ENGLISH

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

By Henning Andersen

Book information

Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Year
2003
ISBN
1588113795, 9781588113795
ISSN
0304-0763
Google Books ID
HNN6q2KQfV0C
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
28 MB (29534089 bytes)
Series
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 239
Pages
viii+292\301
DPI
300
Orientation
portrait
Paginated
yes
Scanned
yes
Time added
2014-05-04 07:20:53

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.

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