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The book investigates the dialectal status of the language of the older runic inscriptions of Scandinavia (AD 200-500) within a framework that encompasses all the early Germanic languages of north-western Europe. The dialect geographical results achieved are compared with the evidence provided by place-name scholarship and by the reports of the classical and post-classical historians as well as by archeological research.
The book is concerned especially with the debate surrounding the grouping of Germanic languages and with the research history of this controversial question. It discusses the methods applied to past attempts and outlines those aplicable to future research in the field.
Looks at the evolution of the English language.
This volume contains revised and, in some cases, extended versions of twelve of the fourteen lectures read at the conference on “Early Germanic Languages in Contact” held at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense on 22-23 August 2013 – with a paper and a review article added at the end on themes pertaining to the aim and scope of the symposium. All papers cover central aspects of the early contact between Germanic and some of its Indo-European and non-Indo-European linguistic neighbours; and, in certain cases, aspects involving internal Germanic language contact.
Artikler om sprogforskeren Otto Jespersens liv og hans videnskabelige indsats
This book, which appeared first in a Danish version in 1980 and subsequently in an English translation in 1986, reverses the history of the English language: it takes present-day English ‘irregularities’ in grammar and spelling as its point of departure, providing historical explanations only to the extent that they illustrate modern forms. A number of comparisons with developments in other Germanic languages are given, not only with Danish phenomena as in the original Danish edition, but also with Dutch and German ones. The authors believe that such comparisons shed light on English language history as well as contribute to make the book more interesting also to students of other Germanic languages.
The handbook is not tied to a particular methodology but keeps in principle to a pronounced methodological pluralism, encompassing all aspects of actual methodology. Moreover it combines diachronic with synchronic-systematic aspects, longitudinal sections with cross-sections (periods such as Old Norse, transition from Old Norse to Early Modern Nordic, Early Modern Nordic 1550-1800 and so on). The description of Nordic language history is built upon a comprehensive collection of linguistic data; it consists of more than 200 articles written by a multitude of authors from Scandinavian and German and English speaking countries. The organization of the book combines a central part on the detailed chronological developments and some chapters of a more general character: chapters on theory and methodology in the beginning and on overlapping spatio-temporal topics in the end.
This book presents a novel framework for studying historical legalisation using quantitative methods, with 10 fully-preserved laws from medieval Sweden, written between c. 1225 and 1350, serving as a case study. By applying a systematic classification scheme to each legal provision, it is possible to investigate the major differences and similarities in structure and content between the 10 laws. This, in turn, allows for the re-assessment of many long-standing problems in Swedish and European medieval legal history that have been challenging to address with traditional methods based on text analyses. Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, major changes in the proportion of legal provisions devoted to different fields of law, and to prescribed consequences, are found. The book shows how the proportions of civil law and public law expanded at the expense of criminal law. Furthermore, a clear transition from casuistic to more abstract law provisions can also be witnessed.
The pioneering work of Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm in the areas of Germanic comparative and historical linguistics, lexicography, philology, and medieval studies places them squarely among the most important figures in the history of the language sciences. The contributions to this volume present a fascinating and timely reevaluation and reaffirmation of the significance of the Grimm Brothers' work in these areas, all of which the Grimms viewed as necessary components in their search for the essence of the German and Germanic Volksgeist.
The use of linguistic forms derived from the lexicon denoting sacred entities is often subject to tabooing behaviour. In the 15th and 16th century phrases like by gogges swete body or by cockes bones allowed speakers to address God without really saying the name; cf. Hock (1991: 295). The religious interjections based on the phonetically corrupt gog and cock are evidenced to have gained currency in the 16th century. In the 17th century all interjections based on religious appellations ceased to appear on stage in accordance with the regulations of the Act to Rest.