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The area around the Baltic Sea has for millennia been a meeting-place for people of different origins. Among the circum-Baltic languages, we find three major branches of Indo-European Baltic, Germanic, and Slavic, the Baltic-Finnic languages from the Uralic phylum and several others. The circum-Baltic area is an ideal place to study areal and contact phenomena in languages. The present set of two volumes look at the circum-Baltic languages from a typological, areal and historical perspective, trying to relate the intricate patterns of similarities and dissimilarities to the societal background. In Volume I, surveys of dialect areas and language groups bear witness to the immense linguistic diversity in the area with special attention to less well-known languages and language varieties and their contacts.
TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.
Dialects are constantly changing, and due to increased mobility in more recent years, European dialects have 'levelled', making it difficult to distinguish a native of Reading from a native of London, or a native of Bonn from a native of Cologne. This comprehensive study brings together a team of leading scholars to explore all aspects of recent dialect change, in particular dialect convergence and divergence. Drawing on examples from a wide range of European countries - as well as areas where European languages have been transplanted - they examine a range of issues relating to dialect contact and isolation, and show how sociolinguistic conditions differ hugely between and within European countries. Each specially commissioned chapter is based on original research, giving an overview of work on that particular area and presenting case studies to illustrate the issues discussed. Dialect Change will be welcomed by all those interested in sociolinguistics, dialectology, the relevance of language variation to formal linguistic theories, and European languages.
Ethnographic studies trace the background to and impact of urbanisation and Christianisation, and the development of royal power, which stimulated the transition from the Viking age to the medieval period. Using the evidence of archaeology, poetry, legal texts and annals, this volume investigates the social, economic and symbolic structures of early Scandinavia at the time of the Viking expansion. The contributors provide an outlineethnography, covering dwellings and settlements, kinship and social relations, law, political structures and external relations, rural and urban economies, and the ideology of warfare. The topics are discussed through case-studies, illustrating the changing schola...
How we address one another says a great deal about our social relationships and which groups in society we belong to. This edited volume examines address choices in a range of everyday interactions taking place in Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Italian and the two national varieties of Swedish, Finland Swedish and Sweden Swedish. The chapter 'Introduction: Address as Social Action Across Cultures and Contexts' is oepn access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.
This volume gives an up-to-date account of various situations of language contact and multilingualism in Europe especially from a historical point of view. Its ten contributions present newly collected data from different parts of the continent seen through diverse theoretical perspectives. They show a richness of topics and data that not only reveal numerous historical and sociological facts but also afford considerable insight into possible effects multilingualism and language contact might have on language change. The collection begins its journey through Europe in the British Isles. Then it turns to northern Europe and looks at how multilingualism worked in three towns that are all marke...
This book is a collection of innovative studies on language contact. It contains novel works on unexplored issues related to language contact in different settings and aims to contribute multi-perspective insights to the current state of the art on language contact. Novel approaches to contact-related change, variation, attrition, and emergence of new varieties are explored from the lens of sociolinguistic, typological, synchronic, and diachronic perspectives. The contact settings vary from official and majority languages to minority, endangered and/or non-official varieties in different parts of the world.
This volume fills an important gap in exploring English in the domains of business and commerce through the prism of sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, as opposed to analyzing business genres or taking a linguodidactic approach. It expands the regional coverage of English in Europe, with several studies based in Central Europe, and also considers contexts which interact with Europe even though they are physically outside of it (Asia, Africa). It addresses English as just one of several languages at play in the ecology of the countries. It focuses not only on the position of languages as declared in documents of various organizations, that is, language policy, but also everyday l...
Open publicationThe Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The book supplies profiles of the language families of Europe, including the sign languages. It also discusses the areal typology, paying attention to the Standard Average European, Balkan, Baltic and Mediterranean convergence areas. Separate chapters deal with the old and new minority languages and with non-standard varieties. A major focus is language politics and policies, including discussions of the special status of English, the relation between language and the church, language and the school, and standardization. The history of European linguistics is another focus as is the history of multilingual European 'empires' and their dissolution. The volume is especially geared towards a graduate and advanced undergraduate readership. It has been designed such that it can be used, as a whole or in parts, as a textbook, the first of its kind, for graduate programmes with a focus on the linguistic (and linguistics) landscape of Europe.
The Evangelium Nicodemi, or Gospel of Nicodemus, was the most widely circulated apocryphal writing in medieval Europe. It depicted the trial, Passion, and crucifixion of Christ as well as his Harrowing of Hell. During the twelfth-century renaissance, some exemplars of the Evangelium Nicodemi found their way to Iceland where its text was later translated into the vernacular and known as Niðrstigningar saga. Dario Bullitta has embarked on a highly fascinating voyage that traces the routes of transmission of the Latin text to Iceland and continental Scandinavia. He argues that the saga is derived from a less popular twelfth-century French redaction of the Evangelium Nicodemi, and that it bears the exegetical and scriptural influences of twelfth-century Parisian scholars active at Saint Victor, Peter Comestor and Peter Lombard in particular. By placing Niðrstigningar saga within the greater theological and homiletical context of early thirteenth-century Iceland, Bullitta successfully adds to our knowledge of the early reception of Latin biblical and apocryphal literature in medieval Iceland and provides a new critical edition and translation of the vernacular text.