book notice: Language Adaptation: Coulmas (Ed)

[Harold Schiffman]

Language Adaptation: Coulmas (Ed)

Title: Language Adaptation
Published: 2009
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
                http://us.cambridge.org

Editor: Florian Coulmas
Abstract:

Language Adaptation examines the process by which a speech community is
forced to adopt an active role in making its language suitable for changing
functional requirements. This wide-ranging collection of essays looks at
this phenomenon from a variety of historical and synchronic perspectives,
and brings together the work of a number of leading scholars in the field.
Several different languages are examined at different stages of their
history, including Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Kiswahili, German and
Hindi. This well-informed book is a significant contribution to the
existing literature on language planning, and is the first to use one
theoretical concept to deal with the relationship between natural and
deliberate language change. It shows that language adaptation is a
particular aspect of language change, and thus establishes a link between
the social and the historical study of language. It will appeal to graduate
students and professionals in linguistics and the social sciences, as well
as to practitioners of language planning.

Preface
1. Language adaptation Florian Coulmas;
2. Terminology development in the revival of a language: the case of
contemporary Hebrew Chaim Rabin;
3. Communicating in Arabic: problems and prospects Muhammad H. Ibrahim;
4. An assessment of the development and modernization of the Kiswahili
language in Tanzania David P. B. Massamba;
5. Aspects of modernization in Indian languages C. J. Daswani;
6. Adaptation processes in Chinese: word formation Fritz Pasierbsky;
7. The development of Japanese society and the modernization of Japanese
during the Meiji restoration Makoto Takada;
8. Lexical aspects of the modernization of Japanese Seiju Sugito;
9. The transition from Latin to German in the natural sciences and its
consequences Uwe Porksen;
10. Greek and Latin as a permanent source of scientific terminology: the
German case Konrad Ehlich;
11. Internationalisms: identical vocabularies in European languages Peter
Braun;
12. International terminology W. Nedobity;
13. Democracy and the crisis of normative linguistics Florian Coulmas;
Index.

http://linguistlist.org/issues/20/20-1605.html


-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to
its members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner
or sponsor of
the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a
message are encouraged to post a rebuttal. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)
*******************************************