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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

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Academic Paper


Title: A Linguistic Time-Capsule: Afro-Hispanic and Afro-Portuguese historical texts
Author: Fernanda L Ferreira
Email: click here to access email
Homepage: http://webhost.bridgew.edu/fferreira
Institution: Bridgewater State College
Linguistic Field: Historical Linguistics
Subject Language Family: Romance
Abstract: In his book A History of Afro-Hispanic Language: five centuries/five continents, Lipski (2005a) discusses in great detail the nature and scope of Afro-Iberian language spoken by Blacks starting from the 15th to the 20th century. He does so using historical textual data. The present article narrowly focuses on pluralization patterns found in the texts originally compiled by that author.

The dating of phonological changes before the advent of recording technology has been a methodological problem for dialectologists and historical linguists. One of the methods employed to circumvent this problem is the analysis of historical texts in order to shed light on phonological as well as morphological and syntactic changes in language. There are other methods also employed to study the development languages, namely, the study of related varieties (i.e. Sephardic Spanish). However, in the absence of conservative linguistic systems that present evidence of particular consonantal changes, researchers need more examples of what one may call "a linguistic time capsule". Just as with time capsules left by previous generations to inform future ones of the details of the past, written texts may provide partial evidence of the intricacies of language left by authors of the past.
Type: Individual Paper
Status: Completed
Venue: Creole Language Series
Publication Info: John Benjamins


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