Language Studies in India: Cognition, Structure, Variation

Description

This book addresses a wide range of aspects of the study of language in a variety of domains such as cognition, change, acquisition, structure, philosophy, politics, and education. It offers a renewed discussion on normative understanding of these concepts and opens up avenues for a fresh look at these concepts. Each contribution in this book captures a wide range of perspectives and underlines the vigorous role of language, which happens to be central to the arguments contained therein. The uniqueness of this book lies in the fact that it presents simplified perspective on various complex aspects of language. It addresses a wide range of audiences, who do not necessarily need to have a technical background in linguistics. It focuses on complex relations between language and cognition, politics, education to name a few with reference to cognition, change, and acquisition. This book is for researchers with an interest in the field of language studies, applied linguistics, and socio-linguistics. Contents Editors and Contributors About the Editors Contributors Introduction References A Troika For 21st-Century Indian Linguistics: Pragmatics, Cognition, And Language Acquisition 1 Pragmatics: Speech Act Theory, Implicature and the Criticality of Context 2 Cognition: Tool Using, Truth and Narrative 3 Language Acquisition: Is There an EAD? References Linguistic Variation, Discourse, and Culture 1 Preliminary Remarks 2 Significating and Discourse 3 Substance-Driven Study of Form 4 Defaults and Variation 4.1 Verbs Converted from Dyadic Nouns 4.2 Vapid Lexemes 4.3 Variation Across Genres References Variation, Conformity, and Possibility: What WE Are 1 Introduction 2 The Politics of Conformity and WE 3 WE and Globalization 4 Conclusion: Toward a Politics of Possibility Notes References Representation, Narration, and Appropriateness in Hindi–Urdu Fiction References English in India’s Multilingual Ecology: Present-Day Use, Users and Usage 1 Introduction 2 The Multilingual Ecology of India 2.1 Linguistic Diversity of India 2.2 Changing Patterns of Bilingualism 3 Uses of English in India 3.1 Education 3.2 Administration 3.3 Judiciary 3.4 Legislature 3.5 Interstate Link Language 3.6 Media 3.7 Commerce 3.8 Advertising 3.9 Literature 3.10 International Communication 3.11 Religion and Spirituality 3.12 Transportation 3.13 Home Domain 4 Users of English in India 4.1 Variation in the Use of English 5 Usage: How English is Used in India 5.1 Indian English in the Unilingual Mode 5.2 Indian English in the Mixed or Multilingual Mode 6 Summary and Implications References Great Andamanese the Sixth Language Family of India: An Inquiry into the Possible Human Language 1 About the Great Andamanese 2 About the Great Andamanese Language 3 Is Great Andamanese Similar to Other Negrito Tribes of Andaman? 4 A Word About the Topography of the Islands 5 The World of Great Andamanese: Cultural and Environmental 6 The Nature of the Language and the Loss of Narrative Ability 7 What Does the Oral Tradition Symbolize? 8 The Concept of Space 9 The Concept of Time 10 Great Andamanese Comprehend Life in Some Sort of Hierarchy 11 Empirical Classification of the Names of the Great Andamanese Birds 11.1 Ethno-Ornithological Descriptions 12 The Naming of a Person 13 The Naming of a Location 14 The Great Loss of Knowledgebase 15 The Grammar of the PGA 15.1 Typology 15.2 The Sound System 15.3 The Concept of Inalienability and Inherency 15.4 The Basic Seven Divisions of Body and Proclitics 15.5 Possession and Genitive 15.6 Structuration of the Language 16 To Conclude the Discussion References Case and Lexical Categories in Dravidian 1 Introduction: The Importance of Destabilizing Received Knowledge 2 Case: The Traditional Notions and Some New Ideas 3 Lexical Categories: How They Are Generated in Grammar 4 The Dative Case in Dravidian: How It ‘Travels’ 5 Adjective as a Derived Category 5.1 The Distributional Evidence: The Dative Subject Construction 5.2 The Morphological Evidence 5.3 Case Movement and Case Absorption 6 Verb as a Derived Category 6.1 The Dative Case in the Malayalam Verb 6.2 Adjective and Verb: What is the Difference? 7 The Dative Subject/Nominative Subject Alternation in Dravidian 7.1 Case Alternation on the Subject 7.2 The Nominative Subject 8 Sentences with Transitive and Ditransitive Verbs 9 Conclusion References Linguistic and Mental Landscaping in India: Reach and Impact 1 Introduction 2 Definition, Terms and Methodology 2.1 Methodology: Data and Selection 3 Multiple Diversity: Market and Communicative Environment 4 Wall Advertising: Ad-Internal Structure, Typology and Languages 5 Globalization: Two Views and Underlying Strategies 5.1 Think Global and Act Global 5.2 Think Local and Act Local 5.3 Social/Developmental and Service Campaigns 5.4 Globalization and Adaptation: Bridging the Gap 5.5 Patterns of Commercial Discourse 6 Ecological and Other Issues 7 Conclusions References Understanding Quasiregularity and Continua in Language: Beyond “Words and Rules” 1 Introduction 2 Quasiregularities in the English Past-Tense 3 English Orthography: Regulars Plus Exceptions, or Quasiregularity? 4 Summary and Preview 4.1 The Continuum of Context Dependence and Non-compositionality of Meaning 4.2 Discussion 4.3 Objections and Qualifications: Can Connectionist Networks Learn Rules? 5 Linguistic Questions and Predictions 6 Why Has the “Word and Rules” Perspective Remained Dominant? 7 Future Research 7.1 Investigating Language Continua as Distribution 7.2 Integrating History and Communication into Explaining Quasiregularity References Mistakes We Make and Do not Make When We Learn Language 1 Introduction 2 Scrambling and Its Acquisition 3 Scrambling in Child Tamil 4 A Preverbal Focus Position 5 A Post-verbal Topic Position 6 A Prediction that Stands Confirmed About Scrambling a Wh-Word 7 Children Do Make Creative Errors 8 Errors and Grammatical Conservatism 9 Conclusion References Natural Language Processing Meets Deep Learning 1 Introduction: Nature of NLP/CL 2 NLP and Machine Learning (ML) 3 Language Modeling and Word Embedding 4 Importance of “Features” 5 Cognitive NLP 6 Text Classification 7 Basic Neural Network Models 8 NLP as Sequence Processing 9 NLP Meets DNN: An Example Application 10 Summary, Conclusion, Future Work References Language Evolution: Theories and Evidence 1 Introducing a Hard Problem 2 Language—The Object and Its Nature 3 Evolutionary Accounts 3.1 The Gestural Origins 3.2 Language as Adaptation 3.3 Language as Exaptation 4 The Evidence or the Lack of It? 4.1 Paleontological and Genetic Evidence 4.2 Archeological Evidence 4.3 Comparative Animal Behavior Studies 5 Conclusion References A Grammar of Endangerment 1 Preliminary Remarks: Where Lies the Danger? 2 Endangerment and Linguistic Identities 3 Endangerment and Language Surveys 4 Endangerment, Othering and Assumptions 5 The Social Grammar of Endangerment 6 Concluding Remarks References Engaging with a Classical Text from a Linguistic Perspective: A Study of “Bad Language” in Sarala Mahabharata 1 Bad Language: An Explication 2 Bad Language in Sarala Mahabharata: An Analysis Notes References Structure of Language in Multilingual Settings: Some Issues 1 Introduction 2 Multilingual Discourse 3 Discussion 4 Least Expansion Hypothesis 5 Multilingual Person’s Knowledge of Language: Rules 6 Concluding Remarks References The Politics of Language: Politics by Another Name References Language Documentation: Issues and Challenges of Field-Worker 1 Introduction 2 Situating the Issues of Language Documentation 3 Anthropocene: Assertion of Agency by Humans 4 ‘Positioning’: Dualism of Conscious Action and Unselfconscious Motivation 5 Terminological Conundrums—Some Reflections 6 Researcher as Explorer and Explainer 7 Problems of Identity in Singularity 8 Communicative Events in Documentation: Reaffirming the Agency in and Through Language 9 Conclusion References Marathi Relative and Complement Clauses in Nominalization Perspective 1 Introduction 2 Previous Works 3 The Formal Characteristics of the Modification Structure 3.1 Outline of Shibatani’s Theory of Nominalization 3.2 Re-appraisal of Noun Modification in Marathi 4 Conclusion: Clause, Sentence and Nominalization References Language of Religion: What Does It Inform the Field of Linguistics? 1 Introduction 2 Contribution of Language of Religion to Language Analysis (Grammars) 3 The Problematic of Language of Religion in Philosophy: Problems as Pointers 4 Sociolinguistic Approaches to Language of Religion and their Inadequacy 5 A Proposal: An Important Contribution of LR to the Study of Language 6 A Parameter for Differentiating Registers: Registers Can Vary in Their Underlying, ‘Conceptual Reality’ and the System of Its Signification 7 Implications of the Proposal: Religious and Non-language (Language: Toward a Theory of Di-system) References