35 research outputs found
Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West
The twentieth century saw intensive intellectual exchange between Eastern and Central Europe and the West. Yet political and linguistic obstacles meant that many important trends in East and Central European thought and knowledge hardly registered in Western Europe and the US. This book uncovers the hidden westward movements of Eastern European literary theory and its influence on Western scholarship
Bindings, boundaries and cuts: relating agency and ontology in photobook encounters
PhD ThesisThe artwork and commodity known as a “photobook” is gaining visibility as an object of creative
practice and cultural economy. It has generally been studied within photographic histories. This
thesis builds alternative ontologies of the photobook as an experiential, social artefact using a
unique methodological assemblage that responds to the object’s hybrid nature.
The enquiry posits that encounters with photobooks are “material-discursive configurations” of
matter, materiality, meaning and context, in which the photobook-object is actualised in relation
to its surroundings and the reader’s sensations and interpretations. The study foregrounds
situated moments of “encounter” between humans and photobooks, which are simultaneously
texts, images, actants and phenomena, to question what roles photobooks perform in different
circumstances – what they do. The research identifies photobook agencies including: affecting
aesthetic art experiences, mediating social and economic relations, and pushing back against
established epistemic regimes.
The study of this messy, boundary object employs counter-hegemonic techniques such as
autoethnography alongside ethnographic data to uncover relational insight into photobook
encounters, analysed through a combined lens of Actor-Network Theory, New Materialism and
Phenomenology. The iterative methodology reveals the research process’ own agency, advancing
the thesis’ argument that more-than-human entities co-produce diverse knowledges. This original
theoretical position produces a multi-faceted analysis of an under-researched artistic medium,
form and genre, which is novel for studies of photographic history and culture, as well as
interdisciplinary object studies.
Through exploring the complexities of a seemingly quotidian book-shaped thing in wide-ranging
personal and institutional encounters, the study fosters a profound, felt awareness of
relationalities between humans and non-humans. This alternative approach shows how
encounters with art objects present new, pluralistic ways of knowing that disrupt habitual
schematic modes of cutting or limiting our experiences of phenomena and things, with
meaningful consequences for rethinking our modes of acting, consuming, feeling and being in
the world.Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnershi
The diachronic typology of differential argument marking
Finnish existential clauses are known for the case marking of their S arguments, whichalternates between the nominative and the partitive. Existential S arguments introduce adiscourse-new referent, and, if headed by a mass noun or a plural form, are marked with thepartitive case that indicates non-exhaustive quantification (as in ‘There is some coffee in thecup’). In the literature it has often been observed that the partitive is occasionally used evenin transitive clauses to mark the A argument. In this work I analyze a hand-picked set ofexamples to explore this partitive A. I argue that the partitive A phrase often has an animatereferent; that it is most felicitous in low-transitivity expressions where the O argumentis likewise in the partitive (to indicate non-culminating aspect); that a partitive A phrasetypically follows the verb, is in the plural and is typically modified by a quantifier (‘many’, ‘alot of’). I then argue that the pervasiveness of quantifying expressions in partitive A phrasesreflects a structural analogy with (pseudo)partitive constructions where a nominative headis followed by a partitive modifier (e.g. ‘a group of students’). Such analogies may be relevantin permitting the A function to be fulfilled by many kinds of quantifier + partitive NPs.</p
Formal approaches to number in Slavic and beyond (Volume 5)
The goal of this collective monograph is to explore the relationship between the cognitive notion of number and various grammatical devices expressing this concept in natural language with a special focus on Slavic. The book aims at investigating different morphosyntactic and semantic categories including plurality and number-marking, individuation and countability, cumulativity, distributivity and collectivity, numerals, numeral modifiers and classifiers, as well as other quantifiers. It gathers 19 contributions tackling the main themes from different theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to contribute to our understanding of cross-linguistic patterns both in Slavic and non-Slavic languages
Elements of Structural Syntax
This volume is now finally available in English, sixty years after the death of its author, Lucien Tesnière. It has been translated from the French original into German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian, and now at long last into English as well. The volume contains a comprehensive approach to the syntax of natural languages, an approach that is foundational for an entire stream in the modern study of syntax and grammar. This stream is known today as dependency grammar (DG). Drawing examples from dozens of languages, many of which he was proficient in, Tesnière presents insightful analyses of numerous phenomena of syntax. Among the highlights are the concepts of valency and head-initial vs. head-final languages. These concepts are now taken for granted by most modern theories of syntax, even by phrase structure grammars, which represent, in a sense, the opposite sort of approach to syntax from what Tesnière was advocating
A Grammar of Eastern Geshiza : A Culturally Anchored Description
This dissertation describes Eastern Geshiza, a previously insufficiently known Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) Horpa language spoken primarily in eastern Geshiza Valley of Danba County in the People’s Republic of China. The approximately 5000 speakers of Eastern Geshiza are categorised as ethnic Tibetans, practice agriculture, and follow the religious traditions of Bön and Tibetan Buddhism. Adopting a functional-typological framework and following an approach that emphasises linguistic ecology, the dissertation aims to anchor the grammatical description to the various contexts of the language.
Eastern Geshiza is currently endangered. Almost all speakers of the language are bilingual: Eastern Geshiza functions as an in-group language while Sichuanese Mandarin, also acquired since childhood, is used for external communication as a regional lingua franca. Knowledge of Tibetan lects and Written Tibetan, however, is low among the speakers. A substantial influx of new lexical loans from Chinese and a gradual language shift towards Chinese among the young constitute issues that will greatly affect both the future shape and vitality of the language.
Eastern Geshiza exhibits complex phonology. It possesses an extensive phoneme inventory that contains 8 fully phonemic vowels and 37 fully phonemic consonant phonemes. The language abounds in complex consonant clusters of up to three members. Eastern Geshiza is morphologically complex. The complexity is particularly prominent in verb morphology that is characterised by an argument indexation system based on accessibility hierarchy and a set of multi-functional verbal prefixes that encode orientation, aspect, and mood. Like many of the other regional languages, Eastern Geshiza is also rich in evidential categories and includes the grammatical category of engagement. Typological peculiarities of the language make it an important source of data for typological research.
The dissertation is based on first-hand field data collected on five major field trips during 2015-18 with the total duration of approximately eight months. The fieldwork was primarily carried out in Balang Village and the surrounding area, the easternmost Geshiza communities closest to Danba County Town. As its theoretical foundations, the description builds on Basic Linguistic Theory and linguistic typology. I hope that this description of the language’s most prominent features will be helpful in advancing our knowledge of Horpa studies and Trans-Himalayan linguistics together with providing new material for linguistic typology and other branches of linguistics.Tämä väitöskirja kuvaa itäisen geshizan kielen. Geshiza on aiemmin riittämättömästi tunnettu sinotiibetiläinen (transhimalajalainen) horpakieli, jota puhutaan pääasiallisesti Geshizan laakson itäosissa Danban läänissä Kiinan kansantasavallassa. Itäisen geshizan noin 5000 puhujaa luokitellaan etnisesti tiibetiläisiksi. He harjoittavat maanviljelystä ja seuraavat uskontoinaan sekä böniä että tiibetinbuddhalaisuutta. Lähestymistavaltaan tämä funktionaalis-typologiseen viitekehykseen nojaava deskriptiivinen kielioppi painottaa kieliekologiaa ja pyrkii ankkuroimaan geshizan kielen sen moninaisiin konteksteihin.
Itäinen geshiza on muuttunut uhanalaiseksi. Lähes kaikki itäisen geshizan puhujat ovat kaksikielisiä: itäinen geshiza toimii ryhmän sisäisenä kielenä, kun taas sichuanin mandariinia, jonka geshizat myös oppivat lapsuudessaan, käytetään ryhmän ulkoiseen kommunikaatioon lingua francana. Tiibetin kielimuotoja tai kirjoitettua tiibetiä ei kuitenkaan tunneta laajalti geshizojen keskuudessa. Suuri määrä uusia lainasanoja kiinasta ja asteittainen kielenvaihto kohti kiinaa nuorten geshizojen parissa ovat tällä hetkellä kaksi keskeistä asiaa, jotka vaikuttavat geshizan kielen tulevaan muotoon sekä sen elinvoimaisuuteen jatkossa.
Itäisen geshizan kielessä on kompleksinen fonologia. Kielessä on laaja foneemi-inventaario, joka sisältää 8 täysin foneemista vokaalia sekä 37 täysin foneemista konsonanttifoneemia. Konsonantit muodostavat laajan kirjon konsonanttiyhtymiä, joissa voi olla jopa kolme jäsentä. Lisäksi itäinen geshiza on morfologisesti kompleksinen kieli. Tämä kompleksisuus tulee vahvasti esille verbimorfologiassa, jossa keskeistä osaa näyttelee saavutettavuushierarkiaan (accessibility hierarchy) perustuva argumentti-indeksaatio ja monikäyttöiset verbiprefiksit, jotka merkitsevät orientaatiota, aspektia, sekä modusta. Kuten monet muut alueen kielet, itäinen geshiza sisältää runsaasti evidentiaalisuuden kategorioita ja kielessä on tämän lisäksi myös hiljattain tunnistettu engagement-kategoria. Kielen typologiset ominaispiirteet tekevät siitä tärkeän lähteen typologiselle tutkimukselle.
Tämä väitöskirja perustuu ensikäden kenttätutkimusaineistoon, jonka keräsin viiden keskeisen aineistonkeruumatkan aikana vuosina 2015-2018. Aineistonkeruumatkojen yhteenlaskettu kokonaiskesto oli noin kahdeksan kuukautta. Suoritin kenttätutkimuksen pääasiallisesti Balangin kylässä sekä sitä ympäröivällä alueella, jotka muodostavat itäisimmät geshizankieliset yhteisöt Danban läänikaupungin läheisyydessä. Teoreettisena pohjana kieliopille toimii Basic Linguistic Theory ja kielitypologia. Toivon, että laatimani kielioppi geshizan keskeisimmistä ominaisuuksista auttaa edistämään horpakielten ja sinotiibetiläisten (transhimalajalaisten) kielten tutkimusta sekä tarjoaa lisäksi uutta materiaalia kielitypologialle ja muille kielitieteen haaroille