Language Structure and Environment

Social, cultural, and natural factors

Editors

Rik De Busser | National Chengchi University, Taiwan

Randy J. LaPolla | Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027204097 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027268730 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

Language Structure and Environment is a broad introduction to how languages are shaped by their environment. It makes the argument that the social, cultural, and natural environment of speakers influences the structures and development of the languages they speak. After a general overview, the contributors explain in a number of detailed case studies how specific cultural, societal, geographical, evolutionary and meta-linguistic pressures determine the development of specific grammatical features and the global structure of a varied selection of languages. This is a work of meticulous scholarship at the forefront of a burgeoning field of linguistics.

[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts, 6] 2015. vi, 370 pp.

Publishing status: Available

https://doi.org/10.1075/clscc.6

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. The influence of social, cultural, and natural factors on language structure: An overview

Rik De Busser | pp. 1–28

Grammar and culture

Chapter 2. On the logical necessity of a cultural and cognitive connection for the origin of all aspects of linguistic structure

Randy J. LaPolla | pp. 31–44

Chapter 3. The body, the universe, society and language: Germanic in the grip of the unknown

Kate Burridge | pp. 45–76

Chapter 4. When culture grammaticalizes: The pronominal system of Onya Darat

Uri Tadmor | pp. 77–98

Chapter 5. The cultural bases of linguistic form: The development of Nanti quotative evidentials

Lev Michael | pp. 99–130

Grammar and society

Chapter 6. Societies of intimates and linguistic complexity

Peter Trudgill | pp. 133–148

Chapter 7. On the relation between linguistic and social factors in migrant language contact

Michael Clyne, Yvette Slaughter, John Hajek and Doris Schüpbach | pp. 149–176

Grammar and geography

Chapter 8. Topography in language: Absolute Frame of Reference and the Topographic Correspondence Hypothesis

Bill Palmer | pp. 177–226

Chapter 9. Walk around the clock: The shaping of a (counter-)clockwise distinction in Siar directionals

Friedel Martin Frowein | pp. 227–260

Chapter 10. Types of spread zones: Open and closed, horizontal and vertical

Johanna Nichols | pp. 261–286

Grammar and evolution

Chapter 11. The role of adaptation in understanding linguistic diversity

Gary Lupyan and Rick Dale | pp. 289–316

Grammar and the field of linguistics

Chapter 12. On becoming an object of study: Legitimization in the discipline of Linguistics

Catherine L. Easton and Tonya N. Stebbins | pp. 319–352

Subjects and Languages Index | pp. 353–366

Author Index | pp. 367–370

Cited by (10)

Cited by ten other publications

Order by:

Duan, Mingyuan & Shangyi Zhou

2022. Geographic Approach: Identifying Relatively Stable Tibetan Dialect and Subdialect Area Boundaries. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 11:5 ► pp. 280 ff.

Moran, Steven, Nicholas A. Lester & Eitan Grossman

2021. Inferring recent evolutionary changes in speech sounds. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:1824

Abainia, Kheireddine

2020. DZDC12: a new multipurpose parallel Algerian Arabizi–French code-switched corpus. Language Resources and Evaluation 54:2 ► pp. 419 ff.

Antunes, Nicolas, Wulf Schiefenhövel, Francesco d’Errico, William E. Banks, Marian Vanhaeren & Richard A Blythe

2020. Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea. PLOS ONE 15:10 ► pp. e0239359 ff.

Ye, Zhengdao

2019. The Emergence of Expressible Agency and Irony in Today’s China: A Semantic Explanation of the NewBèi-construction. Australian Journal of Linguistics 39:1 ► pp. 57 ff.

Cooperrider, Kensy, James Slotta & Rafael Núñez

2018. The Preference for Pointing With the Hand Is Not Universal. Cognitive Science 42:4 ► pp. 1375 ff.

Ono, Tsuyoshi & Sandra Thompson

2017. Negative scope, temporality, fixedness, and right- and left-branching. Studies in Language 41:3 ► pp. 543 ff.

Greenhill, Simon J.

2016. Overview: Debating the effect of environment on language. Journal of Language Evolution 1:1 ► pp. 30 ff.

LaPolla, Randy J.

2016. Review of Evans (2014): The language myth: Why language is not an instinct. Studies in Language 40:1 ► pp. 235 ff.

[no author supplied]

2015. Publications Received. Language in Society 44:5 ► pp. 753 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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