Date: 03-Aug-2006 From: Philipp Waelle <p.waellepeterlang.com> Subject: Language Contact and the Lexicon in the History of Cypriot Greek: Varella
Title: Language Contact and the Lexicon in the History of Cypriot Greek
Series Title: Contemporary Studies in Descriptive Linguistics Vol. 7
Published: 2006
Publisher: Peter Lang AG
http://www.peterlang.com
Author: Stavroula Varella
Paperback: ISBN: 3039105264 Pages: 283 Price: U.K. £ 33
Paperback: ISBN: 3039105264 Pages: 283 Price: U.S. $ 56.95
Paperback: ISBN: 3039105264 Pages: 283 Price: Europe EURO 47.10 Comment: for Germany and Austria EURO 50.40 (incl. VAT)
Abstract:
Cypriot is unique among the Modern Greek dialects in possessing such a variegated vocabulary - testimony, indeed, to the chequered history of the island. This book presents a thorough investigation of the foreign component of the Cypriot lexis. It traces, firstly, the relevant socio-cultural factors that gave rise to it. It presents, secondly, a detailed account of how words from sources as diverse as Romance, Arabic, Turkish and English became fully nativised and indistinguishable from the native stock. A fresh case study of language contact and lexical borrowing, it addresses such issues as the extent of lexical borrowing, the types of vocabulary borrowed, the relationship between the social integration and the structural adaptation of loans, and the degree and predictability of the phonological, morphological and even semantic modification affecting foreign words.
Contents:
Cultural/linguistic contacts in Cyprus and lexical borrowing Loanwords: systematic correspondences and etymology Loanword phonology and morphology Cultural borrowing and semantic adoption Semantic shifts in a cross-linguistic context.
Linguistic Field(s):
Historical Linguistics
Lexicography
Sociolinguistics
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