This work was created to review the evidence for lexical borrowing from the Tocharian languages to the Chinese languages. The used methodology relies on lexical lists, previous etymological findings, linguistic typology and anthropological input. For preparatory data manipulation, a set of semi- automatic scripts has been created. Presented is a qualitative research based on previous findings assisted by raw data. The outcome of this work should be testable findings which could be extracted to a computer processable form.

This overview paper aims to present general approaches to variation in Swahili, both from a structural/typological and from a sociolinguistic angle. Recently, building upon earlier dialectological studies of Swahili, varieties in the periphery have been the focus of scholarly attention, as well as urban dialects from East Africa and Swahili in the diaspora. This introductory paper intends to summarize some of the approaches and directions that address the geographical and sociolinguistic diversity of Swahili, studied from different angles. These include both traditional approaches (descriptive sketches, dialectological and dialectometrical analyses, lexicostatistics etc.) and more recent directions in Bantu studies, such as micro-parametric analysis in the field of microvariation. Moreover, current (socio)linguistic trends are discussed, which mostly deal with language contact, diversity and change in touristic settings, in relation to new media, and in regard to youth language practices, or with new approaches to urban fluidity such as metrolingualism and translanguaging. In this contribution, we aim to give an overview of current trends in the study of Swahili by analyzing processes of linguistic and scholarly diversification and variation in the Swahili-speaking world.

Through the process of historical linguistics it is possible to determine approximate dates of authorship and meaning that establish the conventions of a particular genre. To accomplish such a study, elements of phonology, morphology, and syntax are compared and the results create a field of descriptors representative of a style of writing of a period. By using the method on eight well-known Christmas carols, four were determined to have been written prior to the dates previously speculated, possibly originating in the Middle Ages. The remaining four were written based on the conventions set by the earlier medieval carols.

This is a study of how the Spanish phrase mala vida is used in a historical corpus, the Corpus diacrónico de la academia Española, and an attempt to find out the meaning of this enigmatic phrase, based upon its patterns of use in this particular context. Furthermore, the study investigates mala vida as an attribute, in a particular serie of phrases that refer to people (hombres de mala vida, mujeres de mala vida, gente de mala vida), in the same corpus, in order to find out whom they refer to. The study finds that mala vida has many different meanings, and handles the relationship between them by distinguishing between primary and secondary meanings (significados básicos and significados secundarios), where every possible semantic nuance of mala vida is an expression of either one of two significados básicos, which is expressed in a semantic scheme, that has the latter ones subordinated to the former. As for the secondary objective, the study finds that the attributive phrases refer to certain social groups, whose common denominator is their social marginalization. / Esto es un estudio de como se usa la frase mala vida en un corpus histórico, CORDE, y un intento de averiguar el significado de esta frase enigmática, partiendo de sus pautas de uso en este contexto particular. También investigamos mala vida como atributo, en una serie particular de frases que refieren a gente(hombres de mala vida, mujeres de mala vida, gente de mala vida), en el mismo corpus, para averiguar a quien refieren. El estudio descubre que mala vida tiene muchos significados distintos, y maneja la relación entre ellos, distinguiendo entre los significados básicos y significados secundarios de la frase, donde cada nuáncia semántica, en fondo, es una expresión de uno de dos significados básicos, lo que se demuestra en un esquema semántico, donde los segundos están subordinados a los primeros. En cuanto al objetivo secundario, descubrimos que las frases atributivas refieren a ciertos grupos sociales, cuyo denominador común es su marginalización social.

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No description available.

The aim of this dissertation is to describe the sphere of use of the Russian Instrumental case in written sources from the eighteenth century. The research is based on approximately 11,300 instances of the use of the Instrumental and almost 2,400 constructions with other cases, excerpted from documents of various genres and styles. The corpus includes texts written by forty eighteenth-century authors, and contains works of poetry and drama, literary prose, letters, memoirs and learned tracts. Previous studies of the Instrumental case have in the main dealt with the development of the system of its meanings in the Old Russian period, or else have described its condition in modern times. The present work attempts to systematise its most typical uses and to trace the changes in the function of the Instrumental that took place during the period when a national literary language was coming into being in Russia. The research is primarily focused on the competition between the Instrumental case and other means of expression of particular meanings. In particular it describes (with statistical data) the variation in case forms within the predicate, with the function of an object, and also of the agent in passive constructions. A detailed description is given of those meanings of the Instrumental which are known from the earliest period and still in active use in the eighteenth century, but nowadays perceived as archaic. The most important of these are the Instrumental of cause, and also various uses of the Instrumental without a preposition to indicate time or place.

This PhD thesis examines a phenomenon known as Monosyllabic Circumflexion (MC, hereafter) from a historical linguistics / phonological point of view. MC denotes a Lithuanian or Balto-Slavic phenomenon according to which long vowels and diphthongs in monosyllabic words exhibit a circumflex tone instead of the expected acute tone.  It is observed in the following four categories: I. 3rd person future forms of monosyllabic stems (e.g., šõks ― šókti `to jump;' vy͂s ― výti `to drive') II. reflexes of PIE root nouns (e.g., Latv. gùovs `cow;' Lith. šuõ `dog') III. prepositions/adverbs (e.g., nuõ `from' ~  nùotaka `bride;' vė͂l `again' ~ Latv. vêl `still, yet,' tė͂ (permissive particle) < *teh1) IV. pronominal forms (e.g., tuõ ~ gerúoju `the good (m.~sg.~instr.),' tie͂ ~ tíeji `id. (pl.nom)'). The unexpected circumflex tone in these categories is problematic and important for the solution of a Balto-Slavic accentological question on the etymological background of acute and non-acute tones. The aim of this thesis is to partially contribute to the solution of this problem by establishing the existence of MC and its relative chronology. The first category, the 3rd person future forms, provides a substantial number of examples and counterexamples. The examination of them has revealed the fact that the counterexamples constitute a morpho-semantic group of verbs whose future stems underwent considerable morphological changes in the prehistory, hence not exhibiting MC. This shows that the regular tonal reflex of the 3rd person future forms of monosyllabic acute stem must be circumflex, allowing for the establishment of MC as a regular phonological process, although this category does not provide much information on the relative chronology of MC. The second category, the reflexes of Proto-Indo-European root nouns, gives an important clue as to where MC is located in the relative chronology of Balto-Slavic sound changes. Next, there is a discussion of whether the results of the examinations of the first two categories can be maintained for the data of the third and fourth categories, which show an irregular distribution of the acute and circumflex tones in monosyllabic forms. It is shown that various morphological factors, such as homonymic clashes within the paradigms for pronouns, can explain why some monosyllabic forms have acute tone. Also, the linguistic feature of West Aukštaitian dialects of Lithuanian that tend to preserve the results of MC is revealed. These dialects are known to have played an important role in the formation of standard Lithuanian. In this way, the monosyllabic forms with unexpected circumflex tone in Lithuanian are explained as a combination of MC in the Proto-Balto-Slavic time and the dialectal tendency of West Aukštaitian dialects of Lithuanian.

This thesis casts a new light on the role of Southeast Asia in the ancient Indian Ocean World. It brings together data and approaches from archaeology and historical linguistics to examine cultural and language contact between Southeast Asia and South Asia, East Africa and the Middle East. The interdisciplinary approach employed in this study reveals that insular Southeast Asian seafarers, traders and settlers had impacted on these parts of the world in pre-modern times through the transmission of numerous biological and cultural items. It is further demonstrated that the words used for these commodities often contain clues about the precise ethno-linguistic communities involved in their transoceanic dispersal. The Methodology chapter introduces some common linguistic strategies to examine language contact and lexical borrowing, to determine the directionality of loanwords and to circumvent the main caveats of such an approach. The study then proceeds to delve deeper into the socio-cultural background of interethnic contact in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean as a whole, focusing on the oft-neglected Southeast Asian contributions to the cultural landscape of this region and addressing the nature of pre-modern contact between Southeast Asia and the different parts of the Indian Ocean Word. Following from that, the last three chapters look in-depth at the dispersal of respectively Southeast Asian plants, spices and maritime technology into the wider Indian Ocean World. Although concepts and their names do not always neatly travel together across ethno-linguistic boundaries, these chapters demonstrate how a closer examination of lexical data offers supportive evidence and new perspectives on events of cultural contact not otherwise documented. Cumulatively, this study underlines that the analysis of lexical data is a strong tool to examine interethnic contact, particularly in pre-literate societies. Throughout the Indian Ocean World, Southeast Asian products and concepts were mainly dispersed by Malay-speaking communities, although others played a role as well.

This thesis analyses the nine main tense–aspect constructions in Old Japanese in more detail than ever before, exploiting the research possibilities created by the Oxford Corpus of Old Japanese. The commitment to close textual reading and the interpretation of examples in context that is characteristic of traditional Japanese scholarship is combined with a determination to explain the distributional data revealed by the Corpus. Large samples are used to produce quantitative semantic analyses, allowing a new perspective on multifunctional constructions from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. All findings are placed within the wider perspective of cross-linguistic studies of tense and aspect, an approach often missing in Old Japanese scholarship. This thesis is the most comprehensive analysis of Old Japanese tense and aspect to date. Some traditional conclusions are challenged, and light is shed on many previously unexplained phenomena. Resultative constructions are discovered to be even more pervasive in Japanese than previously thought, with at least five of the nine con-structions I look at hypothesized to have begun as resultative constructions. In most cases these constructions have broadened to also denote ongoing activities, another characteristic of Japanese. This thesis thereby contributes to the cross-linguistic understanding of resultative constructions, and to the question of the validity and nature of the distinction between activities and states. It also shows the potential of an exemplar-based model of linguistic storage, which is seen to be a powerful tool for explaining both the multifunctionality of grammatical constructions and semantic change.