Language Contacts in Prehistory
Studies in Stratigraphy. Papers from the Workshop on Linguistic Stratigraphy and Prehistory at the Fifteenth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 17 August 2001
Published on 28. April 2003
Book
Hardback
292 pages
978-1-58811-379-5 (ISBN)
Description
Every language includes layers of lexical and grammatical elements that entered it at different times in the more or less distant past. Hence, for periods preceding our earliest historical documentation, linguistic stratigraphy - the systematic study of such layers - may yield information about the prehistory of a given tradition of speaking in a variety of ways. For instance, irregular phonological reflexes may be evidence of the convergence of diverse dialects in the formation of a language, and layers of material from different source languages may form a record of changing cultural contacts in the past. In this volume are discussed past problems and current advances in the stratigraphy of Indo-European, African, Southeast Asian, Australian, Oceanic, Japanese, and Meso-American languages.
Reviews / Votes
[...] offers refreshing new approaches to the methodology of linguistic stratigraphy. -- Adam Hyllested, in Acta Linguistica, Vol. 36-2004More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 245 mm
Width: 164 mm
Weight
510 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-58811-379-5 (9781588113795)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Content
1. Preface; 2. Introduction (by Andersen, Henning); 3. Indo-European; 4. Stratum and shadow: A genealogy of stratigraphy theories from the Indo-European West (by Mees, Bernard); 5. Slavic and the Indo-European migrations (by Andersen, Henning); 6. The development of the perfect in Indo-European: Stratigraphic evidence of prehistoric areal influence (by Drinka, Bridget); 7. Africa; 8. Stratigraphy in African historical linguistics (by Ehret, Christopher); 9. Stratigraphy and prehistory: Bantu Zone F (by Masele, B.F.Y.P.); 10. Language contacts in Nilo-Saharan prehistory (by Ehret, Christopher); 11. Southeast Asia; 12. Evidence for Austroasiatic strata in Thai (by Diller, Anthony); 13. Australia; 14. Millers and mullers: The archaeo-linguistic stratigraphy of technological change in holocene Australia (by McConvell, Patrick); 15. Oceania; 16. Loanword strata in Rotuman (by Schmidt, Hans); 17. Japan; 18. Substratum and adstratum in prehistoric Japanese (by Unger, J. Marshall); 19. Meso-America; 20. Uto-Aztecan in the linguistic stratigraphy of Mesoamerican prehistory (by Dakin, Karen); 21. Language Index