Klicka på en bild för att gå till Google Book Search.
Laddar... The History of Languages: An Introductionav Tore Janson
Ingen/inga Laddar...
Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. Read the title of this book carefully, because book is just what the title says. It is not a book about historical linguistics, it is a book about the history of languages, placed firmly in the framework of political and social history. The book proceeds to discussion of how language itself might have evolved, through the identification of language families, through the development of individual languages, and finally to what the future might hold. The author is notably balanced in his approach, and modest in his claims. Overall, the focus is on European languages and on English in particular, but there is enough discussion of other languages and language groups to make this a more general approach than one often sees. One very strong point is the style. It is accessible and well-written, which makes it a pleasant read for the non-student even though it is clearly a textbook. And it avoids the "acadamese" that has become a curse in so much serious writing about the humanities. I didn't enjoy this book as much as "Empires of the Word", which covers much of the same ground, but that may be because that was a book written for popular consumption, and this is au fond a text. And I should stress that I learned a good bit from it, even though I have read a great deal on the topic. ( ) inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
Ingår i serien
This is an introduction to the history of languages, from the distant past to a glimpse at what languages may be like in the distant future. It looks at how languages arise, change, and ultimately vanish, and what lies behind their different destinies. What happens to languages, he argues, hasto do with what happens to the people who use them, and what happens to people, individually and collectively, is affected by the languages they speak.The book opens by examining what languages the hunter-gatherers might have spoken and the changes to language that took place when agriculture made settled communities possible. It then looks at the effects of the invention of writing, the formation of empires, the spread of religions, and therecent dominance of world powers, and shows how these relate to great changes in the use of languages. Tore Janson discusses the appearance of new languages, the reasons why some languages spread and others die, considers whether similar cyclical processes are found at different times and places,and examines the causes of internal changes in languages and dialects.The book ranges widely among the world's languages and mixes thematic chapters on general processes of change with accounts of specific languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Latin, Greek, and English. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
Pågående diskussionerIngen/ingaPopulära omslag
Google Books — Laddar... BetygMedelbetyg:
Är det här du? |