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Der gemeinsame Wandel der inselkeltischen Sprachen wie auch des Englischen vom vorwiegend synthetischen Typus zum vorwiegend analytischen Typus läßt sich vermutlich auf einen ca. 1500 Jahre dauernden intensiven Sprachenkontakt zwischen diesen Sprachen zurückführen. Heute ist das Englische die analytischste Sprache der Britischen Inseln und Irlands, gefolgt vom Walisischen, Bretonischen und Irischen. Letzteres ist von den genannten Sprachen noch am weitesten morphologisch komplex.
Extract: [...]Of all the print-media newspapers are the most commonly used. They are not literature in the sense of belles letters, but they should not be underestimated in their political, social and personal importance. No other printed product is as closely linked with everyday life as the newspapers. The day begins under their influence, and their contents mirror the events of the day with varying accuracy. Newspapers are strongly reader-oriented. They want to inform, but they also want to instil opinions. Specific choices of information shape the content level. Specific choices of language are resorted to in order to spread opinions and viewpoints. Language creates solidarity between the producers and the consumers of newspapers and thereby supports ideologies by specifically targeted linguistic means. Other strategies are employed for the same purpose, too. Visual aspects are of great importance, such as the typographical layout, the use of pictures, drawings, colours, fonts, etc.[...]
Classical writers either glorified the Celts and their cult officials, the druids, thereby demonstrating "soft primitivism", or they vilified them ("hard primitivsm"). Both types of primitivism reflect the self-assessment of the classical cultures concerning their own identity and the level of their cultural status rather than providing hard-core information about Celts and druids. Outside the archaeological evidence there is no reliable information about these. And even the archaeological evidence is very much open to controversial interpretation This situation leave much room to personal speculation, high-flung imagination and even fantasy. TRI
The five Potsdam "Studientage zum Englischen Mittelalter (SEM)" (1999-2003) served a number of purposes. These are fully discussed in this article. The first and foremost idea was to provide a yearly forum for young scholars in English medieval studies to present their research to other scholars in the field and to test their market value ("Nachwuchsfoerderung"). After Potsdam, the SEM meetings are circulating between those universities in the German speaking countries, which feature a Medieval Studies Programme in their departments of English and American Studies. This programme serves to boost their academic profile and etablish centres of excellency for English medieval Studies on the Continent. Networking is another prime objective of the SEMs. See http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/sem/sem.htm etc.
The language situation in the Philipines between the many different native languages and English is complex. The book under review outlines the various contact situations, focussing on the contact between Tagalog, the most important indigenous language of the Philipines on the one hand and English on the other. This serves as the basis for a detailed discussion of the sociological determinasts of the contact continuum between Tagalog on the one hand and Standard English on the other. The main asset of the book is to be found in its well informed survey character resulting from personal teaching experience.
In previous research, the methodology of typological investigations into languages was based on the analysis of standard languages (or rather standardised written languages). Prof. Kortmann's collection of essays broadens this methodological scope by directing the scholars' typological interest to the traditional dialects, most of them transmitted orally only. Undoubtedly, there is a great potential in this effort. Most of the contributions in this volume, however, show, that the attempt to unify or perhaps rather to accommodate the methodologies of typological research and traditional dialectology needs to be further harmonised in future research in order to bear sound generalisable insights to the rich data available.
This paper argues that the texts surviving from the Old English period do not reflect the spoken language of the bulk of the population under Anglo-Saxon elite domination. While the Old English written documents suggest that the language was kept remarkably unchanged, i.e. was strongly monitored during the long OE period (some 500 years!), the spoken and "real Old English" is likely to have been very different and much more of the type of Middle English than the written texts. "Real Old Engish", i.e. of course only appeared in writing after the Norman Conquest. Middle English is therefore claimed to have begun with the 'late British' speaking shifters to Old English. The shift patterns must have differed in the various part of the island of Britain, as the shifters became exposed to further language contact with the Old Norse adstrate in the Danelaw areas and the Norman superstrate particularly in the South East, the South West having been least exposed to language contact after the original shift from 'Late British' to Old English. This explains why the North was historically the most innovative zone. This also explains the conservatism of the present day dialects in the South West. It is high time that historical linguists acknowledge the arcane character of the Old English written texts.
A close comparison of selected parts of the translation of the Venerable Bede's 'Historia Ecclesiastica gentis anglorum' into Old English and Old Irish reveals how selective the translators proceeded in their translation work and how they adapted the Latin original to the genre traditions of their vernacular styles of writing. By their omissions, their choices of lexis and syntax they clearly expressed their translation interests. Part of the differences also seems to have been motivated by the targeted written and the oral mode of communication. While the Irish translation is entirely written in character and hardly lends itself to reading out aloud ('prelecting'), the style and rhythm of the Old English translation suggests that it was to serve public reading purposes in front of illiterate or semi-literate listening audiences.
This article provides a survey of the research carried out by Celtic scholars in Germany during the 15 years between 1980 and 1995. It is based on the respective bibliography published in 'Studia Celtica Japonica' 9 (1997). The major research fields covered are IE Studies, Celtic philology, linguistics, literature, archaeology and cultural studies.