This volume provides an overview of four currently booming areas in the discipline of corpus linguistics. The first section is concerned with studies of the history and development of morphological and syntactic phenomena in English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. The second section contains case studies investigating the functions and contexts of use of different morphological and syntactic forms in English, Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. The third section contains studies in the field of genre and register from settings as diverse as health, call center, academic, and legal discourse. The final section features papers refining existing, and exploring new, corpus-linguistic methods: dispersions, text mining, corpus similarity, as well as the development of extraction patterns and the evaluation of tagging methods.
Studies Based on the Corpus of Early English Correspondence
What role has social status played in shaping the English language across the centuries? Have women also been the agents of language standardization in the past? Can apparent-time patterns be used to predict the course of long-term language change? These questions and many others will be addressed in this volume, which combines sociolinguistic methodology and social history to account for diachronic language change in Renaissance English. The approach has been made possible by the new machine-readable Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC) specifically compiled for this purpose. The 2.4-million-word corpus covers the period from 1420 to 1680 and contains over 700 writers. The volume introduces the premises of the study, discussing both modern sociolinguistics and English society in the late medieval and early modern periods. A detailed description is given of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, its encoding, and the separate database which records the letter writers' social backgrounds. The pilot studies based on the CEEC suggest that social rank and gender should both be considered in diachronic language change, but that apparent-time patterns may not always be a reliable cue to what will happen in the long run. The volume also argues that historical sociolinguistics offers fascinating perspectives on the study of such new areas as pragmatization and changing politeness cultures across time. This extension of sociolinguistic methodology to the past is a breakthrough in the field of corpus linguistics. It will be of major interest not only to historical linguists but to modern sociolinguists and social historians.
Introduction. Terttu Nevalainen For just as there is no society without language,
there is no language without society. (Breton 1991: xi) What can social history
add to our understanding of diachronic language change? The question is
becoming ever more intriguing the more we learn about the role of social factors
in present-day language variation and change. Once the issue has been raised,
questions abound: Have women been the agents of language standardization in
the past in ...
Annotation. Calling corpus linguistics a core methodology in language research, Granger and Petch- Tyson (both of the U. of Louvain, Belgium) present 16 papers that are organized into separate sections investigating experimental methodologies, the use of corpora in describing the English language, and corpora in foreign language learning and teaching. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Krug, M. G. (2000), Emerging English Modals. A corpus-based study of
grammaticalization. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Leech, G. N. (1987),
Meaning and the English Verb. 2nd edition. London: Longman. Middle English
Dictionary.
This book tells the story of the contacts and conflicts between muslims and christians in Southeast Asia during the Dutch colonial history from 1596 until 1950. The author draws from a great variety of sources to shed light on this period: the letters of the colonial pioneer Jan Pietersz. Coen, the writings of 17th century Dutch theologians, the minutes of the Batavia church council, the contracts of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) with the sultans in the Indies, documents from the files of colonial civil servants from the 19th and 20th centuries, to mention just a few. The colonial situation was not a good starting-point for a religious dialogue. With Dutch power on the increase there was even less understanding for the religion of the muslims . In 1620 J.P. Coen, the strait-laced calvinist, had actually a better understanding and respect for the muslims than the liberal colonial leaders from the early 20th century, convinced as they were of western supremacy.
Dr. H.M. Rasjidi, Jakarta , Bulan Bintang; Pesantren, madrasa, sekolah:
Pendidikan Islam dalam kurun moderen ... in Modern Indonesia), Jakarta LP3ES;
Perkembangen Teologi dalam Dunia Kristen Modem, (An Introduction to Modern
...
Pure, Strong and Sexless explores the representation of gender and sexuality of peasant women in turn of the century Russian culture through the writings of populist writer Gleb Uspensky. Uspensky s numerous works address a range of issues related to sexuality, including infanticide, abortion, prostitution, adultery and venereal disease. This is the first comprehensive study of populist s fantasies in regard to the peasant woman s body as a non-sexed utopian body within Russian fin-de-siecle sexual discourse. Included in this book is the first English translation of the diary of Uspensky s psychiatrist, Dr Boris Sinani. This frank account portrays the tragic decline of a sensitive observer and writer into the psychotic and delusionary world of schizophrenia. This work is an invaluable source for students of Russian literature, gender studies, and history of psychiatry."
