism and Anti-Semitism using a methodological framework devised by Ruth Wodak et al., the Discourse Historical Approach. It pays particular attention to the...

From the dawn of the early modern period around 1400 until the eighteenth century, Latin was still the European language and its influence extended as far as Asia and the Americas. At the same time, the production of Latin writing exploded thanks to book...

This volume offers a comprehensive treatment of the historical developments underpinning our present understandings of the relationship between language and the social by integrating the study of language with key strands of sociological theory.//The...

Originally published in 1987, this book shows that there is still considerable continuity in the practices and ideas of marriage in Afican against a background of social and economic change. This book discusses the diverse marriage forms in Africa and...

Qur'anic idiomaticity, in its all aspects, poses a great deal of challenge to Qur'an readers, learners, commentators, and translators. One of the most challenging aspects of Qur'anic idiomaticity is Qur'anic idiomatic phrasal verbs, where significances...

The central theme in any history of texts and books must be that of change and renewal: Parchment that is written on, in one set of circumstances in late antiquity, may in the Early Middle Ages be scraped clean and written on again, leaving evidence of a...

Ugetsu Monogatari, or Tales of Moonlight and Rain numbers among the best-loved Japanese classics. These nine illustrated tales of the supernatural from eighteenth-century Osaka combine popular appeal with a high literary standard. The author expressed...

A collection of essays examining colonial Philadelphia and its surroundings as a zone of cultural and linguistic interchange. Documents everyday multilingualism and intercultural negotiations with special attention to themes of religion, education, race...

Arabic is one of the world's largest languages, spoken natively by nearly 300 million people. By strength of numbers alone Arabic is one of our most important languages, studied by scholars across many different academic fields and cultural settings...

Morris Swadesh, one of this century's foremost scientific investigators of language, dedicated much of his life to the study of the origin and evolution of language. This volume, left nearly completed at his death and edited posthumously by Joel F...

A loanword, or wailaici, is a word with similar meaning and phonetic form to a word from a foreign language that has been naturalized in the recipient language. From ancient times, cultural exchanges between China and other countries has brought and...

Compared with other subdisciplines in Chinese linguistics, children's language acquisition is a significant field with relatively limited achievements. Based on data from a dynamic and developmental corpus, this book is a comprehensive exploration of the...

A History of the Chinese Language provides a comprehensive introduction to the historical development of the Chinese language from its Proto-Sino-Tibetan roots in prehistoric times to Modern Standard Chinese. Taking a highly accessible and balanced...

Generations of students have learned Latin with this classic introductory textbook that remains the most highly regarded and bestselling single-volume of its kind. Wheelock's Latin 7th Edition retains its signature core of authentic Latin...

Each of us bears a unique name given to us at birth. When people use your name, they typically refer to you. But what is the linkage that ties a name to a person and hence allows it to refer? Li's book approaches this question of reference empirically...

From "mad as a wet hen" to "corn dodger" and "hobgoblin," Charles Funk's collections of curious words and expressions are a treasure trove of word origin. In a language where hearse and rehearse have the same root and the word dunce comes from a great...

This collection sheds light on the ways in which corpus linguistics and the use of learner corpora might be applied to the study of academic discourse, revealing linguistic and rhetorical patterns and insights into variation across a range of...

This book delves into the Chinese literary translation landscape over the last century, spanning critical historical periods such as the Cultural Revolution in the greater China region.　Contributors from all around the world approach this theme from...

This book is the first sociological and feminist critique of multicultural theory and practice. Using empirical research, it answers the question: is multiculturalism bad for women? arguing that it is not only bad for (minority ethnic) women, but for...

Jürgen Trabant reads the profound insights into human semiosis contained in Vico's 'sematology' as both a spirited rejection of Cartesian philosophy and an early critique of enlightened logocentricism. Sean Ward's translation makes this work available to...

A Comprehensive and Comparative Grammar of English Creoles provides a detailed, comprehensive description of the morphology, grammar, and syntax of a selected number of English Creoles, including those spoken on both sides of the Atlantic and the Pacific...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as...

The Handbook provides an accessible and authoritative overview of this dynamic and growing area of research. This volume is key reading for all engaged in the study and research of Language, Gender and Sexuality within English Language, Sociolinguistics,...

Some years ago when I. assembled a number of general articles and lectures on probability and statistics, their publication (Essays in Probability and Statistics, Methuen, London, 1962) received a some­ what better reception...

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as...

This book tells the story of the life and work of L. Susan Stebbing (1885-1943), the first woman Professor of Philosophy in Britain, and the author of a number of popular books, including Thinking to Some Purpose (1939). It traces her professional and...

With the backdrop of new global powers, this volume interrogates the state of writing in English. Strongly interdisciplinary, it challenges the prevailing orthodoxy of postcolonial literary theory. An insistence on fieldwork and linguistics makes this...

The 'story' of English is continually re-told and re-written, as more and more people use the language and have a part in shaping the way it develops. Varieties of Modern English provides a critical introduction to the study of regional, social,...

A collection of studies offering an up-to-date analysis of official policies to promote Catalan in a democratic framework in each of the main Spanish regions where it is spoken: Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands.

This collection looks at the growing rapprochement between contemporary theory and early modern English literary-cultural studies. With sections on posthumanism and cognitive science, political theology, and rematerialism and performance, the essays...

Examining identity in relation to globalization and migration, this book uses narratives and memoirs from contemporary authors who have lived "in-between" two or more languages. It explores the human desire to find one's "own place" in new cultural...

Make learning Latin faster and easier with this essential companion to the esteemed classic introductory textbook, Wheelock's Latin. Reflecting the trend toward more active use of classroom Latin, this supplemental workbook focuses on listening and...

Peter McQuillan analyzes a number of key words in the Irish language-duchas, duthaigh, dual, and saoirse-along with derivatives and associated terms in order to reveal their relationships to historical and cultural texts. He demonstrates how the...

This book offers a new perspective on the British experience of the Second World War in Europe, one in which foreignness and foreign languages are central to the dynamics of war-making. It offers a series of snapshots of the role which foreign languages...

This book investigates the historical evolution of figurative language within the framework of cognitive linguistics. It examines how and why metaphors evolve through the ages, and it discusses the role of culture, the patterns of metaphor evolution, and...

It is not easy to have the confidence and competence to manage a pension scheme successfully. In this book, Andrew Clare and Chris Wagstaff provide a uniquely objective and practical guide to the range of markets, investments, tools and techniques to...

A first in multimodal/multisemiotic discourse studies, this collection of original articles by international scholars focuses primarily on texts from non-English speaking contexts. The illuminating insights enhance our understanding of how language and...