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Paleolinguistics
Paleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics. Those who use the term are generally advocates of hypotheses not generally accepted by mainstream historical linguists, a group colloquially referred to as "long-rangers". Background The controversial hypotheses in question fall into two categories. Some of them involve the application of standard historical linguistic methodology in ways that raise doubts as to the validity of the hypothesis. A good example of this sort is the Moscow school of Nostraticists, founded by Vladislav Illich-Svitych and including Aharon Dolgopolsky, Sergei Starostin, and Vitaly Shevoroshkin, who have argued for the existence of Nostratic, a language family including the Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Altaic, Dravidian, and Kartvelian language families and sometimes other languages. They have established regular pho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass Comparison
Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison. The method is rejected by most linguists , though not all. Some of the top-level relationships Greenberg named are now generally accepted, though they had already been posited by others (e.g. Afro-Asiatic and Niger–Congo). Others are accepted by many though disputed by some prominent specialists (e.g. Nilo-Saharan), others are predominantly rejected but have some defenders (e.g. Eurasiatic), while others are almost universally rejected (e.g. Khoisan and Amerind). Methodology The thesis of mass comparison is that a group of languages is related when they show numerous resemblances in vocabulary, including pronouns, and morphemes, forming an interlocking pattern common to the group. Unlike the comparative method, mass comparison does not require any regular or systematic correspondences between the languag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families ( comparative linguistics) # to develop general theories about how and why language changes # to describe the history of speech communities # to study the history of words, i.e. etymology Historical linguistics is founded on the Uniformitarian Principle, which is defined by linguist Donald Ringe as: History and development Western modern historical linguistics dates from the late-18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity. At first, historical linguistics served as the cornerstone of comparative linguistics, primarily as a t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguistics is concerned with both the cognitive and social aspects of language. It is considered a scientific field as well as an academic discipline; it has been classified as a social science, natural science, cognitive science,Thagard, PaulCognitive Science, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). or part of the humanities. Traditional areas of linguistic analysis correspond to phenomena found in human linguistic systems, such as syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences); semantics (meaning); morphology (structure of words); phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures in sign languages); phonology (the abstract sound system of a particular language); and pragmatics (how social con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Martin (linguist)
Samuel Elmo Martin (29 January 1924 – 28 November 2009) was a linguist known for seminal work on the languages of East Asia, a professor at Yale University, and the author of many works on the Korean and Japanese languages. Biography Martin was born in Pittsburg, Kansas on 29 January 1924, and grew up in Emporia, Kansas. During World War II he was trained as a Japanese Language Officer, and was stationed in Japan at the end of the war. After the war, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in Oriental Languages. He graduated in 1947, but stayed on at Berkeley to study for a master's degree in linguistics under Chao Yuen Ren, which he completed in 1949. He then went to Yale University to study for a PhD in Japanese Linguistics under Bernard Bloch. He completed his dissertation on Japanese morphophonemics in 1950 (published as a monograph by the Linguistic Society of America the following year), and was immediately offered a position at Yale Un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri (Frits) Kortlandt (born 19 June 1946) is a Dutch former professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He writes on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in general, and Proto-Indo-European, though he has also published studies of languages in other language families. He has also studied ways to associate language families into super-groups such as controversial Indo-Uralic. Biography Kortlandt was born on 19 June 1946 in Utrecht. Kortlandt, along with George van Driem and a few other colleagues, is one of the proponents of the Leiden School of linguistics, which describes language in terms of a meme or benign parasite. Kortlandt holds five degrees from the University of Amsterdam: * B.A., 1967, Slavic Linguistics and Literature * B.A., 1967, mathematics and economics * M.A., 1969, Slavic linguistics * M.A., 1970, mathematical economics * Ph.D., 1972, mathematical linguistics He obtained his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen described him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Early life Otto Jespersen was born in Randers in Jutland. He was inspired by the work of Danish philologist Rasmus Rask as a boy, and with the help of Rask's grammars taught himself some Icelandic, Italian, and Spanish. He entered the University of Copenhagen in 1877 when he was 17, initially studying law but not forgetting his language studies. In 1881 he shifted his focus completely to languages, and in 1887 earned his master's degree in French, with English and Latin as his secondary languages. He supported himself during his studies through part-time work as a schoolteacher and as a shorthand reporter in the Danish parliament. In 1887–1888, he traveled to England, Germany and France, meeting linguists like Henry Sweet and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugene Helimski
Eugene Arnoľdovič Helimski (sometimes also spelled Eugene Khelimski, Russian: Евге́ний Арно́льдович Хели́мский; 15 March 1950 in Odessa, USSR – 25 December 2007 in Hamburg, Germany) was a Soviet and Russian linguist (in the latter part of his life working in Germany). He was a Doctor of Philosophy (1988) and Professor. Helimski researched Samoyedic and Finno-Ugric languages, problems of Uralic and Nostratic linguistic affinity, language contact, the theory of genetic classification of languages, and the cultural history of Northern Eurasia and of shamanism. He became one of the world's leading specialists in Samoyedic languages. Biography Helimski graduated from the Department of Structural and Applied Linguistics of Moscow State University (1972); completed a Dissertation on "Ancient Ugro-Samoyedic Linguistic Ties" (Tartu, 1979); completed the Doctoral Dissertation on "Historical and Descriptive Dialectology of the Samoyedic Languages" (T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold C
Harold may refer to: People * Harold (given name), including a list of persons and fictional characters with the name * Harold (surname), surname in the English language * András Arató, known in meme culture as "Hide the Pain Harold" Arts and entertainment * ''Harold'' (film), a 2008 comedy film * ''Harold'', an 1876 poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson * ''Harold, the Last of the Saxons'', an 1848 book by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton * ''Harold or the Norman Conquest'', an opera by Frederic Cowen * ''Harold'', an 1885 opera by Eduard Nápravník * Harold, a character from the cartoon ''The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy'' *Harold & Kumar, a US movie; Harold/Harry is the main actor in the show. Places ;In the United States * Alpine, Los Angeles County, California, an erstwhile settlement that was also known as Harold * Harold, Florida, an unincorporated community * Harold, Kentucky, an unincorporated community * Harold, Missouri, an unincorporated community ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Dybo
Vladimir Antonovich Dybo (russian: Влади́мир Анто́нович Дыбо́; born 30 April 1931) is a Soviet and Russian linguist, Doctor Nauk in Philological Sciences (1979), Professor (1992), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2011). A specialist in comparative historical linguistics and accentology, he is well-known as one of the founders of the Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics. Biography Dybo graduated from the Department of Russian language and Literature of the Faculty of History and Philology of State University of Gorky (1954) and postgraduate studies at the department of common and comparative linguistics of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University. Since 1958, he has been working at the Institute for Slavic Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (RAS): senior scientific and technical research fellow, junior research fellow, senior research fellow, leading research fellow; At present, he is the chief researcher at the Departme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Igor Diakonov
Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff (occasionally spelled Diakonov, russian: link=no, И́горь Миха́йлович Дья́конов; 12 January 1915 – 2 May 1999) was a Russian historian, linguist, and translator and a renowned expert on the Ancient Near East and its languages. His brothers were also distinguished historians. Life and career Diakonoff was brought up in Norway. He graduated from Leningrad State University (now Saint Petersburg State University) in 1938. In the same year he joined the staff of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg). In 1949, he published a comprehensive study of Assyria, followed in 1956 by a monograph on Medes, Media. Later on, he teamed up with the linguist Sergei Starostin to produce authoritative studies of the Languages of the Caucasus, Caucasian, Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic, and Hurro-Urartian languages. Diakonoff was honored in 2003 with a festschrift volume published in his memory, edited by Lionel Bender (l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Cuny
__NOTOC__ Albert Cuny (16 May 1869 – 21 March 1947) was a French linguist known for his attempts to establish phonological correspondences between the Indo-European and Semitic languages and for his contributions to the laryngeal theory. He was a student of the French Indo-Europeanist Antoine Meillet ( Faral 1947:277). From 1910 until his formal retirement from teaching in 1937 he was a professor of Latin and comparative grammar at the University of Bordeaux (ib. 278). He continued teaching Sanskrit at the University however for the rest of his life (ib.). He was a correspondent of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (ib. 277). Cuny's place in the development of the laryngeal theory is described as follows by Émile Benveniste (1935:148): See also *Hermann Möller *Indo-Semitic languages *Laryngeal theory The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that: * The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Björn Collinder
Erik Alfred Torbjörn "Björn" Collinder (22 July 1894 – 20 May 1983) was a Swedish linguist who was Professor of Finno-Ugric Languages at Uppsala University. Biography Collinder was born in Sundsvall, Sweden on 22 July 1894. After gaining a licentiate in Nordic philology at Uppsala University, Colinder developed a strong interest in Finno-Ugric languages. Since 1929, Collinder was a docent in Finno-Ugric languages at Uppsala University. He subsequently succeeded his mentor K.B. Wiklund as Professor of Finno-Ugric Languages at Uppsala University. Collinder retired as Professor Emeritus in 1961, and was succeeded by his protégé Bo Wickman. Collinder specialized in the Germanic loanwords in Finnic and Sami. He was a highly productive author of scholarly literature, and also conducted fieldwork among the Sámi people. He is also noted as the translator of a number of works, including Beowulf, the Poetic Edda, the Kalevala, and many of the works of William Shakespeare. Under ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
