Books on the topic 'Diachronic basins'

The collective monograph is devoted to the problems of the theory and practice of nationally-oriented language teaching as a means of intercultural communication, taking into account the native culture of the adressee. The presented work - in synchronous and diachronic plans - sets out the basic principles of learning and teaching language in the aspect of culture laid down by the scientific school of Pushkin state Russian language institute. Addressed to researchers, graduate students and students of philology, teachers of foreign languages and all those who are interested in the problems of linguoculturology and intercultural communication.

This essay appeals to self-governance to explain why basic planning norms—both synchronic and diachronic—are norms of practical rationality. The best rationale of her own plan-infused practical thinking that is available to a reflective planning agent who has the capacity for self-governance involves a tight connection between plan rationality and conditions of self-governance, both synchronic and diachronic. This leads to the idea that there is rational pressure not only in the direction of forms of coherence involved in a planning agent’s self-governance, both at a time and over time, but also in the direction of an end of one’s diachronic (and so, synchronic) self-governance. This is because that end is central to a planning agent’s diachronic self-governance, given the role of that end in willpower that coheres with such diachronic self-governance. While this end is not essential to agency per se, it is a rationally self-sustaining element of a stable reflective equilibrium that involves basic planning norms.

Is there a diachronic rationality constraint on an agent’s intentions over time, one that favors stability of intention? I argue that there is reason to think that there is some such diachronic rationality constraint and that a plausible approach to this matter draws on our understanding of a planning agent’s self-governance over time. On natural assumptions, we normally have a reason of diachronic self-governance to conform to this constraint. This argues against what we can call brute shuffling in cases (of a sort discussed by John Broome) of continued incomparability over time. And we can embrace this norm without endorsing unacceptable forms of bootstrapping of normative reasons. In this way we extend the self-governance strategy for supporting basic norms of plan rationality from a focus on synchronic norms to this focus on a diachronic norm.

Figurines are ubiquitous during the Early to Middle Formative (1400–500 bc) throughout the Mesoamerican highlands. As materializations of embodiment, figurines represent productions and performances of cultural practices. Two theses are pursued in this chapter: synchronic juxtapositions in figurine style evince strategies and negotiations of social actors, referencing identity, gender, social norms, affiliation, status and rank, and/or ethnicity, while diachronic changes in figurine frequency and style may reflect larger societal processes. Through comparisons of excavated Early and Middle Formative figurine assemblages from two major highland regions, the southern highlands (the Valleys of Oaxaca and Nochixtlán) and the central highlands (the Basin of Mexico, Puebla, and Morelos), as well as brief comparative detours to Olmec-style figurines from the Gulf Coast and Mokaya figurines from Soconusco, the chapter explores entanglements between synchronic aesthetic negotiations and diachronic changes in figurines and socio-political transformations.

This introduction explains the background for present concerns with a deeper understanding and defense of basic norms of plan rationality, both synchronic and diachronic. It gives an overview of the defense adumbrated in these essays: one that involves but goes beyond appeal to pragmatic benefits of general forms of practical thinking involved in our planning agency. A central idea is that these planning norms track conditions of a planning agent’s self-governance, both synchronic and diachronic. The reflective significance of this tracking thesis depends on an end of one’s self-governance over time. While this end is not essential to agency, it is a rationally self-sustaining keystone of a stable reflective equilibrium involving basic planning norms. It is thereby in a position to play a role in our planning framework that is analogous to the role of concern with quality of will in the framework of reactive attitudes, as understood by Peter Strawson.

This chapter provides an overview of the diachronic development of the left periphery in German. It introduces the OV/V2 asymmetry as a basic property of continental West Germanic syntax, as well as the components of the verb-second rule. On this basis, it surveys the rise of verb-second, elaborating on state-of-the-art in the beginning of the attestation, on the relation between V2 and the emergence of complementizers in Germanic, as well as on the role of Germanic sentence particles in the left periphery of the clause. In addition, orders challenging the validity V2 in German—such as verb-first, verb-third, and verb-final orders—are discussed. The chapter also discusses the role of information structure in movement to the left periphery, as well as the emergence of a special class of adverbial connectives, which develop from low adverbs and acquire a special status with respect to the left periphery.

This chapter considers how a modern reader can make sense of a medieval text, but also to have an aesthetic and emotional reaction to the text. It deploys insights from neuroscientific work on emotion in mental processing, the psychology and history of emotions, and cognitive poetic approaches to the aesthetics of reading, to consider how poetic language use interacts with cognitive structures and processes. By using a new diachronic perspective, this chapter explores the shared cognitive basis of meaning and feeling in short (translated) elegiac poems written over 1,000 years ago in Old English. It demonstrates that readerly emotional investment arises from linguistic features, including metaphoric language and affective triggers, to produce a literary effect. By tracing the interaction of affective and interpretive processes, this chapter considers the shared cognitive/emotional basis of meaning-making in both proximate and distant literary responses and broadens the scope of inquiries into cognition and poetics.

Chapter 6 summarizes the main contributions of the book, as well as topics for future research. From an empirical point of view, the book has shown that four distinct macro-typologies of verb movement can be identified which can be predicted on the basis of independent morphological properties of the languages under investigation, thus casting new light on the long-debated issue of the interplay between ‘rich’ morphology and verb movement. From a methodological point of view, the volume has shown the importance of formulating analyses which are not language-specific but have a wider empirical basis. From a theoretical perspective, it has underlined the advantages of using a hybrid minimalist-cartographic framework. Questions for future research include whether it is possible to extend and adapt the present approach to other language families, such as Germanic, and investigating whether the proposed approach makes the correct predictions once diachronic variation too is taken into account.

Abstract This volume advances research on diachronic alignment typology across the Indo-European family, showing the breadth and fertility of this field. It brings together contributions from leading specialists in Indo-European languages to explore the macro- and micro-dynamic factors contributing to variety and change in alignment and argument realisation. The chapters included in the book explore synchronic and diachronic dimensions of alignment morphosyntax based on a broad range of data from Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic (including Romance), Armenian, and Slavic. Few existing studies deal with variation and change in the alignment typology across languages belonging to one linguistic family, and the present volume aims to fill this gap. Alignment is taken to include both basic alignment patterns associated with major construction types as well as various valency-decreasing constructions, such as passives, anticausatives, and impersonals. The chapters range from broad comparative studies based on data from several branches to careful studies of specific constructions in individual languages, with a strong empirical focus, partly drawing on qualitative and partly on quantitative methods. The volume contributes to a more precise understanding of the respective roles played by analogy/extension, reanalysis, and areal factors in alignment change, demonstrating the versatility of argument realisation morphosyntax in genetically related languages.

This chapter investigates the suspicion among New Testament scholars that the author (or the authors) of the Gospel (and Epistles) of John used already written sources which he himself (or they themselves) did not write. Various models of Johannine source criticism are sketched on the basis of selected examples. The chapter delineates the weaknesses and strengths of the source-critical approach on its own terms and to draw conclusions from them for future work. The critical evaluation shows above all that the issue of the literary and non-literary (oral) pre-history of the Johannine writings (‘diachronic’ investigation of the texts) remains an important consideration in Johannes research. Nevertheless, this approach has in the future to take into account more prominently than before the final text and its design (‘synchronic’ investigation of the texts).

Over roughly the last decade, there has been a notable rise in new research on historical German syntax in a generative perspective. This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of this thriving new line of research by leading scholars in the field, combining it with new insights into the syntax of historical German. It is the first comprehensive and concise generative historical syntax of German covering numerous central aspects of clause structure and word order, tracing them throughout various historical stages. Each chapter combines a solid empirical basis and valid descriptive generalizations with reference also to the more traditional topological model of the German clause with a detailed discussion of theoretical analyses couched in the generative framework. The volume is divided into three parts according to the main parts of the clause: the left periphery dealing with verbal placement and the filling of the prefield (verb second, verb first, verb third orders) as well as adverbial connectives; the middle field including discussion of pronominal syntax, order of full NPs and the history of negation; and the right periphery with chapters on basic word order (OV/VO), prosodic and information-structural factors, and the verbal complex including the development of periphrastic verb forms and the phenomena of IPP (infinitivus pro participio) and ACI (accusativus cum infinitivo). This book thus provides a convenient overview of current research on the major issues concerning historical German clause structure both for scholars interested in more traditional description and for those interested in formal accounts of diachronic syntax.

Drawing on ideas of Wittgenstein’s and of Merleau-Ponty’s, this chapter presents a conception of language on which the method of cases—even after contextualist amendments—is fundamentally misguided and liable to lead us astray. The alternative conception combines context-sensitivity with pragmatist non-representationalism, or what Huw Price has called “functional pluralism,” while at the same time emphasizing the synchronic and diachronic plasticity of language. Following Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, as well as Austin, it argues that the basic unit of linguistic sense is the speech act, an act wherein a speaker—drawing more or less creatively on the history of her language—positions herself significantly by means of words, in relation to others and in a world shared with others. This sort of positioning is precisely what we do not do—or even so much as simulate—when we give our answers to the theorist’s questions.

Demokratie wird im Wesentlichen durch Kommunikation und Argumentation konstituiert und legitimiert. Dieses Aushandeln von Entscheidungen steht im Fokus verschiedener Erscheinungsformen von Politikkritik, die in der Sprachwissenschaft inzwischen selbst ein Thema der Forschung geworden ist. Der vorliegende Band dokumentiert die Vorträge, die bei der Arbeitstagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Sprache in der Politik zum Thema »Protest – Parteienschelte – Politikverdrossenheit: Politikkritik in der Demokratie« vom 7. bis 9. Mai 2015 an der Universität Trier gehalten worden sind. Die Autoren und Autorinnen des Sammelbandes nähern sich dem Gegenstand »Politikkritik in der Demokratie« aus unterschiedlichen, interdisziplinären Perspektiven: Im ersten Teil des Bandes wird Politikkritik aus sprach- und literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht diachronisch betrachtet. Im zweiten, umfangreicheren Abschnitt des Sammelbandes »Kommunikative Praktiken und sprachliche Strategien der Politikkritik heute« werden aus sprach- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Perspektive unterschiedliche Facetten kommunikativer Praktiken und sprachlicher Strategien von Politikkritik an konkreten Beispielen erläutert. Die Beiträge des dritten Teils analysieren den Untersuchungsgegenstand länderübergreifend. Die Beiträge stellen eine Basis für die weitere Erforschung eines zentralen Gegenstands der Politolinguistik dar.

This handbook offers an in depth and comprehensive state of the art survey of the linguistic domains of modality and mood and examines the full range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the phenomena involved. Following an opening section that provides an introduction and historical background to the topic, the volume is divided into five parts. Parts 1 and 2 present the basic linguistic facts about the systems of modality and mood in the languages of the world, covering the semantics and the expression of different subtypes of modality and mood respectively. The authors also examine the interaction of modality and mood, mutually and with other semantic categories such as aspect, time, negation, and evidentiality. In Part 3, authors discuss the features of the modality and mood systems in five typologically different language groups, while chapters in Part 4 deal with wider perspectives on modality and mood: diachrony, areality, first language acquisition, and sign language. Finally, Part 5 looks at how modality and mood are handled in different theoretical approaches: formal syntax, functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar, and formal semantics.

As any quick survey of the syntactic literature will show, there are almost as many different views of ergativity as there are so-called ergative languages (languages whose basic clause structure instantiates an ergative case-marking or agreement pattern). While ergativity is sometimes referred to as a typological characteristic of languages, research on the phenomenon has made it more and more clear that (a) languages do not fall clearly into one or the other of the ergative/absolutive vs. nominative/accusative categories and (b) ergative characteristics are not consistent from language to language. This volume contributes to both the theoretical and descriptive literature on ergativity and adds results from experimental investigations of ergativity. The chapters cover overview approaches within generative, typological, and functional paradigms, as well as approaches to the core morpho-syntactic building blocks of an ergative construction (absolutive case and licensing, and ergative case and licensing); common related constructions (anti-passive); common related properties (split-ergativity, syntactic vs. morphological ergativity, word order, the interaction of agreement patterns and ergativity); and extensions and permutations of ergativity (nominalizations, voice systems). While the editors all work within the generative framework and investigate the syntactic properties of ergativity through fieldwork, and many of the chapters represent similar research, there are also chapters representing different frameworks (functional, typological) and different approaches (experimental, diachronic). The theoretical chapters touch on many different languages representing a wide range of language families, and there are sixteen case studies that are more descriptive in nature, attesting to both the pervasiveness and diversity of ergative patterns.

What Happened to governance in Kashmir? studies the state of Jammu and Kashmir from the perspective of an ‘exceptional state’ rather than a ‘normal state’, a periphery on the margins of the centre, and thus shifts the focus from the central grid to the local arena. It contains a mass of information on what successive governments did to manage the conflicted state of Jammu and Kashmir. It identifies the various issues and problems the state has been confronted with since the transfer of power to ‘popular’ government in 1948 to 1989. The book makes a critical study of the engagement of Indian state and its clientele governments and patronage democracies with political instability to create ‘order’ in ‘durable disorder’. With having examined the different political, military, legal, economic, social, and cultural strategies, instruments and tactics employed by the state at different times to suit changing environments, this is the first work on post 1947 Kashmir which brings together many capital dimensions of state, politics, and governance in Kashmir under one cover. While critically delineating the doings of the governments, the book does not only provide flesh and blood to some existing narratives, it also modifies and even refutes some of the long held assumptions on the basis of hitherto unexamined evidence. All in all, the book illuminates the reader about the policies of Indian state towards Kashmir and the extent the successive governments have succeeded in winning the emotional integration of Kashmiris with the Indian Union. As Sheikh Abdullah was a central figure of Kashmir politics and governance, the readers will find a refreshingly new light on his governance when he was in power, and a most influential agency to mould the public opinion when he was out of state power. Similar revealing information on the other governments are documented for the first time. Having studied each government in its own right, we find the governance characterized by change in continuity. Indeed, governance in Kashmir does not constitute one single development. In essence it is a diachronic assemblage, a composite result of different systems each with its own internal or imposed coherence moving at different speeds—some are stable, some move slowly, and some wear themselves out more quickly depending on various forces and factors. What Happened to Governance in Kashmir? is a telling tale on the state of governance in Kashmir; the policies and strategies adopted by Indian state and the successive patronage governments to grapple with the multifarious problems of the state. Kashmir is an ailing state. It is the victim of colonialism and partition, which subverted its geographical centrality with serious economic implications besides making it a permanent conflict state causing immense human and material loss. Besides being claimed by India, Pakistan, and Kashmiris, it is also a rainbow state very difficult to manage with various ethno-regional and sub-regional nationalities at cross-purposes. Added to this, it is a dependent state. This book situates governance in its total milieu and examines the governance in the framework of challenge and response continuum. It unfolds how in a conflict state like Kashmir democracy and governance is always guided and controlled. This is the first comprehensive book on the post 1947 governance in Kashmir.