linguistics Archives

Reflexive Translation Studies

In the past decades, translation studies have increasingly focused on the ethical dimension of translational activity, with an emphasis on reflexivity to assert the role of the researcher in highlighting issues of visibility, creativity and ethics. In Reflexive Translation Studies, Silvia Kadiu investigates the viability of theories that seek to empower translation by making visible its transformative dimension; for example, by championing the visibility of the translating subject, the translator’s right to creativity, the supremacy of human translation or an autonomous study of translation.

Inspired by Derrida’s deconstructive thinking, Kadiu presents practical ways of challenging theories that argue reflexivity is the only way of developing an ethical translation. She questions the capacity of reflexivity to counteract the power relations at play in translation (between minor and dominant languages, for example) and problematises affirmative claims about (self-)knowledge by using translation itself as a process of critical reflection.

In exploring the interaction between form and content, Reflexive Translation Studies promotes the need for an experimental, multi-sensory and intuitive practice, which invites students, scholars and practitioners alike to engage with theory productively and creatively through translation.

Rewriting Language

Inclusive language remains a hot topic. Despite decades of empirical evidence and revisions of formal language use, many inclusive adaptations of English and German continue to be ignored or contested. But how to convince speakers of the importance of inclusive language? Rewriting Language provides one possible answer: by engaging readers with the issue, literary texts can help to raise awareness and thereby promote wider linguistic change.

Christiane Luck analyses five iconic texts from a literary, linguistic and sociological perspective. She shows how Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and Verena Stefan’s Häutungen highlight the issues inherent in the linguistic status quo; Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time and June Arnold’s The Cook and the Carpenter explore the possibilities and challenges of linguistic neutrality; and Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalias døtre reverses linguistic norms to illustrate the link between language and imagination. A focus group study provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of the literary approaches and shows how literary texts can sensitise readers to the impact of biased language. Particularly in the context of education, Luck concludes, literary texts can be a valuable tool to promote inclusive language use.

A Grammar of Gaddi

This is the first long-form descriptive grammar of the Pahari Indo-Aryan language, Gaddi (also called Bharmauri), spoken by the Gaddi people, a traditionally pastoral community now undergoing rapid occupational and lifestyle change. In 2010, the language was considered ‘definitely endangered’ by the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger.

A Grammar of Gaddi begins with an account of the historical and sociolinguistic profile of the community, including a discussion on the vitality of the language. Following this is a detailed documentation of the linguistic properties of the language, with chapters dedicated to the language’s phonetics and phonology, its word classes, its morphosyntax and its syntax. The appendices in the book contain the phonemic inventory of the language, a basic word list, and the cardinal, ordinal, fractional and distributive numerals of Gaddi.

The careful linguistic analysis in the book allows for Gaddi language data to be presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet, with minute morphological glosses for maximum transparency. The book thus serves as a vital resource for public and private bodies, and will be of use to the language community as a basis for primers, textbooks and learning tools.

Sahidic Coptic

Sahidic Coptic was the literary language of Late Antique Egypt during the years 350–800 and the final phase of Ancient Egyptian as a living language, bringing an end to four millennia of written history. Sahidic Coptic texts are among our most detailed written sources regarding: the end of ancient Egypt; Byzantine imperial rule; the early Bible; the development of Christian orthodoxy; Christianity in Africa; religious assimilation and persecution; the origin of mediaeval monasticism; and the rise of Islam.

This concise textbook teaches beginner students the grammar of documents written in Sahidic Coptic, and provides the historical and cultural context required for reading primary sources through informal as well as more formal and religious texts.

There are 20 language lessons followed by 7 chapters of sample reading and a detailed vocabulary list.

Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide

Nowhere on Earth is there an ecological transformation so swift and so extreme as between the snow-line of the high Andes and the tropical rainforest of Amazonia. The different disciplines that research the human past in South America have long tended to treat these two great subzones of the continent as self-contained enough to be taken independently of each other. Objections have repeatedly been raised, however, to warn against imagining too sharp a divide between the people and societies of the Andes and Amazonia, when there are also clear indications of significant connections and transitions between them.

Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide brings together archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians and historians to explore both correlations and contrasts in how the various disciplines see the relationship between the Andes and Amazonia, from deepest prehistory up to the European colonial period. The volume emerges from an innovative programme of conferences and symposia conceived explicitly to foster awareness, discussion and co-operation across the divides between disciplines. Underway since 2008, this programme has already yielded major publications on the Andean past, including History and Language in the Andes (2011) and Archaeology and Language in the Andes (2012).

The Origins of Self

The Origins of Self explores the role that selfhood plays in defining human society, and each human individual in that society. It considers the genetic and cultural origins of self, the role that self plays in socialisation and language, and the types of self we generate in our individual journeys to and through adulthood.

Edwardes argues that other awareness is a relatively early evolutionary development, present throughout the primate clade and perhaps beyond, but self-awareness is a product of the sharing of social models, something only humans appear to do. The self of which we are aware is not something innate within us, it is a model of our self produced as a response to the models of us offered to us by other people. Edwardes proposes that human construction of selfhood involves seven different types of self. All but one of them are internally generated models, and the only non-model, the actual self, is completely hidden from conscious awareness. We rely on others to tell us about our self, and even to let us know we are a self.

Developed in relation to a range of subject areas – linguistics, anthropology, genomics and cognition, as well as socio-cultural theory – The Origins of Self is of particular interest to students and researchers studying the origins of language, human origins in general, and the cognitive differences between human and other animal psychologies.

A Grammar of Elfdalian

Elfdalian is the language traditionally spoken in Övdaln (Älvdalen), central Sweden. Due to its linguistic differences to Swedish, coupled with the determination of the speech community, several attempts have been made to acquire an official recognition of Elfdalian as a minority language in Sweden. However, despite growing interest in documenting and revitalising Elfdalian, it is still regarded as a dialect.

As one of the best-preserved members of a larger but lesser-known Dalecarlian (or Dalmål) sub-branch of the Scandinavian languages, Elfdalian is a unique language to study. The purpose of the grammar is to account for Late Classical, or ‘Preserved’, Elfdalian from linguistic, historical and sociolinguistic angles, and to make the language, including both its archaic and innovative features, accessible to a wider audience.

The grammar has multiple target groups: people in Övdaln who wish to revitalise or reclaim their language in a more original form than the one it was transferred into through language decline and Swedish influence since the beginning of the twentieth century; those who wish to transmit the language to others through preschool, school or adult instruction; and likewise others who wish to study a lesser-known North Germanic language. Linguists may find Elfdalian interesting from the angles of comparative historical linguistics, language structure, as well as sociolinguistics and language planning.

A Grammar of Khowar

This book is the first full-length English-language grammar of Khowar, one of the Far Northwestern Indo-Aryan languages. It reflects more than 30 years of field research by the author, and attempts to capture a snapshot of the language at the end of the twentieth century, a time when this and other small mountain languages in northern Pakistan were undergoing rapid change, the pace of which continues to accelerate.

An introductory chapter presents the language in its genetic, geographical, and typological contexts, and its multi-layered lexicon. There follow chapters on phonology, word formation and derivational morphology, nominal morphology, deictic elements, the verbal system, adjectival modification, adverbial modification, morphosyntax, and morphosemantics. This final chapter is a distillation of features of the language that are central to understanding how it conceives of and portrays the world.

In addition to grammatical analysis and discussion, A Grammar of Khowar features numerous original example sentences, mostly contributed by senior, highly competent speakers of the language. A significant number of examples are drawn from oral texts recorded by the author in several villages. They are presented in roman representation and are accompanied by a complete morphological analysis and English translation.

Additionally, an Appendix contains a 30-page sample text, presented first in Khowar’s Perso-Arabic script then by roman-based morphological analysis and an English translation by the author.

A Grammar of Akajeru

A Grammar of Akajeru describes aspects of the grammatical system and lexicon of Akajeru, a traditional dialect of the North Andamanese language, as it was reportedly used around the beginning of the twentieth century. It is based primarily on the fragments of this variety provided by the British anthropologist Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown and scattered among the published results of his anthropological research carried out on the islands between 1906 and 1908. These are supplemented by published lists of 46 anatomical terms and 28 toponyms collected by Edward Horace Man, Officer in Charge of the Andamanese 1875–79.

The book provides a linguistic analysis of all the extant Akajeru material, plus items identified by Radcliffe-Brown as ‘North Andaman’ without further specification, his few records of Akabo and Akakhora and Man’s few records of Akakhora, which together constitute all the documentation of these other traditional North Andamanese dialects. It includes a grammatical sketch of Akajeru, a list of all the words that were recorded, together with an English-Akajeru finder list, and a comparison between Akajeru and Present-day Andamanese, an Akajeru-based variety with elements from all the other traditional dialects of North Andamanese that is today remembered by only three people.

Elements, Government, and Licensing

Elements, Government, and Licensing brings together new theoretical and empirical developments in phonology. It covers three principal domains of phonological representation: melody and segmental structure; tone, prosody and prosodic structure; and phonological relations, empty categories, and vowel-zero alternations. Theoretical topics covered include the formalisation of Element Theory, the hotly debated topic of structural recursion in phonology, and the empirical status of government.
In addition, a wealth of new analyses and empirical evidence sheds new light on empty categories in phonology, the analysis of certain consonantal sequences, phonological and non-phonological alternation, the elemental composition of segments, and many more. Taking up long-standing empirical and theoretical issues informed by the Government Phonology and Element Theory, this book provides theoretical advances while also bringing to light new empirical evidence and analysis challenging previous generalisations.
The insights offered here will be equally exciting for phonologists working on related issues inside and outside the Principles & Parameters programme, such as researchers working in Optimality Theory or classical rule-based phonology.