161 research outputs found
Language policy and orthographic harmonization across linguistic, ethnic and national boundaries in Southern Africa
Drawing on online and daily newspapers, speakers' language and
writing practices, official government documents and prescribed spelling systems in
Southern Africa, the paper explores the challenges and possibilities of orthographic
reforms allowing for mobility across language clusters, ethnicity, regional and
national borders. I argue that this entails a different theorisation of language, and for
orthographies that account for the translocations and diasporic nature of late modern
African identities and lifestyles. I suggest an ideological shift from prescriptivism to
practice-orientated approaches to harmonisation in which orthographies are based
on descriptions of observable writing practices in the mobile linguistic universe.
The argument for orthographic reforms is counterbalanced with an expose on
current language policies which appear designed for an increasing rare monoglot
'standard' speaker, who speaks only a 'tribal' language. The implications of the
philosophical challenges this poses for linguists, language planners and policy
makers are thereafter discussed.IS
The late acquisition of a major difficulty of French inflectional orthography: The homophonic /E/ verbal endings
Modes of wording direct into indirect speech in intercultural communication
This paper aims to determine the modes of wording indirec
Dynamic Models of Language Evolution: The Linguistic Perspective
Language is probably the key defining characteristic of humanity, an immensely powerful tool which provides its users with an infinitely expressive means of representing their complex thoughts and reflections, and of successfully communicating them to others. It is the foundation on which human societies have been built and the means through which humanity’s unparalleled intellectual and technological achievements have been realized. Although we have a natural intuitive understanding of what a language is, the specification of a particular language is nevertheless remarkably difficult, if not impossible, to pin down precisely. All languages contain many separate yet integral systems which work interdependently to allow the expression of our thoughts and the interpretation of others’ expressions: each has, for instance, a set of basic meaningless sounds (e.g. [e], [l], [s]) which can be combined to make different meaningful words and parts of words (e.g. else, less, sell, -less ); these meaningful units can be combined to make complex words (e.g. spinelessness, selling ), and the words themselves can then be combined in very many complex ways into phrases, clauses and an infinite number of meaningful sentences; finally each of these sentences can be interpreted in dramatically different ways, depending on the contexts in which it is uttered and on who is doing the interpretation. Languages can be analysed at any of these different levels, which make up many of the sub-fields of linguistics, and the primary job of linguistic theorists is to try to explain the rules which best explain these complex combinations
Empirical Evaluation of a Mathematical Model of Ethnolinguistic Vitality: The Case of Võro
El campo de las ciencias y la educación superior entre el monopolio del inglés y el plurilingüismo: elementos para una política del lenguaje en América Latina
Japans Alterung: Ein katastrophaler Erfolg?
Japan altert schneller als andere Industrieländer und hat damit eine wenig beneidenswerte Vorreiterrolle inne. Im Eröffnungsvortrag zum MPIfG Institutstag 2015 widmete sich Florian Coulmas der Überalterung der japanischen Gesellschaft aus einer soziologischen Perspektive. Dabei bereitet er die Problematik nicht nur statistisch auf sondern macht auch die weichen kulturellen Faktoren deutlich, die teilweise die Folgen dieser Entwicklung abschwächen oder auch manchmal die Lösung einiger Probleme behindern
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