This thesis discusses the earliest Iranian loanwords in Tocharian, a branch of two Indo-European languages spoken in Western China during the first millennium of our era, as well as an early... Show moreThis thesis discusses the earliest Iranian loanwords in Tocharian, a branch of two Indo-European languages spoken in Western China during the first millennium of our era, as well as an early stratum of so-called "BMAC" loanwords in Tocharian. Show less
While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here, we outline the Grambank database.... Show moreWhile global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here, we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on the structural diversity of the world’s languages, evaluate constraints on linguistic diversity, and identify the world’s most unusual languages. An analysis of the consequences of language loss reveals that the reduction in diversity will be strikingly uneven across the major linguistic regions of the world. Without sustained efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages, our linguistic window into human history, cognition, and culture will be seriously fragmented. Show less
This thesis describes the Ashéninka language as it is spoken in the Gran Pajonal plateau and the upper Ucayali River in Peru, an area where the last Andean foothills give way to the Amazonian... Show moreThis thesis describes the Ashéninka language as it is spoken in the Gran Pajonal plateau and the upper Ucayali River in Peru, an area where the last Andean foothills give way to the Amazonian lowlands. The number of speakers is estimated at around 10,000. This language forms part of the so-called Ashé-Ashá dialect continuum, which is part of the group of Campan languages, a subgroup of the Arawak language family. The Ashéninka people live in so-called 'comunidades nativas', indigenous settlements with official authorities that are legally recognised in Peru.The thesis presents a description of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. The discussion of the morphology is by far the longest, with the description of verbs comprising roughly half of the thesis due to the complex verbal morphology. Furthermore, the text discusses the relations within the Ashé-Ashá dialect continuum, compares the reality status systems of the different Campan languages and shows the partial loss of this system in Ucayali-Pajonal Ashéninka. Other relevant findings include the probable origin of the word 'campa', the non contrastive but distinctive affricates, the long adjectives denoting forms, the discussion of the subject cross-referenced with a suffix instead of the usual prefix, the proposal of the existence of a future suffix in all Ashé-Ashá varieties, and some suffixes that have not been mentioned in the literature on other Ashé-Ashá varieties.Moreover, the thesis contains annexes with 11 glossed texts from different genres and a vocabulary of 625 words. Show less
Prospective (also known as proximative, imminent or pre-inchoative) aspect presents some subsequent situation as imminent while underspecifying its realization. An English example is be about to,... Show moreProspective (also known as proximative, imminent or pre-inchoative) aspect presents some subsequent situation as imminent while underspecifying its realization. An English example is be about to, as in ‘I am about to leave’. Dutch has several expressions tied to this semantics, including op het punt staan ‘lit. stand on the point: be about to’. This squib presents the first exploration of this type of viewpoint aspect in Dutch. Drawing on corpus data, I show that there are at least six prospective patterns in Dutch, and discuss (i) the source structures their prospective meaning derives from, (ii) the restrictions they impose on their complement, and (iii) their interaction with the perfect. Show less
In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of pronominal politeness in the Indo-European languages and demonstrate that the processes of change of pronominal systems related to politeness follow... Show moreIn this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of pronominal politeness in the Indo-European languages and demonstrate that the processes of change of pronominal systems related to politeness follow two evolutionary regimes, one inside the ‘Standard Average European’ (SAE) linguistic area and another outside of it. Historical processes of language change differ at different levels of linguistic structure. In general, we presume that lower level, unconscious aspects of language change slowly over phylogenetic time, giving rise to patterns of relationship that can often be described as a family tree. Aspects of language that are consciously manipulated by speakers are expected to vary at a faster rate and to diffuse within areas of contact. Politeness is a social phenomenon, so we expect these systems to be highly susceptible to areal norms of interaction. We show that the similarities of SAE politeness systems can be accounted for with a model of convergence due to parallel evolution in a shared (social-demographic) environment, rather than by genealogical relatedness or borrowing. By quantifying and testing factors determining rates of structural change, we offer a novel and realistic approach that can explain similarities between distantly related languages sharing the same environment. Show less
In medisch spreken en schrijven wordt het lidwoord voor ‘patiënt’ vaak weggelaten, terwijl dat in hetStandaardnederlands ongrammaticaal is. Doel van het gerapporteerde onderzoek was om te... Show moreIn medisch spreken en schrijven wordt het lidwoord voor ‘patiënt’ vaak weggelaten, terwijl dat in hetStandaardnederlands ongrammaticaal is. Doel van het gerapporteerde onderzoek was om te beschrijven en verklaren hoe en wanneer het lidwoord weggelaten wordt in het medisch Nederlands. We zetten een onlinevragenlijst uit onder medisch personeel. 85 respondenten namen deel aan dit onderzoek. De deelnemers vertoonden een sterke voorkeur om het bepaald lidwoord (‘de’) weg te laten voor het woord ‘patiënt’ en verwante woorden. Dit fenomeen leek onafhankelijk van de functie van het woord in de zin, of van de zinsconstructie. Het onbepaald lidwoord (‘een’) werd in dezelfde situaties echter niet weggelaten.De conclusie is dat artsen een andere taal spreken, namelijk een variant van het Standaardnederlands waarin weglaten van het bepaald lidwoord voor ‘patiënt’ de voorkeur heeft. Dit fenomeen kan worden verklaard door ‘patiënt’ te zien als substituut voor de naam van de patiënt. Show less
Despite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a... Show moreDespite ample attention in the literature for alignment patterns and case frames more generally, we know very little about how these elements of grammar spread from one language to another in a contact situation. Achieving a better understanding of this will help explain areal patterns in alignment and grammatical relation marking. In this contribution, we zoom in on a contact situation in the foothills of North-West Amazon, where languages of the Quechuan and Tukanoan families are in contact, and where previous authors have suggested that grammatical relation marking shows many potential contact effects. We find that, despite the absence of loanwords, abstract lexico-grammatical information associated with individual lexical items may spread from one language to another, especially within the class of sensation predicates. These can be characterized as lexically driven diffusion patterns, without formal borrowing, consistent with an overall characterization of the area’s sociolinguistics as loanword-avoiding. Show less
This book is about the speech habits of young people from the Qassim region in central Saudi Arabia. It focuses on the way they speak when addressing people who are not from their home region. This... Show moreThis book is about the speech habits of young people from the Qassim region in central Saudi Arabia. It focuses on the way they speak when addressing people who are not from their home region. This way of speaking is referred “White Dialect”. While this term is used more generally in Saudi Arabia, it may not always refer to the same type of entity. In this book, the term “White Dialect” is used exclusively in the way it is used by the young Qassimi speakers that participated in this research. This book investigates the “White Dialect” used by the young Qassimi Arabic speakers and answers three main questions: what is the “White Dialect”? when it is used and why it is used. Besides the “White Dialect”, this book also highlights some of the differences between old and young Qassimi Arabic. The “White dialect” is not a dialect in the common linguistic sense, with relatively stable forms and a clear grounding in one or another group. However, the term “White Dialect” is retained in this book, because it is the term used by the speakers themselves, and thus implies a certain awareness of it as a variety different from other varieties. Results show that the “White Dialect” is a linguistic strategy for Arabic speakers to adopt linguistic features from the range of different Arabic varieties available to them, to produce a spontaneous and fluid form of Arabic that serves their desired communicative motives. Show less
Little is known about health professionals’ evaluation of translation options and expectations about communicating risks concerning the use of medical devices. Since translators’ decisions are (at... Show moreLittle is known about health professionals’ evaluation of translation options and expectations about communicating risks concerning the use of medical devices. Since translators’ decisions are (at least partially) based on what they believe readers expect from the translated product, investigating health professionals’ reception of translated medical texts is particularly useful. Adopting a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of translation norms, this article reports on a questionnaire involving 34 Portuguese health professionals who were asked to evaluate translated instructions for a medical device. This evaluation was followed by questions on the health professionals’ expectations. The results suggest that readers’ expectations about how translators should translate do not coincide with their evaluation of translation options. In other words, the findings point to a contradiction between what health professionals say translators should do when translating biomedical texts and what are their preferred translation options when evaluating translated excerpts. We believe these findings can contribute to the awareness of health professionals’ dominating discourses of faithfulness and fidelity towards the original in the translation of biomedical texts and their influence on perceptions of quality. These discourses, as the findings suggest, can have implications on how readers perceive how translators should translate. Show less
This dissertation investigates the grammaticalization of posture verbs in Dutch and German. Dutch posture verbs have been used as progressive markers since the Middle Dutch period. In the modern... Show moreThis dissertation investigates the grammaticalization of posture verbs in Dutch and German. Dutch posture verbs have been used as progressive markers since the Middle Dutch period. In the modern language, the verbs take a complement verb introduced by an infinitive marker te, whereas in Middle Dutch, they are linked with another verb by the coordinating conjunction ende, resulting in a structure comparable to verbal coordination. This Middle Dutch progressive construction with posture verbs has a parallel in Modern German, namely a pseudo-coordinate construction with posture verbs. The Modern German construction is thought to be in the early stages of grammaticalization, in the sense that it occasionally hints at temporal aspect.Through a quantitative investigation of data extracted from corpora, this study concludes that the two Dutch posture-verb constructions are independent of each other. Therefore, the historical development of the construction can be described as the replacement of the older pseudo-coordinate construction by the new construction, which is functionally superior. The present-day German construction, on the other hand, is generally biclausal and cannot be characterized as a grammaticalized progressive construction. The comparison of the Dutch pseudo-coordinate construction with the German coordinate construction provides insight into the continuum between coordination and pseudo-coordination. Show less
