Sank's Glossary of Linguistics
K |
KATHAREVOUSA
(Sociolinguistics; Diachronic) Among the Greeks the Church, whether it was the Patriarchate of Constantinople or the Church of Greece in the nineteenth century, employed Greek. What distinguished them from their Orthodox Slavic neighbors was language and not religion. But the language of the Church, which under the Ottomans served as a bond for all the Greeks, was based on archaic Greek and could not be well understood by the common people, who spoke popular Greek.
Thus a linguistic dualism (diglossia) was created. Yet, in the linguistic battles of the nineteenth century, the language which was first imposed as a literary language was neither of the two but katharevousa (puristic Greek). This was a language founded on everyday usage but purged of dialectal features and unnecessary foreign words and at the same time freed from the archaic—a middle of the road language.
Its founder, Adamantios Korais (1748-1833), a physician who lived in France, thought that language was one of the most inalienable possessions of a nation in which all its members shared with "a democratic, as it were, equality." His katharevousa was to serve as a common and correct language for the propagation of culture among the Greeks and at the same time a means for their unification.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, the adherents of the popular language, the so-called demotic, increased in number. In Ioannis Psykharis (1854-1929), a philologist at the Sorbonne, they found their principal representative. Psykharis, like Korais, held high the value of language. He proclaimed:
Language and fatherland are identical. To fight for one's fatherland or one's language, the fight is one and the same. (Dimaras 1965)
The linguistic battle was now transposed: it was not between the archaic and katharevousa but between katharevousa and demotic, the latter predominating. The struggle has not yet ended. We see, even at present, the University of Athens using katharevousa and that of Thessaloniki demotic. Nevertheless, in both instances the Greeks see the language of their ancient ancestors living. The sense of linguistic continuity, so closely connected with their history and culture, has made them conscious of their national identity. | Stavro Skendi, 1975
KIDS THESE DAYS
(Examples)
- Again and again—retro not, double is, speaker-oriented hopefully, split infinitives, etc.—the phenomena turn out to have been around, with some frequency, for very much longer than you think. It's not just Kids These Days. (Arnold Zwicky, 2005) | Laurence R. Horn, 2021
- "The kids these days" no longer call it "calligraphy." They call it "lettering." | Lea Bishop, 2023
- "But, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, people have forgotten the other terms; they just know the one word, 'cup'," [said Daniel Kane]. ... "I see this happening now in our society", he added. "Kids these days may say, 'Yeah, but you don't know the way we speak.' But in ten years from now, all the words that I have in my head will be gone." | Language Log, 2021
- Whether it has been pencils, television, computers, or cellphones, technological culprits of bad writing have always been found: Arguments blaming people ("kids these days!") extend back through time and are based on skewed views of error and correctness. | Scott Warnock, 2017
- While we may wish that kids these days didn't cuss so durn much, our culture as a whole has become more tolerant of vulgarity and less tolerant of racially abusive language. | Matt Mitchell, 2016
- To modern eyes the snippets of "telegraph speak" described in this article look almost exactly like the "txtspeak," language we use today on cell phones and online. In fact, the entire article bears an impressive resemblance to a Huffington Post exposé on the logistics of e-romance or a BuzzFeed piece on how kids these days can communicate using only emoji. | Isabel McKay, 2015
- There is a common view that "kids these days" don't read as much as they used to. This view is so firmly held that discussion nearly always focusses on why children don't read, assuming that the decline in reading is real. | Sy-Ying Lee, Christy Lao, and Stephen Krashen, 2016
- But to many of the older generation in the Land of the Morning
Calm, this hysteria for oeraeŏ ("foreign words") is seen as dishonorable. "There are kids these days who forget their culture; they prefer hamburgers and bread to kimchi," they sadly note. | Leif Olsen, 1999
- "When I was in my elementary years and in high school," said Mary Jean Mike, of Hard Rock. "I didn't think that Navajo culture and Navajo reading and writing was important till I got out of college with my B.A. degree and then when you run into older people that talk to each other, a lot of the stuff they talk about was really interesting. When I sit around and listen to them, that's when I think of a lot, too. I'm still learning, there's still a lot that I need. When you're young you don't think it's that much important. Just like these young kids these days they don't really take advantage of it." | Louise Lockard, 1995
See Also RECENCY ILLUSION.
KINYALOLO'S CONSTRAINT
- (Morphosyntax) A morphological economy constraint against a verbal projection realizing agreement with an argument multiple times. Kinyalolo originally proposed this constraint to explain agreement restrictions in Kilega. In Kilega declarative sentences, T agrees with the subject. In subject wh-questions, the subject moves to Spec, CP and C agrees with the wh-operator. In this case, subject agreement on T is suppressed as shown in (1).
- Kilega (Carstens 2005)
Nází
1.who
ú-(*á)-ku-kít-ag-a
1.CA-(1.SA)-PROG-do-HAB-FV
búbo?
14.that
'Who (usually) does that?'
This observation is what led to Kinyalolo's Constraint, a version of which I present below.
- Kinyalolo's Constraint (Kinyalolo 1991; cited from Alok and Baker 2018)
In a word (phonologically defined), AGR on one head is silent if and only if its features are predictable from AGR on another head.
| Eunsun Jou, 2024
- (Morphosyntax) A constraint motivated by the existence of patterns like those in (1), from KiLega. Here, the number of overt agreement morphemes in a clause tracks the number of verb(-like) words, with each verb(-like) word having one and only one subject agreement morpheme.
- KiLega (Carstens 2005)
a.
Mikoko
4.sheep
z-á-bézág-á
4.AGR-A-be-FV
zí-se
4.AGR-about.to
z-á-sínz-u-a
4.AGR-ASP2-slaughter-PASS-FV
'Sheep were about to be slaughtered.'
b.
Masungá
6.yam
má-kilí
6.AGR-be.still
m-á-yik-u-á.
6.AGR-ASP2-cook-PASS-FV
'The yams are still being cooked.'
c.
pro
Mú-ná-kúbul-íl-é
IIPL.AGR-MOD-pour-ASP-FV
mázi.
6.water
'You could have poured water.'
Carstens (2005), following a pioneering analysis by Kinyalolo (1992), argues that multiple heads within the functional spine of a KiLega clause agree with the subject (e.g. T, Asp1, Mod, Asp2 and others). In her analysis, when the functional spine is realized as several different phonological words, as in (1a), then the agreement morphemes mostly show up unhindered. But when the functional spine of a clause is realized as fewer phonological words, as in (1b), or just a single word as in (1c), all but the outermost subject-agreement morphemes are "suppressed" by Kinyalolo's Constraint. | Matthew Tyler and Itamar Kastner, 2021
- (Morphosyntax) Kinyalolo (1991) and Carstens (2005) argue that a condition like the following holds in Kilega and certain other Bantu languages:
Kinyalolo's Constraint
* Agreement on a lower head with NP X if there is a higher head that also agrees with
X and the two functional heads are in the same word at PF.
It is motivated in Kilega by the fact that agreement between T and the subject, which is normally obligatory in Kilega, is suppressed when the subject raises to Spec, CP and the verb raises to C, because then ordinary subject agreement is redundant with the agreement
between C and its specifier.
KC is probably not universal. There are a few languages in which v and T both seem able to agree with the same NP. One is the Austronesian language Nuaula, called to my attention by Mark Donohue (another is Burushaski). | Mark Baker, 2010
KINYALOLO'S CONSTRAINT GENERALIZED
(Morphosyntax)
Kinyalolo's Constraint Generalized (KCG) (cf. Kinyalolo 1991 et seq.)
Within a given syntactic domain D, for a given feature F, only the highest overt head bearing an instance of F is pronounced on the surface if the values of F on lower heads
are predictable from the value of F on the highest head.
(See also Carstens 2005, Henderson 2011, Newman 2021, Oxford 2023.)
Highest head bearing an instance of F
The highest head bearing an instance of a feature F is that head H such that
- H bears F.
- For all other heads H′ such that H′ bears F, there is at least one copy of H that asymmetrically c-commands some copy of H′, and no copy of H′ that c-commands any copy of H.
Overt
A head H is overt iff
- The value of H's PHON attribute does not equal Ø.
- H's PHON feature is not marked for deletion.
KCG holds in Latin for
- Case Features in the Case Field, which is predictable thanks to the hierarchy of projections.
- Interpretable Number Features across the nominal extended projection (occur on Num and, if present, NF).
| Neil Myler, 2023
KOINÉ
- (Sociolinguistics) Nida and Fehderau (1970) were probably the first linguists to establish the koïné as a typological category. They saw it as a language of wider communication typified by "modifications in the direction of simplification of morphological and syntactic structure [... but which] presents no such structural break as is clearly present in the case of pidgins", and which is "always mutually intelligible with at least some forms of the standard language". The definition most usually relied upon these days, however, is Siegel's (1985):
Koïnéization is the process which leads to mixing of linguistic subsystems, that is, of language varieties which either are mutually intelligible or share the same genetically related superimposed language. It occurs in the context of increased interaction among speakers of these varieties. A koïné is the stabilized composite variety that results from this process. Formally, a koïné is characterized by a mixture of features from the contributing varieties, and at an early stage of development, is often reduced or simplified in comparison to any of these varieties. Functionally, a koïné serves as a lingua franca among speakers of the different varieties. It may also become the primary language of amalgamated communities of these speakers.
Although they are not subject to the drastic restructuring essential in the definition of a pidgin, koïnés do share with the latter the fact of being native to no one; thus every speaker of a koïnéized (or pidginized) variety of a language speaks another language or dialect natively. | Ian Hancock, 2000
- (Sociolinguistics) Table (1) summarizes the features of the original koine (Koinē Greek) taken into account by various writers in their definitions of a koine.
- Comparison of features of original koine and other "koines"
Original koine
Blanc
Burchfield
Dillard
Ferguson
Gambhir
Graff
Haller
Hartmann and Stork
Hill
Hymes
Mohan
Nida and Fehderau
Pei
Samarin
(1968)
(1976)
(1972)
(1959)
(1981)
(1932)
(1981)
(1973)
(1958)
(1971)
(1976)
(1970)
(1966)
(1971)
1a
+b
−
−
+
+
2
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
3
+
+
+
+
+
+
4
+
+
±
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
5
+
+
±
−
±
+
±
+
±
+
±
6
+
+
±
+
aFeatures of the original koine:
1. Based primarily on one dialect.
2. Has features of several dialects.
3. Reduced and simplified.
4. Used as a regional lingua franca.
5. Is a standard.
6. Is nativized to some extent.
b+ = Feature is described as being present.
− = Feature is described as being absent.
± = Feature can be either present or absent.
blank = Feature is not mentioned.
| Jeff Siegel, 1985
KOINEIZATION
(Sociolinguistics) Or, dialect mixing, or, structural nativization. The process by which a new variety of a language emerges from the mixing, leveling, and simplifying of different dialects.
The new variety of a language that develops as a result of koineization is called a koiné. According to Michael Noonan (2010), "Koineization has probably been a fairly common feature of the history of languages".
The term koineization (from the Greek κοινὴ for 'common tongue') was introduced by linguist William J. Samarin (1971) to describe the process that leads to the formation of new dialects. | Richard Nordquist, 2019
Page Created By Split July 6, 2024