Bastard Tongues

Bastard Tongues

Author: Derek Bickerton

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2008-03-04

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1429930306

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Why Do Isolated Creole Languages Tend to Have Similar Grammatical Structures? Bastard Tongues is an exciting, firsthand story of scientific discovery in an area of research close to the heart of what it means to be human—what language is, how it works, and how it passes from generation to generation, even where historical accidents have made normal transmission almost impossible. The story focuses on languages so low in the pecking order that many people don't regard them as languages at all—Creole languages spoken by descendants of slaves and indentured laborers in plantation colonies all over the world. The story is told by Derek Bickerton, who has spent more than thirty years researching these languages on four continents and developing a controversial theory that explains why they are so similar to one another. A published novelist, Bickerton (once described as "part scholar, part swashbuckling man of action") does not present his findings in the usual dry academic manner. Instead, you become a companion on his journey of discovery. You learn things as he learned them, share his disappointments and triumphs, explore the exotic locales where he worked, and meet the colorful characters he encountered along the way. The result is a unique blend of memoir, travelogue, history, and linguistics primer, appealing to anyone who has ever wondered how languages grow or what it's like to search the world for new knowledge.


Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue

Author: John McWhorter

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009-10-27

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1592404944

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A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar Why do we say “I am reading a catalog” instead of “I read a catalog”? Why do we say “do” at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Language distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history. Covering such turning points as the little-known Celtic and Welsh influences on English, the impact of the Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, and the Germanic invasions that started it all during the fifth century ad, John McWhorter narrates this colorful evolution with vigor. Drawing on revolutionary genetic and linguistic research as well as a cache of remarkable trivia about the origins of English words and syntax patterns, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue ultimately demonstrates the arbitrary, maddening nature of English— and its ironic simplicity due to its role as a streamlined lingua franca during the early formation of Britain. This is the book that language aficionados worldwide have been waiting for (and no, it’s not a sin to end a sentence with a preposition).


Adam's Tongue

Adam's Tongue

Author: Derek Bickerton

Publisher: Hill and Wang

Published: 2009-03-17

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1429930292

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How language evolved has been called "the hardest problem in science." In Adam's Tongue, Derek Bickerton—long a leading authority in this field—shows how and why previous attempts to solve that problem have fallen short. Taking cues from topics as diverse as the foraging strategies of ants, the distribution of large prehistoric herbivores, and the construction of ecological niches, Bickerton produces a dazzling new alternative to the conventional wisdom. Language is unique to humans, but it isn't the only thing that sets us apart from other species—our cognitive powers are qualitatively different. So could there be two separate discontinuities between humans and the rest of nature? No, says Bickerton; he shows how the mere possession of symbolic units—words—automatically opened a new and different cognitive universe, one that yielded novel innovations ranging from barbed arrowheads to the Apollo spacecraft. Written in Bickerton's lucid and irreverent style, this book is the first that thoroughly integrates the story of how language evolved with the story of how humans evolved. Sure to be controversial, it will make indispensable reading both for experts in the field and for every reader who has ever wondered how a species as remarkable as ours could have come into existence.


Key Terms in Second Language Acquisition

Key Terms in Second Language Acquisition

Author: Bill VanPatten

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2015-11-26

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 147422752X

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The new edition of Key Terms in Second Language Acquisition defines the key terminology within second language acquisition, and also provides accessible summaries of the key issues within this complex area of study. The final section presents a list of key readings in second language acquisition that signposts the reader towards classic articles and also provides a springboard to further study. The whole book has been updated and expanded to take into account a wider range of theories and developments since the first edition. It remains at the top of its game. The text is accessibly written, with complicated terms and concepts explained in an easy to understand way. Key Terms in Second Language Acquisition is an essential resource for students.


The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact

The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact

Author: Evangelia Adamou

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-26

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 1351109146

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The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact provides an overview of the state of the art of current research in contact linguistics. Presenting contact linguistics as an established field of investigation in its own right and featuring 26 chapters, this handbook brings together a broad range of approaches to contact linguistics, including: experimental and observational approaches and formal theories; a focus on social and cognitive factors that impact the outcome of language contact situations and bilingual language processing; the emergence of new languages and speech varieties in contact situations, and contact linguistic phenomena in urban speech and linguistic landscapes. With contributions from an international range of leading and emerging scholars in their fields, the four sections of this text deal with methodological and theoretical approaches, the factors that condition and shape language contact, the impact of language contact on individuals, and language change, repertoires and formation. This handbook is an essential reference for anyone with an interest in language contact in particular regions of the world, including Anatolia, Eastern Polynesia, the Balkans, Asia, Melanesia, North America, and West Africa.


Kisisi (Our Language)

Kisisi (Our Language)

Author: Perry Gilmore

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-10-19

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1119101565

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Recognized as a finalist for the CAE 2018 Outstanding Book Award! Part historic ethnography, part linguistic case study and part a mother’s memoir, Kisisi tells the story of two boys (Colin and Sadiki) who, together invented their own language, and of the friendship they shared in postcolonial Kenya. Documents and examines the invention of a ‘new’ language between two boys in postcolonial Kenya Offers a unique insight into child language development and use Presents a mixed genre narrative and multidisciplinary discussion that describes the children’s border-crossing friendship and their unique and innovative private language Beautifully written by one of the foremost scholars in child development, language acquisition and education, the book provides a seamless blending of the personal and the ethnographic The story of Colin and Sadiki raises profound questions and has direct implications for many fields of study including child language acquisition and socialization, education, anthropology, and the anthropology of childhood


The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact

The Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact

Author: Salikoko Mufwene

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-06-30

Total Pages: 850

ISBN-13: 1009115766

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Language contact - the linguistic and social outcomes of two or more languages coming into contact with each other - starts with the emergence of multilingual populations. Multilingualism involving plurilingualism can have various consequences beyond borrowing, interference, and code-mixing and -switching, including the emergence of lingua francas and new language varieties, as well as language endangerment and loss. Bringing together contributions from an international team of scholars, this Handbook - the second in a two-volume set - engages the reader with the manifold aspects of multilingualism and provides state-of-the-art research on the impact of population structure on language contact. It begins with an introduction that presents the history of the scholarship on the subject matter. The chapters then cover various processes and theoretical issues associated with multilingualism embedded in specific population structures worldwide as well as their outcomes. It is essential reading for anybody interested in how people behave linguistically in multilingual or multilectal settings.


Language Contact, Continuity and Change in the Genesis of Modern Hebrew

Language Contact, Continuity and Change in the Genesis of Modern Hebrew

Author: Edit Doron

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2019-09-18

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 9027262438

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The emergence of Modern Hebrew as a spoken language constitutes a unique event in modern history: a language which for generations only existed in the written mode underwent a process popularly called “revival”, acquiring native speakers and becoming a language spoken for everyday use. Despite the attention it has drawn, this particular case of language-shift, which differs from the better-documented cases of creoles and mixed languages, has not been discussed within the framework of the literature on contact-induced change. The linguistic properties of the process have not been systematically studied, and the status of the emergent language as a (dis)continuous stage of its historical sources has not been evaluated in the context of other known cases of language shift. The present collection presents detailed case studies of the syntactic evolution of Modern Hebrew, alongside general theoretical discussion, with the aim of bringing the case of Hebrew to the attention of language-contact scholars, while bringing the insights of the literature on language contact to help shed light on the case of Hebrew.


Complex Processes in New Languages

Complex Processes in New Languages

Author: Enoch Oladé Aboh

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 9027252572

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In recent years, there has been a new interest in evaluating complex structures in languages. The implications of such studies are varied, e.g., the distinction between supposedly more complex and less complex languages, how complexity relates to human knowledge of language, and the role of the reduction or increase of complexity in language change and creolization. This book focuses on the latter issue, but the conclusions presented here hold of typological complexity in general. The chapters in this book show that the notion of complexity as conceived of in linguistics mainly centres on the outer manifestations of language (e.g., numbers of affixes). This exercise is useful in establishing the patterning of languages in terms of their degrees of analyticity or synthesis, but it fails to address the properties of the inner rules of these grammars, and how these relate to the computational system that governs the human language capacity. Put simply, issues of complexity should not be equated with the complexity observed in surface patterns of grammars alone."


Origins of Language

Origins of Language

Author: James R. Hurford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-03

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 0198701667

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This book offers an accessible overview of what is known about the evolution of the human capacity for language and what sets human language apart from the simple communication systems used by non-human animals. It draws on a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, neuroscience, genetics, and animal behaviour.