Spread Of Languages Research Articles

New insights from Thailand into the maternal genetic history of Mainland Southeast Asia

Tai-Kadai (TK) is one of the major language families in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA), with a concentration in the area of Thailand and Laos. Our previous study of 1234 mtDNA genome sequences supported a demic diffusion scenario in the spread of TK languages from southern China to Laos as well as northern and northeastern Thailand. Here we add an additional 560 mtDNA genomes from 22 groups, with a focus on the TK-speaking central Thai people and the Sino-Tibetan speaking Karen. We find extensive diversity, including 62 haplogroups not reported previously from this region. Demic diffusion is still a preferable scenario for central Thais, emphasizing the expansion of TK people through MSEA, although there is also some support for gene flow between central Thai and native Austroasiatic speaking Mon and Khmer. We also tested competing models concerning the genetic relationships of groups from the major MSEA languages, and found support for an ancestral relationship of TK and Austronesian-speaking groups.

THE JOURNALISTIC ACTIVITY OF VASYL SHTUL IN VOLYN IN THE PERIOD OF NAZI OCCUPATION (1941–1943)

In the article, the journalistic activity of Vasyl Shtul in Volyn in the period of Nazi occupation (1941–1943) is highlighted. The status of development of this issue in Ukrainian and foreign historiography is determined. Therefore, we should note that in historiography the abovementioned issue wasn`t the subject of special historical investigation. The issues that require further study and development are specified. For the purpose of comprehensive study of the given issues archival documents and newspaper publications are used. In view of the status of development of this issue in historiography the main attention was focused on V. Shtul's activity in 1941–1943. The information about the birthplace of V. Shtul is clarified. The influence of social and political events of the period of the Second World War on the public and political activity of V. Shtul is considered. V. Shtul’s social and political activity is of special interest. Particular attention is paid to V. Shtul’s journalistic activity at the Volyn publishing house, namely in the editorial board of the journal «Volyn». As an editorial staff member, V. Shtul in his articles focused on the commemoration of various historical dates, for instance the 20th anniversary of the Bazar tragedy, 73rd anniversary of the formation of the association «Prosvita» in Lviv etc. He also focused on the problems related to the national-patriotic education of youth. Therefore, we should note that V. Shtul was a member of the OUN(M) and supported the association «Prosvita», which promoted the idea of independent Ukraine and the spread of the Ukrainian language in the region. The evaluation of V. Shtul’s activity as a public-political figure is provided. It is stated, that V. Shtul died in 1943 in the result of the strife between OUN(M) and OUN(B). The conclusion on the importance of the public-political activity of V. Shtul during the Nazi occupation of Volyn (1941–1943) is made.

A Study on the Spread and Development of English Language - Focused on the Outer ․ Expanding Circle Countries in Asian context -

A Study on the Spread and Development of English Language - Focused on the Outer ․ Expanding Circle Countries in Asian context -

Wika sa Pampublikong Espasyo: Isang Pag-aaral sa Tanawing Pangwika ng Maynila

Wika sa Pampublikong Espasyo: Isang Pag-aaral sa Tanawing Pangwika ng Maynila

Enclaves of genetic diversity resisted Inca impacts on population history

The Inca Empire is claimed to have driven massive population movements in western South America, and to have spread Quechua, the most widely-spoken language family of the indigenous Americas. A test-case is the Chachapoyas region of northern Peru, reported as a focal point of Inca population displacements. Chachapoyas also spans the environmental, cultural and demographic divides between Amazonia and the Andes, and stands along the lowest-altitude corridor from the rainforest to the Pacific coast. Following a sampling strategy informed by linguistic data, we collected 119 samples, analysed for full mtDNA genomes and Y-chromosome STRs. We report a high indigenous component, which stands apart from the network of intense genetic exchange in the core central zone of Andean civilization, and is also distinct from neighbouring populations. This unique genetic profile challenges the routine assumption of large-scale population relocations by the Incas. Furthermore, speakers of Chachapoyas Quechua are found to share no particular genetic similarity or gene-flow with Quechua speakers elsewhere, suggesting that here the language spread primarily by cultural diffusion, not migration. Our results demonstrate how population genetics, when fully guided by the archaeological, historical and linguistic records, can inform multiple disciplines within anthropology.

Genome diversity in the Neolithic Globular Amphorae culture and the spread of Indo-European languages.

It is unclear whether Indo-European languages in Europe spread from the Pontic steppes in the late Neolithic, or from Anatolia in the Early Neolithic. Under the former hypothesis, people of the Globular Amphorae culture (GAC) would be descended from Eastern ancestors, likely representing the Yamnaya culture. However, nuclear (six individuals typed for 597 573 SNPs) and mitochondrial (11 complete sequences) DNA from the GAC appear closer to those of earlier Neolithic groups than to the DNA of all other populations related to the Pontic steppe migration. Explicit comparisons of alternative demographic models via approximate Bayesian computation confirmed this pattern. These results are not in contrast to Late Neolithic gene flow from the Pontic steppes into Central Europe. However, they add nuance to this model, showing that the eastern affinities of the GAC in the archaeological record reflect cultural influences from other groups from the East, rather than the movement of people.

Scenarious specificity of regional phraseology

The purpose of this work is to define the features common to phraseological units that arise on the basis of local / regional scenarios and function in territorially limited regions of the spread of the Russian language. In addition, the author made an attempt to establish the dependence of the precedent of phraseological unit on the chronotope as a natural connection of space-time coordinates, and also to characterize the features of the functioning of local phraseological units in regions different in terms of social and / or professional status of the Russian-speaking population that dominates there: in the city and in the countryside. The object of study is regional phraseological units, the subject — regional scenarios, generating precedent phenomena. The result of this study is the establishment of such basic features of regional phraseological units: territorial limitations of functioning; difficulties in understanding its meanings by native speakers of the Russian language living in other regions; ability to spread to other territories and to enter the national Russian language. The conclusions point to a direct link between the notion of a precedent phenomenon in linguistics and the notions of a dominant and a chronotope. As the dominant of perception of the process, action, object, and attribute changes, prerequisites arise for the emergence of new precedent phenomena and for the obsolescence of existing ones. As the phraseological unit spreads in the communicative space, the scenarios for their occurrence are distorted and the dependence of their functioning on the primary scenarios is erased. Passing the boundary of this dependence, phraseological unit as a lingvosemiotic phenomenon is synchronized in speech, loses its connection with past scenarios and focuses on semantic compatibility in one or another discourse.

Variasi Sintaksis Bahasa Inggris Para Guru Bahasa Inggris di Kota Padang, Sumatera Barat

English has become a language spread all over the world. The sociolinguistic facts show that various variations of English arise due to local language and cultural contact. In the context of English language learning in a country that uses English as a foreign language, it is still believed that English teachers in schools teach standard English namely British Received Pronunciation and Standard American English. However, this condition needs to be questioned whether the English teachers actually use standard English or whether they use a certain English variation. The purpose of this study is to describe the English language used by teachers in syntax. Several English teachers who taught in high school in Padang became participants in this study. The results of this study show that the English teachers have a syntactic difference with the English standard English and British English. The results of this study can provide information on teaching English in Indonesia.

Can a language spread from bottom upwards? A study on the spread of standard Chinese in Johor, Malaysia

Abstract Language spread as defined by (Cooper, Robert Leon. 1982. A framework for the study of language spread. In Robert L. Cooper (eds.), Language spread: Studies in diffusion and social change, 5–36. Bloomington: Indiana University Press) became a new research branch after (Fishman, Joshua Aaron. 1989. The spread of English as a new perspective for the study of ‘Language Maintenance and Language Shift.’ In Joshua A. Fishman (eds.), Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective, 32–263. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters) seminal work. In literature, most of the languages in spread are European languages such as English and Spanish. (Fishman, Joshua Aaron. 1989. The spread of English as a new perspective for the study of ‘Language Maintenance and Language Shift.’ In Joshua A. Fishman (eds.), Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective, 32–263. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters) contended that the spread of English was a top-down process. (Garcia, Ofelia.2002. Language spread and its study: Narrowing its spread as a scholarly field. In Robert B. Kaplan (eds.), The oxford handbook of applied linguistics, 352–364. New York: Oxford University Press) also proposed that language spread started first in high societal domains. However, according to our study in Malaysia, standard Chinese undertook a different route in its process of spread. It spreads its use first in high domains such as the education domain and then in low domains such as the family domain. This paper aims to answer the research question whether it is possible for a language to spread from bottom upwards as compared to the well-known top-down spread. The empirical basis of this paper is a language survey conducted by the researcher in the state of Johor, Malaysia. In this study, questionnaires, home interviews and un-intrusive observations were used as the research methods. By comparing the spread process of English and Chinese—both transnational languages due to globalization–this paper will contribute to the theory of language spread and identify the differences between the spread of English and the spread of Chinese.

On the History of Global Chinese and Its Research

AbstractThe formation and development of Global Chinese as a field of inquiry involves a process, every phase of which requires substantial evidence, regularity and theoretical motivation. In general, Global Chinese has a history and the research on Global Chinese needs to focus on its history. Conceptually, the history of Global Chinese should contain at least four main points. It is a history of the global spread of the Chinese language; it is situated at a higher level than the history of Modern Chinese; it is an integral part of the history of the Chinese language, and it is an extension of the history of Chinese. The study of the history of Global Chinese should include at least four aspects: the continuous migration of the Chinese people; the impact of local social life and language culture on overseas Chinese; the influence of foreign languages, and the interactions between and changes of varieties of in different parts of the world. As for the research methods of the history of Global Chinese history, a multidimensional model is proposed.

Discussion: Are the Origins of Indo-European Languages Explained by the Migration of the Yamnaya Culture to the West?

Two co-authored articles in Nature (Haak et al., 2015; Allentoft et al., 2015) caused a sensation. They revealed genetically the mass migration of steppe Yamnaya culture people in the Early Bronze Age to central and northern Europe. The authors considered this event as the basis of the spread of Indo-European languages. In response, the Russian archaeologist, Leo S. Klejn, expresses critical remarks on the genetic inference, and in particular its implications for the problem of the origins of Indo-European languages. These remarks were shown to the authors and they present their objections. Klejn, however, has come to the conclusion that the authors’ objections do not assuage his doubts. He analyses these objections in a further response.

Garments, Parts of Garments, and Textile Techniques in the Assyrian Terminology: The Neo-Assyrian Textile Lexicon in the 1st-Millennium BC Linguistic Context

At its political and territorial apex in the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Assyria developed into an imperial society characterised by the coexistence of languages and cultures of various origins. The policy of deporting and resettling conquered peoples across the Empire’s territory caused the spread of the Aramaic language and alphabetic script as well as the use of Aramaic as a co-official language alongside Akkadian. The linguistic change caused by these events in the Empire’s core territory emerges from the late stage of the Assyrian dialect, which shows the impact of Aramaic on various grammatical and lexical elements of the language. At the same time, Neo-Assyrian maintained continuous contact with the Neo- Babylonian dialect, the language spoken by numerous individuals employed in the state sector as scribes, scholars, and officials.

Implementing constitutional language provisions through the Indigenous Language Publishing Programme

The trade publishing sector in South Africa produces books primarily in English and Afrikaans, which is not representative of the spread of languages spoken in the country. In particular, there are very few books published for general readers in the local African languages. The Indigenous Language Publishing Programme (ILPP) is a government-sponsored initiative that aims to improve this situation. This article assesses the impact and sustainability of the ILPP as an attempt to represent the official languages more equally in the publishing industry. Our study, based on an analysis of documents and interviews, found that the national language and book policies have not been well implemented, which is a failure in terms of reaching constitutional ideals. Moreover, despite the ILPP being an attempt at creating language equality, the initiative seems not to be sustainable because it is reliant on external funding. The Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) is not willing to fund such a project on an ongoing basis, which puts the programme’s longevity at risk. As a result, the ILPP’s influence remains limited. The minority languages remain under-represented and this raises questions about whether there is in fact a viable market for books in all of the South African languages.

The Structured Coalescent and Its Approximations.

Phylogeographic methods can help reveal the movement of genes between populations of organisms. This has been widely done to quantify pathogen movement between different host populations, the migration history of humans, and the geographic spread of languages or gene flow between species using the location or state of samples alongside sequence data. Phylogenies therefore offer insights into migration processes not available from classic epidemiological or occurrence data alone. Phylogeographic methods have however several known shortcomings. In particular, one of the most widely used methods treats migration the same as mutation, and therefore does not incorporate information about population demography. This may lead to severe biases in estimated migration rates for data sets where sampling is biased across populations. The structured coalescent on the other hand allows us to coherently model the migration and coalescent process, but current implementations struggle with complex data sets due to the need to infer ancestral migration histories. Thus, approximations to the structured coalescent, which integrate over all ancestral migration histories, have been developed. However, the validity and robustness of these approximations remain unclear. We present an exact numerical solution to the structured coalescent that does not require the inference of migration histories. Although this solution is computationally unfeasible for large data sets, it clarifies the assumptions of previously developed approximate methods and allows us to provide an improved approximation to the structured coalescent. We have implemented these methods in BEAST2, and we show how these methods compare under different scenarios.

Interactive Communication of the Core Values between China and the ASEAN Members through Confucius Institutes under the “Belt & Road” Strategy

Core values reflect the spiritual pursuit of a nation or a country, serve as the value standards for judgment in a society, and are an important embodiment of the soft power of a country. National policies are one of the key determinants in language spread and cultural values communication, which are usually influenced by international political, economic and diplomatic factors. The spread and communication of languages and cultural values among different regions and countries are an interactive process, starting from differences, while based on things in common. The ongoing enhancement of China’s national strength is a guarantee for the interactive communication of core values between China and the ASEAN members. Confucius Institutes provide an impetus, opportunity and channel for such communication under the “Belt & Road” Strategy advocated by China.

“Una época en la que el Ciudadano ve su seguridad individual respetada”. La circulación del lenguaje de los derechos en los tribunales de la Buenos Aires posrevolucionaria (1810-1830)

El artículo rastrea el uso del lenguaje de los derechos en los tribunales porteños durante los primeros 20 años de revolución. Los expedientes judiciales utilizados ofrecen una vía privilegiada para pensar sobre la difusión de ese lenguaje más allá de las elites, rastreando usos más generalizados e incluso populares del mismo. En la convicción de que las culturas jurídicas se transforman sobre una base cotidiana, de la mano de los cambios en la percepción de los ciudadanos sobre cuáles son sus derechos y cómo pueden reclamarlos, el trabajo apunta a mostrar cómo los valores y los derechos movilizados por pleiteantes y abogados en el foro de Buenos Aires comenzaron a reformularse en el contexto revolucionario. Si bien no siempre los principios y leyes más novedosos fueron los más eficaces en el arco de las contiendas judiciales, su circulación fue cimentando la creación de una cultura de los derechos legalista cuyo futuro afianzamiento sólo puede explicarse a partir de estos tempranos e imperfectos pasos

Лингвистический аспект как фактор внешней политики КНР в XXI в.

The analysis of the linguistic aspect of the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China is becoming more relevant today owing to the fact that the impact of soft power factors - methods to achieve the desired result without the use of violence - enhances in foreign policy processes. The foreign policy of China is not an exception. of the main elements of soft power is the language policy. The article is devoted to the linguistic aspect of China's foreign policy in modern conditions as an instrument of soft power. The definition of the concept soft power, the principal components and instruments of soft power in Eastern countries are underlined in the article. New principles and direction of China's diplomacy, pledged at the VIII Congress of the CPC, reflect the fact that soft power is used as one of the main tools of China's foreign policy. In addition, a special place is given to the language policy of the country. It is important to note that the language policy was chosen by the Chinese leadership as one of the priorities of foreign policy directions for a number of reasons, which include an increased interest in China after its reaching economic success and the rapid growth in the number of countries which co-operate with China. Moreover, big demand in specialists in the Chinese language is also significant. The attention is focused on the premises of the active implementation of the language policy of the PRC. An important step for the People's Republic of China was the beginning of the policy of reform and opening under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. In addition, a decisive role played the standardization of the Chinese language and the foundation of the State Office of the People's Republic of China on the spreading of the Chinese language and traditional culture abroad in 1984. The correlation of the new strategy of the Chinese leadership, One Belt - one way and the desire to spread the Chinese language and culture abroad is considered in the article as well. An important place is given to the consideration of the Russian-Chinese cooperation in the area of language, to main projects and activities carried out in this area. The language policy of the People's Republic of China is one of the determining factors of the country's foreign policy in the modern world. This linguistic aspect influences both the domestic and foreign policy of the Chinese leadership. The language policy of the PRC is multidirectional: it includes not only the spread of the Chinese language abroad, but also the desire to preserve the languages of ethnic minorities in the country, protection of cultural and linguistic diversity of China. Today, the international position of the country and its image directly depend on the success of the implementation of China's language policy.

Historical sociolinguistics in colonial New Guinea: The Rhenish mission society in the Astrolabe Bay

AbstractThe Rhenish Mission Society, a German Protestant mission, was active in a small part of northern New Guinea, the Astrolabe Bay, between 1887 and 1932. Up until 1914, this region was under German colonial rule. The German dominance was also reflected in rules on language use in official contexts such as schools and administration.Missionaries were strongly affected by such rules as their most important tool in mission work was language. In addition, they were also responsible for school education as most schools in the German colonial areas in the Pacific were mission-run. Thus, mission societies had to make decisions about what languages to use, considering their own needs, their ideological convictions, and the colonial government’s requirements. These considerations were framed by the complex setting of New Guinea’s language wealth where several hundred languages were, and still are, spoken.This paper investigates a small set of original documents from the Rhenish Mission Society to trace what steps were taken and what considerations played a major role in the process of agreeing on a suitable means of communication with the people the missionaries wanted to reach, thereby touching upon topics such as language attitudes, language policies and politics, practical considerations of language learning and language spread, and colonial actions impacting local language ecologies.

ENGLISH AS A LINGUA FRANCA: IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGY AND ASSESSMENT

The English language functions as a global language that facilitates communication among people of different lingua-cultures. This background leads to the question of whether the traditional language assessment still fulfils the needs of the majority of language learners who will use English for various purposes with people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This article illustrates the development and spread of the English language by focusing on two key paradigms: World Englishes (WE) and English as a lingua franca (ELF). This article argues that a native-oriented means of English pedagogy and assessment does not fit the current functions of the language and cannot meet the various and complex needs of the majority of English language learners. It therefore emphasizes the importance of an ELF-informed approach, such as the ‘post-method’ approach to English language teaching and more flexible language assessment focusing on students’ performance of tasks. The article concludes that English language teaching and assessment need to be more informed by ELF than by the entrenched, anachronistic native-oriented ideology.

Erratum to: Complete mitochondrial genomes of Thai and Lao populations indicate an ancient origin of Austroasiatic groups and demic diffusion in the spread of Tai-Kadai languages.

The Tai–Kadai (TK) language family is thought to have originated in southern China and spread to Thailand and Laos, but it is not clear if TK languages spread by demic diffusion (i.e., a migration of people from southern China) or by cultural diffusion, with native Austroasiatic (AA) speakers switching to TK languages. To address this and other questions, we obtained 1234 complete mtDNA genome sequences from 51 TK and AA groups from Thailand and Laos. We find high genetic heterogeneity across the region, with 212 different haplogroups, and significant genetic differentiation among different samples from the same ethnolinguistic group. TK groups are more genetically homogeneous than AA groups, with the latter exhibiting more ancient/basal mtDNA lineages, and showing more drift effects. Modeling of demic diffusion, cultural diffusion, and admixture scenarios consistently supports the spread of TK languages by demic diffusion.