Investigating West Germanic Languages
Investigating West Germanic Languages

Author: Jennifer Hendriks

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2024-05-15

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 9027247102

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This volume celebrates Robert B. Howell's wide-ranging contribution as a scholar, mentor, collaborator, and colleague in the field of Germanic linguistics. In addition to investigating present-day or past varieties of Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Flemish, German, and Pennsylvania Dutch, each of the thirteen contributions in this volume explores one or more of the topics found in Howell’s work: (1) Linguistic structure and change (Page, Sundquist, Fagan, De Vaan); (2) Migration, contact, and change (Fertig, Louden, Roberge); (3) Vernacular sources and change (Auer & Gordon, Hendriks, Van der Wal); (4) Historical sociolinguistics: past, present, and future (Van Bree, Crombez, Vandenbussche & Vosters, Lauersdorf & Salmons).

Reshaping of the Nominal Inflection in Early Northern West Germanic
Reshaping of the Nominal Inflection in Early Northern West Germanic

Author: Elżbieta Adamczyk

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2018-04-20

Total Pages: 602

ISBN-13: 9027264414

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The book is a comprehensive corpus study of analogical developments in the nominal morphology of four Northern West Germanic languages: Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon and Old Low Franconian. It examines the patterns of reorganisation of the nominal paradigms, focusing on the analogical interdeclensional shifts of nouns affiliated with historical minor classes. The wide scope and comparative nature of the study facilitate identifying the major patterns of inflectional restructuring, both language-specific and those of a more general character, demonstrating that the process was far from random. By framing the investigated phenomena quantitatively, the study affords insight into the dynamics of the changes, their scope in individual languages, the mechanisms underlying the restructuring process and the factors conditioning it. The book may be of interest to both historical linguists who may appreciate its descriptive aspects as well as morphologists concerned with the mechanisms of morphological processes, especially analogy.

Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics
Investigations in Sociohistorical Linguistics

Author: Peter Trudgill

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-09-02

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1139489798

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In the last five hundred years or so, the English language has undergone remarkable geographical expansion, bringing it into contact with other languages in new locations. It also caused different regional dialects of the language to come into contact with each other in colonial situations. This book is made up of a number of fascinating tales of historical-sociolinguistic detection. These are stories of origins - of a particular variety of English or linguistic feature - which together tell a compelling general story. In each case, Trudgill presents an intriguing puzzle, locates and examines the evidence, detects clues that unravel the mystery, and finally proposes a solution. The solutions are all original, often surprising, sometimes highly controversial. Providing a unique insight into how language contact shapes varieties of English, this entertaining yet rigorous account will be welcomed by students and researchers in linguistics, sociolinguistics and historical linguistics.

Germanic Heritage Languages in North America
Germanic Heritage Languages in North America

Author: Janne Bondi Johannessen

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-08-15

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 9027268193

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This book presents new empirical findings about Germanic heritage varieties spoken in North America: Dutch, German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, West Frisian and Yiddish, and varieties of English spoken both by heritage speakers and in communities after language shift. The volume focuses on three critical issues underlying the notion of ‘heritage language’: acquisition, attrition and change. The book offers theoretically-informed discussions of heritage language processes across phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics and the lexicon, in addition to work on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and contact settings. With this, the volume also includes a variety of frameworks and approaches, synchronic and diachronic. Most European Germanic languages share some central linguistic features, such as V2, gender and agreement in the nominal system, and verb inflection. As minority languages faced with a majority language like English, similarities and differences emerge in patterns of variation and change in these heritage languages. These empirical findings shed new light on mechanisms and processes.

Middle and Modern English Corpus Linguistics
Middle and Modern English Corpus Linguistics

Author: Manfred Markus

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9027203555

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This book brings together a variety of approaches to English corpus linguistics and shows how corpus methodologies can contribute to the linking of diachronic and synchronic studies. The articles in this volume investigate historical changes in the English language as well as specific aspects of Middle and Modern English and, moreover, of English dialects. The contributions also discuss the development of English corpus linguistics generally and its potential in the future. Special focus is given to the continuity between Middle and Modern English – much in line with the linking in previous studies of Middle English and Old English under the generic term “medievalism”. This volume highlights the continual development of English from the medieval to modern period.

On the Formal Syntax of the Westgermania
On the Formal Syntax of the Westgermania

Author: Werner Abraham

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1983-01-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 9027227233

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It has often been noted that Dutch (and Frisian) reflects a particular stage of development between German and English. Phonologically, syntactically and morphologically, Dutch and German are closely related languages. Yet, there remain sufficient morphosyntactic differences in terms of language development. The contributions of this collection focus on the relationships and differences of these neighbouring West Germanic languages.

Investigating Obsolescence
Investigating Obsolescence

Author: Nancy C. Dorian

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1992-09-03

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 9780521437578

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This collection will certainly stimulate further and better co-ordinated research into a topic of direct relevance to sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics.

The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics
The Cambridge Handbook of Germanic Linguistics

Author: Michael T. Putnam

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-04-16

Total Pages: 1207

ISBN-13: 1108386350

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The Germanic language family ranges from national languages with standardized varieties, including German, Dutch and Danish, to minority languages with relatively few speakers, such as Frisian, Yiddish and Pennsylvania German. Written by internationally renowned experts of Germanic linguistics, this Handbook provides a detailed overview and analysis of the structure of modern Germanic languages and dialects. Organized thematically, it addresses key topics in the phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics of standard and nonstandard varieties of Germanic languages from a comparative perspective. It also includes chapters on second language acquisition, heritage and minority languages, pidgins, and urban vernaculars. The first comprehensive survey of this vast topic, the Handbook is a vital resource for students and researchers investigating the Germanic family of languages and dialects.

The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine
The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine

Author: Eric C. Steinhart

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-02-09

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 131624041X

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The German invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War was central to Nazi plans for territorial expansion and genocidal demographic revolution. To create 'living space', Nazi Germany pursued two policies. The first was the systematic murder of millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma, and other groups that the Nazis found undesirable on racial, religious, ethnic, ideological, hereditary, or behavioral grounds. It also pursued a parallel, albeit smaller, program to mobilize supposedly Germanic residents of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union - so-called Volksdeutsche or ethnic Germans - as the vanguard of German expansion. This study recovers the intersection of these two projects in Transnistria, a portion of southern Ukraine that, because of its numerous Volksdeutsche communities, became an epicenter of both Nazi Volksdeutsche policy and the Holocaust in conquered Soviet territory, ultimately asking why local residents, whom German authorities identified as Volksdeutsche, participated in the Holocaust with apparent enthusiasm.