The Advent of the Europeans and the History of the Development of Tamil Grammar Texts

Grammatical and linguistic history, like Tamil literary history, has its own antiquity and continuity. Grammatical writings have kept on showing up as the literary writing has increased and changed. Grammatical texts based on the knowledge of literature, the knowledge of the language, or the critical objectives of the language, the literature that appears in that language, later become more closely identified with social history. Numerous grammatical works have appeared in Tamil but many of them do not exist. However, many of the available texts are qualified enough to speak of the grammatical richness of Tamil. With the grammatical richness of a language, it is possible to estimate how ancient the literary richness of that language and the origin of the speakers of that language are. Thus, the numerous grammars available in Tamil serve as evidence for measuring the antiquity of the Tamil language. The origin of grammatical texts is not a linear one, but one that is continually developing to suit the occasions, the blend of dialects, and the progressions in the writing. This change sets the stage for the development of language. Thus, Tamil grammar texts have undergone a series of changes. This article sets out to evaluate the background to the development of nineteenth-century grammar textbooks following the arrival of Europeans, who occupy a significant place in this change.

How Old is the Hebrew Bible? A Response to Konrad Schmid

The methodological issues about how to integrate the linguistic history of Hebrew into our inquiries into the literary history of the Bible are complicated and controverted. In this contribution to the discussion, I attempt to clarify areas of agreement and disagreement, provide an example (Genesis 1–11) where some of the issues of integration of methods can be tested, and consider the relevant evidence for the emulation of classical Hebrew.

Italo-Romance: Venetan

Venetan belongs to the group of northern Italian dialects, which are characterized by the presence of some phonological and morphological features that are common to French dialects and are attributed to the Celtic substratum. However, numerous traces of the Venetic substratum distinguish the Venetan dialects from the other (Gallo-Italic) dialects. In the linguistic history of the Venetan dialects, Venice played a central role due to the political power achieved by the Venetian Republic and its commercial expansion into many Adriatic and Mediterranean countries. There, the Venetian dialect laid the foundations for the development of a “colonial Venetian,” which has been used for several centuries. In the 21st century, Venetan is still vital in three regions of northeastern Italy (Veneto, Trentino Alto-Adige, Friuli Venezia Giulia), in Istria, and in Dalmatia. Small Venetan-speaking communities are also found elsewhere in Europe as well as Canada, Australia, and North and South America. These were the destination countries for the numerous emigrants who left Veneto between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Alongside several structural features that are common to the other northern Italian dialects, Venetan presents some distinctive properties. In phonology, apocope and syncope are restricted and consonant lenition in inter-vowel position is extensive. In verbal morphology, Venetan is characterized by the agglutination of the auxiliary ‘have’ with the clitic ghe, the alternation of the traditional Venetian form [ze] with the form [ɛ] for the auxiliary ‘be’ at present indicative 3rd persons, and the variety of past participle suffixes. In nominal derivation, some suffixes, such as the augmentatives -ón/-óne and -àso and the present participle suffix -ànte (which is used for the formation of nomina agentis) are very productive. In syntax, 2sg and 3sg/pl subject clitics are obligatory; dative and object clitics are used for doubling respectively datives and pronominal objects in the 1st and 2nd person; specific rules govern the structure of direct, indirect, and noncanonical interrogatives. The Venetan lexicon, which developed in several domains, particularly in marine (on the lagoon) and agricultural (on the mainland) contexts, mirrors the history of the region, revealing several traces of different strata (Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Slavic, Jewish, and French).

Language in Economics and Accounting Research: The Role of Linguistic History

This paper investigates whether a consideration of linguistic history is important when studying the relationship between economic and linguistic behaviors. Several recent economic studies have suggested that differences between languages can affect the way people think and behave (linguistic relativity or Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). For example, the way a language obliges one to talk about the future might influence intertemporal decisions, such as a company’s earnings management. However, languages have historical relations that lead to shared features—they do not constitute independent observations. This can inflate correlations between variables if not dealt with appropriately (Galton’s problem). We discuss this problem and provide an overview of the latest methods to control linguistic history. We then provide an empirical demonstration of how Galton’s problem can bias results in an investigation of whether a company’s earnings management behavior is predicted by structural features of its employees’ language. We find a strong relationship when not controlling linguistic history, but the relationship disappears when controls are applied. In contrast, economic predictors of earnings management remain robust. Overall, our results suggest that careful consideration of linguistic history is important for distinguishing true causes from spurious correlations in economic behaviors.

The role of synchrony in the study of national literary language histories on the territory of Slavia Orthodoxa

The article examines the role of the synchronous approach as a basic prerequisite for refined falsifiability in the study of the histories of the national literary languages on the territory of the Slavia Orthodoxa cultural-linguistic community. Its possible role in the study of literary-linguistic history as a component of the historical approach to language in the context of the theory and methodology of Imre Lakatos’ research programs is also analyzed.

Judeo-Romance in Italy and France (Judeo-Italian, Judeo-French, Judeo-Occitan)

The linguistic history of the Italian, French, and Occitan Jewish communities may be reconstructed thanks to the survival of both written records and modern dialects. The situation of the three groups, however, sharply diverges in terms of quality and quantity of the available sources and retention of their linguistic identity after the medieval period. For the Jewish communities of the Italo-Romance area, there is a corpus of medieval and modern texts, mostly in Hebrew script, and with several dialectological inquiries for modern and contemporary dialects. As for the Jewish communities of Northern France, only a limited corpus of medieval written sources exists, because the French-speaking Jews were linguistically assimilated to their respective environments after the 1394 expulsion from the kingdom of France. On the other hand, the records of the Occitan-speaking Jews are scanty for both the medieval and the modern periods, when they apparently maintained a certain amount of linguistic distinctiveness.