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What do linguistics, philology and even cultural studies have in common? There can be many answers for this question; certainly, however, they all have to deal with the new technologies and methods that go by the name of “Digital Humanities”. Today, all human sciences are facing new challenges both from the methodological point of view and from their very scientific contents. Accordingly, the number of research fields and approaches represented in this volume is large, reflecting the complexity of the problems of formalization, computation and digitalization of data and resources. The future of human sciences will be marked by the ever-increasing importance of formal models and computational tools, and the effective communication among the specialists of different fields is crucial for the scientific success of every single area of research. This collection of cutting-edge, high-quality papers is a fundamental step towards a better definition of the role the “Digital Humanities” will play in the next years.
This book aims to address a gap in the existing literature on the relationship between vagueness and ambiguity, as well as on their differences and similarities, both in synchrony and diachrony, and taking into consideration their relation to language use. The book is divided into two parts, which address specific and broader research questions from different perspectives. The former part examines the differences between ambiguity and vagueness from a bird-eye perspective, with a particular focus on their respective functions and roles in language change. It also presents innovative linguistic resources and tools for the study of these phenomena. The second part contains case studies on vagueness and ambiguity in language change and use. It considers different strategies and languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Medieval Latin, and Old Italian. The readership for this volume is broad, encompassing scholars in a range of disciplines, including pragmatics, spoken discourse, conversation analysis, discourse genres (political, commercial, notarial discourse), corpus studies, language change, pragmaticalization, and language typology.
The book deals with the concept of fragmentation as applied to languages and their documentation. It focuses in particular on the theoretical and methodological consequences of such a fragmentation for the linguistic analysis and interpretation of texts and, hence, for the reconstruction of languages. Furthermore, by adopting an innovative perspective, the book aims to test the application of the concept of fragmentation to languages which are not commonly included in the categories of ‘Corpussprache’, ‘Trümmersprache’, and ‘Restsprache’. This is the case with diachronic or diatopic varieties — of even well-known languages — which are only attested through a limited corpus of texts as well as with endangered languages. In this latter case, not only is the documentation fragmented, but the very linguistic competence of the speakers, due to the reduction of contexts of language use, interference phenomena with majority languages, and consequent presence of semi-speakers.
This volume brings together work from leading specialists in Indo-European languages to explore the macro- and micro-dynamic factors that contribute to variation and change in alignment and argument realization. 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 explore synchronic and diachronic aspects of alignment morphosyntax based on data from Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Italic, Armenian, and Slavic. All have a strong empirical focus, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative methods, and range from broad comparative studies to detailed investigations of specific constructions in individual languages. The book is one of very few studies to examine variation and change in alignment typology across languages in a single family. It contributes to a greater understanding of the roles played by analogy/extension, reanalysis, and areal factors in alignment change, and demonstrates the extent of variation found in the morphosyntax of argument realization in genetically-related languages.
This two-volume work contains a selection of papers first presented at the 22nd International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, held in Prague (2023). The papers address important issues in Latin linguistics with a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. The first volume ("Word") contains texts concerning Latin phonology, etymology, flexion and derivation, and lexical semantics, both with respect to individual words and to entire word classes. Both diachronic and synchronic perspectives are employed in the discussion of the various issues. The second volume ("Clause and Discourse") includes papers dealing with issues of syntax and semantics, and with the structure of texts and pragmatic aspects. One of the subchapters, entitled "Conversation and Dialogue", contains papers presented at the conference in a separate workshop of the same name, linked by a common methodological framework of "Conversation Analysis". This book provides essential texts for researchers in the field of Latin linguistics and may also be of use to linguists who work primarily with other languages.
This edited volume pays tribute to traditional and innovative language contact research, bringing together contributors with expertise on different languages examining general phenomena of language contact and specific linguistic features which arise in language contact scenarios. A particular focus lies on contact between languages of unbalanced political and symbolic power, language contact and group identity, and the linguistic and societal implications of language contact settings, especially considering contemporary global migration streams. Drawing on various methodological approaches, among others, corpus and contrastive linguistics, linguistic landscapes, sociolinguistic interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, the contributions describe phenomena of language contact between and with Romance languages, Semitic languages, and English(es).