Language History

Dragons soar through the skies and protests erupt on the streets, but Vivien Featherswallow isn’t worried. She’s going to follow the rules, get a summer internship studying dragon languages, be smart, be sweet, and make sure her little sister never, ever has to risk growing up Third Class. She just has to free one dragon. By midnight, Viv has started a civil war. With her parents and cousin arrested and her sister missing, Viv is brought to Bletchley Park as a codebreaker—if she succeeds, she and her family can all go home again. If she doesn’t, they’ll all die.

All humans, but no other species, have the capacity to create and understand language. It provides structure to our thoughts, allowing us to plan, communicate, and create new ideas, without limit. Yet we have only finite experiences, and our languages have finite stores of words. Where does our linguistic creativity come from? How does the endless scope of language emerge from our limited selves? Drawing on research from neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics, David Adger takes the listener on a journey to the hidden structure behind all we say (or sign) and understand.

If you are a beginner or seasoned professional in Information Technology this book explains the syntax and semantics of data model design. Models, Metaphor and Meaning looks at data modeling for information systems from the perspective of information theory, linguistics and semiotics in order to explain how models convey meaning. The book starts with a critique of William Kent’s classic Data and Reality and builds on contemporary themes in psycho-linguistics regarding metaphor as a key to our conceptual thinking. The book reviews Shannon’s Information Theory and analyzes the differences...

Drawing on evidence from many fields, including archaeology, anthropology, neurology and linguistics, Sverker Johansson weaves these disparate threads together to show how our human ancestors evolved into language users. The Dawn of Language provides a fascinating survey of how grammar came into being and the differences or similarities between languages spoken around the world, before exploring how language eventually emerged in the very remote human past.

It seems impossible: a small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbors, becomes the dominant world power in the 19th century. Equally unlikely, a colony of that island nation across the Atlantic grows into the military and cultural colossus of the 20th century. How? By the sword, of course; by trade and industrial ingenuity; but principally, and most surprisingly, by the power of their common language.

Melody Beattie integrates her own life experiences and fundamental recovery reflections in this unique daily meditation book written especially for those of us who struggle with the issue of codependency. Problems are made to be solved, Melody reminds us, and the best thing we can do is take responsibility for our own pain and self-care.

On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle - an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick.

David Hume reduced philosophy to ruins: he denied the existence of everything, except our actual perceptions themselves. I alone exist, he argued, and the world is nothing more than part of my consciousness. Yet we know that the world remains, and we go on as before. What Hume expressed was the status of our knowledge about the world, a world in which neither religion nor science is certain.

In Becoming Fluent, Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz draw on insights from psychology and cognitive science to show that adults can master a foreign language if they bring to bear the skills and knowledge they have honed over a lifetime. Adults shouldn't try to learn as children do, they should learn like adults. Roberts and Kreuz report evidence that adults can learn new languages even more easily than children.

Fifty thousand years ago - merely a blip in evolutionary time - our Homo sapiens ancestors were competing for existence with several other human species, just as their precursors had done for millions of years. Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet? Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special.

What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world.

Inspired by myth, fairy tale, and folklore, number one New York Times best-selling author Leigh Bardugo has crafted a deliciously atmospheric collection of short stories filled with betrayals, revenge, sacrifice, and love.

In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for example, addresses just five per cent of the universe, pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored, and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning.

The Maya forged one of the greatest societies in the history of the ancient Americas and in all of human history. Long before contact with Europeans, Maya communities built spectacular cities with large, well-fed large populations. They mastered the visual arts, and developed a sophisticated writing system that recorded extraordinary knowledge in calendrics, mathematics, and astronomy. The Maya achieved all this without area-wide centralized control.

Half the world's population speaks a language that has evolved from a single prehistoric mother tongue. First spoken in Stone Age times on the steppes of central Eurasia 6,500 years ago, this mother tongue spread from the shores of the Black Sea across almost all of Europe and much of Asia. It is the genetic basis of everything we speak and write today - the DNA of language.

The Foundations of Faith series features important writings from the early Christian Church, with modernized language to make these influential works more accessible to today's reader. Included in Volume 1 are the following works: The Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) The First and Second Epistles of Clement The Epistle of Barnabas The Odes of Solomon The Epistle of Polycarp The Martyrdom of Polycarp The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus The Seven Prison Epistles of Ignatius Ignatius to the Ephesians Ignatius to the Magnesians Ignatius to the Trallians Ignatius to the Romans ...

Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer's Middle English, Old English—the language of Beowulf—defies comprehension by untrained modern readers. Used throughout much of Britain more than a thousand years ago, it is rich with words that haven't changed (like word), others that are unrecognizable (such as neorxnawang, or paradise), and some that are mystifying even in translation ( gafol-fisc, or tax-fish).

Splendiferous Speech explores the main sources of the American vernacular - the expanding western frontier, the bumptious world of politics, and the sensation-filled pages of popular 19th-century newspapers. It's a process that started with the earliest English colonists (first word adoption - the Algonquian raccoon) and is still going strong today. Author Rosemarie Ostler takes listeners along on the journey as Americans learn to declare linguistic independence and embrace their own brand of speech.

Includes all 100 civics Questions and Answers read by a professional American voice actor with a natural American accent.

There’s more to salvation than punching your ticket for heaven. John Wesley taught that full salvation means becoming completely holy in heart and life. This focus on personal holiness was one of the defining characteristics of the Wesleyan revival. The many Methodist and Wesleyan denominations, the Pentecostal and holiness movements, and the Salvation Army all trace their lineage back to these teachings. Wesley’s followers believed what he taught fiercely, lived it out faithfully, and witnessed to it boldly, to the point that they were often violently persecuted. Today, millions of ...