Jun 04
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook publication
Title: Dawn
Subtitle: The Origins of Language and the Modern Human Mind
Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
http://www.transactionpub.com
Book URL: http://www.transactionpub.com/title/Dawn-978-1-4128-6265-3.html?srchprod=1
Author: Rik Smits
Electronic: ISBN: 9781412862103 Pages: 230 Price: U.S. $ — Comment: EBooks are available from eBook vendors worldwide; price varies by vendor
Hardback: ISBN: 9781412862653 Pages: 230 Price: U.S. $ 29.95
Paperback: ISBN: 9781412862578 Pages: 230 Price: U.S. $ 79.95
Abstract:
In this work, originally published in Dutch, Rik Smits theorizes that language
could not have developed originally as a system of communication. It is,
instead, the result of combining separate abilities, each of which developed
independently to aid the survival of early humans. Lacking strength and speed,
man relies on wisdom for survival. Smits theorizes that human skills in
calculation and estimation continued to develop until they were sufficient to
accommodate a system as complex as grammar.
Only after our linguistic ability emerged could humans think logically and
share our reasoning with others, at which point almost everything we now call
culture began to flourish. Smits concludes that language cannot have long
predated the invention of agriculture in the Middle East, some 14,000 years
ago. The huge advance in civilization represented by language made abstract
powers of reasoning indispensable for the first time, along with highly
developed concepts of identity, past, present, and future, all of which rely
upon language.
This explanation of the origins of language throws new light on cave paintings
by Cro-Magnon man, whose masterpieces date from about 40,000 to 15,000 years
ago. Anatomically Cro-Magnons were modern humans, but they had no language in
the modern sense. Their absence of language gave them no true sense of
individual identity.
Jun 04
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhbook publication
Title: Grammatical Complexity in Academic English
Subtitle: Linguistic Change in Writing
Publication Year: 2016
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
http://cambridge.org
Book URL: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/history-english-language/grammatical-complexity-academic-english-linguistic-change-writing?format=HB
Author: Douglas Biber
Author: Bethany Gray
Hardback: ISBN: 9781107009264 Pages: Price: U.S. $ 110.00
Hardback: ISBN: 9781107009264 Pages: Price: U.K. £ 69.99
Abstract:
Grammatical Complexity in Academic English uses corpus-based analyses to
challenge a number of dominant stereotypes and assumptions within linguistics.
Biber and Gray tackle the nature of grammatical complexity, demonstrating that
embedded phrasal structures are as important as embedded dependent clauses.
The authors also overturn ingrained assumptions about linguistic change,
showing that grammatical change occurs in writing as well as speech. This work
establishes that academic writing is structurally compressed (rather than
elaborated); that it is often not explicit in the expression of meaning; and
that scientific academic writing has been the locus of some of the most
important grammatical changes in English over the past 200 years (rather than
being conservative and resistant to change). Supported throughout with textual
evidence, this work is essential reading for discourse analysts,
sociolinguists, applied linguists, as well as descriptive linguists and
historical linguists.
1. Academic writing: challenging the stereotypes; 2. Using corpora to analyze
grammatical change; 3. Phrasal versus clausal discourse styles: a synchronic
grammatical description of academic writing contrasted with other registers;
4. The historical evolution of phrasal discourse styles in academic writing;
5. The functional extension of phrasal grammatical features in academic
writing; 6. The loss of explicitness in academic research writing; 7.
Conclusion.
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