Oxford Reference Search Results

linguistic palaeontology   Quick reference

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.)

...palaeontology The attempt to relate the vocabulary of a prehistoric language, as reconstructed from descendants that are historically attested, to the time and place or other circumstances in which it may have been spoken. E.g. there are cognate words for ‘horse’ in Greek ( híppos ), Sanskrit ( áśvaḥ ), Latin ( equus ), and other Indo-European languages. From this and other evidence a stem for ‘horse’ ( ek w o- ) is reconstructed for the prehistoric Indo-European protolanguage . One may then look at archaeological evidence of the distribution and...

Germanic   Quick reference

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.)

..., Dutch , English , Danish , Norwegian , Swedish , and others living or extinct. The hypothetical common language, Proto-Germanic, is not directly attested. Traditionally divided into East Germanic ( Gothic ), North Germanic (Scandinavian), and West Germanic ; but prehistoric relationships are now seen as more...

relative chronology   Quick reference

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.)

...One in which events are ordered in time, but without specific dates. E.g. one can deduce from the evidence of attested forms in Sanskrit that a sound change by which [k] > [tʃ] before front vowels must have preceded one by which the front vowel [e] > [a]: but both changes are prehistoric and the times over which they took place are...

Schleicher, August (1821–68)   Quick reference

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics (3 ed.)

...in his reaction to Darwin’s The Origin of Species ( 1859 ), which itself referred to comparative linguistics as a model, and was allied to an interpretation of the typology of languages in which the inflecting type represented a stage of perfection which resulted from a prehistoric period of growth, followed by a historical decay into the analytic (1) type that developed in Europe and elsewhere from the classical and other earlier Indo-European languages. In assessing these ideas one should perhaps note that when Schleicher died he was still in his...

Hittite   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...Animate/neuter gender opposition is present, even down to such complementary plural pairs as warsulis, warsula ‘drops’ resembling La. loci, loca ‘places’. Separate grammatical feminine formations are not found; but the profusion of -i- and -iya- stems points to a prehistoric absorption of feminine noun types into the common gender (cf. Gk. pótnia ‘lady’), rather than to their ultimate non-development. In addition to the expected noun classes (stems in -a-,-i-,-u- , or consonants), Hittite is a marvel of archaism in preserving both basic...

Indo-European Languages   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...of the I[ndo-]E[uropean] family. Two new branches, both now extinct, have been added in the 20th century: Anatolian and Tocharian. The similarities among these languages, attested over nearly four millennia, require us to assume they are the continuation of a single prehistoric common language, spoken perhaps seven thousand years ago, called P [ roto -] I [ ndo -] E [ uropean ]. The systematic investigation of the resemblances among these languages by the comparative method enables us to reconstruct the principal features of the grammar and...

Reconstruction   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...is based on a synoptic point of view and on pluralistic, multidisciplinary strategies of a “conjunctive approach.” Thus linguistically reconstructed tree names can be correlated with reconstructed connotations and with precisely datable pollen remains to yield an overall prehistoric system (Friedrich 1970 :2, 14). To take a second example, reconstructing a mythological universe of meanings, one may enlist philology (e.g. of a key epithet such as ‘laughter-loving’), structural and interpretive anthropology (e.g. the semantic dimensions of the Homeric...

Tamil   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

.... Spoken in southern India and northwestern Sri Lanka from prehistoric times, Tamil ( tamiz̳ ) belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian language family. During its history, especially during the Chola Empire and the British Raj, Tamil was transplanted to Burma, Malaysia, Mauritius, Guyana, and Martinique. The earliest records of Tamil, inscriptions in Ashokan Brāhmī script, date from 200 bce . Its literature, preserved on palm-leaf manuscripts and by rote memory, covers two thousand years. Three stages of Tamil appear in these records: ancient (...

Telugu   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...(Koṇḍa), Pengo, and Manḍa. Culturally, it has had closer links for centuries with the other two literary languages to the south and west, Tamil and Kannaḍa. General references include Krishnamurti 1961 , 1978 , Lisker 1963 , and Krishnamurti and Gwynn 1985 . 1. History Prehistoric changes included palatalization of Proto-SD * k before a front vowel ( i e ); change of the radical vowels i u to e o before C a ; and apical displacement (*V + apical + V → apical + V̄/V). These processes are already attested in early Telugu place names, e.g. * ker̲u - >...

Areal Linguistics   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...Eurasia, primarily its far western edge, and northern Africa show several unusual commonalities (Gensler 1993 ). Gensler cautiously refrains from identifying a causal mechanism. Vennemann ( 2001 a, 2001 b, to appear, and references therein) traces some of these sharings to prehistoric contacts of coastal Europeans with Phoenician seafarers and their cultural antecedents. The Pacific Rim, from New Guinea and Melanesia north along the Asian Pacific coast and south down the American Pacific coast, exhibits several shared features that are uncommon or virtually...

Southeast Asian Languages   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...borrowing Indic ones. Little is known about the earliest inhabitants of insular and peninsular SEA, whose distant descendants are perhaps represented by scattered “relic” populations like the Negritos of northern Malaya, or the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands. Already in prehistoric times, speakers of Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic languages had established themselves throughout the region. Only much later, in the second half of the 1st millennium CE, did speakers of Tibeto-Burman and Tai-Kadai languages filter down into the peninsula. The most recent...

Comparative Method   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...history of a language allows us to exclude borrowing as a cause of similarity. For example, we know that many English words resemble French words because English has borrowed extensively from French since the 11th century. Where language contact is less well documented or prehistoric, similarity resulting from borrowing can be excluded with reasonable certainty by selecting items unlikely to have been borrowed. For instance, words referring to technology or material culture, which are often borrowed along with cultural or technological innovations, may make...

Historical Linguistics   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...of words and grammatical constructions, innovations, or neologisms, and semantic change, including narrowing, broadening, and shifts in the reference of terms. Some changes may be prehistoric, inferable through a study of relative chronology. In other instances, they are at least partially traceable through documents. In practice, both the study of chronology of prehistoric changes and the tracing of changes through documents are used to establish language history. On the theoretical level, historical linguistics is concerned with the typology of possible...

Polynesian Languages   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...that were part of a chief's name became taboo and were replaced by other words, explains in part why the vocabularies of Tahitian and Tuamotuan differ widely from those of other Polynesian languages. The lexicons of Polynesian languages bear witness to language contacts in prehistoric times; thus East Uvean and Anutan have borrowed extensively fron Tongan. Non-Polynesian languages which have exchanged lexical borrowings with Polynesian languages are Fijian and Rotuman (with Tongan), Gilbertese (with Tuvaluan and some Outliers), and many Melanesian and...

Tupian Languages   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...Gavião, Monde, Suruí de Rondônia, Zoró); Mundurukú (Kuruáya, Mundurukú); Ramarama (Karo); and Tuparí (Makuráp, Mekéns, Sakirabia, Tuparí, Wayoró). Three isolated languages represent individual families: Awetí, Puruborá, and Sateré-Mawé. 1. The Tupí-Guaraní family Extensive prehistoric splintering and migration have resulted in great linguistic and geographical diversification within the TG family, which includes the Guaranian languages. Members of this family are, or were, found from the eastern coast of Brazil to Bolivia and Peru; and from Paraguay,...

History of Linguistics   Reference library

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2 ed.)

...his philological and historical accounts of the IE languages were much more advanced (Bynon 2001 ). His general views, however, were far more extreme. For him, languages were real organisms, which had a life of their own; they developed according to natural laws through a prehistoric period of growth, followed by decay and differentiation. “Glottik” or linguistics was a part of natural history, and followed the method of the natural sciences. The Romantic connections between language and culture, or language and history, were rejected. 7. The...

Analogy in Morphology   Reference library

David Fertig

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology

...is often invoked to account for influence among forms within paradigms as well, however, especially in cases of suppletion. The paradigm of the verb ‘to be’, for example, includes forms from two or more originally distinct lexical items in many Indo-European languages. In prehistoric and medieval German, there are a couple of instances where an initial b- (compare English be , been ) has spread to forms that originally did not begin with b- . Old High German 1pl present indicative birum and 2p birut must have developed from earlier *irum , *irut...

Tense and Aspect in Morphology   Reference library

Marianne Mithun

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Morphology

...Uras. ( Daniels, 2015 , pp. 590–591) (17) (18) Daniels points out that the time references of the different past tenses are flexible, but within a particular context, their sequentiality is maintained. The two sentences in (18), for example, portray essentially the same prehistoric time, but the first occurred before the second: the first is a far past, while the second is a historic past. Many languages also have multiple future tenses. In some cases, the number of futures matches the number of pasts. More often, there are fewer futures than pasts. The...