Historical Linguistics 2001


Book Description

This is a selection of papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics held in Melbourne 13-17 August 2001, hosted by the Linguistics Program at La Trobe University. The papers range from the general theoretical to the study of particular languages and embrace most areas of linguistics, particularly morpho-syntax.




The Indonesian Language


Book Description

"This book, the first of its kind, is a historical, social, cultural and linguistic study of Indonesian. It traces the origins and pre-colonial development of the language, the emergence of Classical Malay from the fourteenth century, the choice of Malay by the nationalist movement as the national language prior to independence, the planning associated with the adoption and implementation of the language, its borrowings from other language, its use in contemporary Indonesia and its future. The book challenges many assumptions about Indonesian, particularly countering the myth that Indonesian is a simple language."--BOOK JACKET.







Statehood, Scale and Hierarchy


Book Description

Against the background of language and nation formation in Indonesia, this book demonstrates how language planning is inseparable from the broader actions of the state, and how postcolonial nationalism and globalization have had profound implications for language use and state actions to control it. Using language planners’ texts, national and regional policy statements and the discussions of university English majors, it explores the borders of what can be defined as Indonesian, Javanese and English languages, and how this is informed by ideologies of language and nationalism in contemporary Indonesia. The tensions played out in the book between the ideologically perceived languages around which policies are built and the realities of linguistic performance and the resources of the individual are echoed across the globe, making this book crucial reading for anyone interested in the interplay of language planning and language use.




An Introduction to Historical Linguistics


Book Description

All languages change, just as other aspects of human society are constantly changing. This book is an introduction to the concepts and techniques of diachronic linguistics--the study of language change over time. It covers all the major areas of historical linguistics, presenting concepts in a clear and concise way. While examples are given from a wide range of languages, most major concepts and techniques are illustrated by material drawn from the languages of Australia and the Pacific. The needs of undergraduate students of linguistics have been kept firmly in mind, but the book will also be of interest to the general reader seeking to understand language and language change. This third edition includes a number of rewritten and supplemented sections and new material on grammaticalization, ergativity and accusativity, language diversification, palaeolinguistics, and morphological evolution.




Applied Linguistics in the Indonesian Context


Book Description

This open access edited volume presents a series of studies utilizing a variety of linguistic research techniques to investigate areas of language education, acquisition and assessment, contemporary political debate, modern and historical print media, and clinical language disorders, in the Indonesian context. In doing so, the authors provide a rich and diverse overview of current research in the fields of linguistics and applied linguistics. The initial section focuses on research conducted in educational settings, focusing on English-medium instruction (EMI), reading assessment, discovery-based learning, cultural elements in textbooks, and pre-service teacher preparation in Indonesia, offering recommendations for improving language education. The second section demonstrates the applications of corpus linguistics, focusing on collocation patterns in different languages, lexical use and context of rhetorical markers, and authorship determination. A third section presents investigations related to aspects of historical and contemporary language use in a variety of contexts, including advertisements, political debate, Indonesian print media, and translanguaging and multilingual writings, discussing the social and cultural dimensions of language use in Indonesia. The final section focuses on clinical linguistics, investigating the relationship between language disorders and language use, including spoken narratives provided by patients with Alzheimer's and the structure and time reference use of agrammatic speakers, with valuable insights into the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of language disorders. Brought together in a single volume, the chapters illustrate how linguistic analysis can be applied across a variety of disciplines and research sites. The volume is relevant to linguists, educators, sociologists, historians, and members of the medical community with particular interest in the Indonesian context.




Austronesian Undressed


Book Description

Many Austronesian languages exhibit isolating word structure. This volume offers a series of investigations into these languages, which are found in an "isolating crescent" extending from Mainland Southeast Asia through the Indonesian archipelago and into western New Guinea. Some of the languages examined in this volume include Cham, Minangkabau, colloquial Malay/Indonesian and Javanese, Lio, Alorese, and Tetun Dili. The main purpose of this volume is to address the general question of how and why languages become isolating, by examination of a number of competing hypotheses. While some view morphological loss as a natural process, others argue that the development of isolating word structure is typically driven by language contact through various mechanisms such as creolization, metatypy, and Sprachbund effects. This volume should be of interest not only to Austronesianists and historians of Insular Southeast Asia, but also to grammarians, typologists, historical linguists, creolists, and specialists in language contact.







Variation in Indonesian Sign Language


Book Description

This pioneering work on Indonesian Sign Language (BISINDO) explores the linguistic and social factors that lie behind variation in the grammatical domains of negation and completion. Using a corpus of spontaneous data from signers in the cities of Solo and Makassar, Palfreyman applies an innovative blend of methods from sign language typology and Variationist Sociolinguistics, with findings that have important implications for our understanding of grammaticalisation in sign languages. The book will be of interest to linguists and sociolinguists, including those without prior experience of sign language research, and to all who are curious about the history of Indonesia’s urban sign community. Nick Palfreyman is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies (iSLanDS), University of Central Lancashire.