The Kitans established the Liao dynasty in northern China, which lasted for over two centuries (916-1125). In this survey the reader will find what is currently known about the Kitan language and scripts. The language was very likely distantly related to Mongolian, with two quite different scripts in use. A few generations after their state was defeated, almost all trace of the...(展开全部)

The scholarly culture of Ming dynasty China (1368–1644) is often seen as prioritizing philosophy over concrete textual study. Nathan Vedal uncovers the preoccupation among Ming thinkers with specialized linguistic learning, a field typically associated with the intellectual revolution of the eighteenth century. He explores the collaboration of Confucian classicists and Buddhist...(展开全部)

In the more than 3,000 years since its invention, the Chinese script has been adapted many times to write languages other than Chinese, including Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Zhuang. In Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script, Zev Handel provides a comprehensive analysis of how the structural features of these languages constrained and motivated meth...(展开全部)

How do we evaluate the power and utility of language when it has been made to articulate falsehoods in certain totalitarian regimes or has been charged with vulgarity and imprecision in a mass-consumer democracy? How will language react to the increasingly urgent claims of more exact speech such as mathematics and symbolic notation? These are some of the questions Steiner addre...(展开全部)

How do we evaluate the power and utility of language when it has been made to articulate falsehoods in certain totalitarian regimes or has been charged with vulgarity and imprecision in a mass-consumer democracy? How will language react to the increasingly urgent claims of more exact speech such as mathematics and symbolic notation? These are some of the questions Steiner addre...(展开全部)

'Politics and the English Language' is widely considered Orwell's most important essay on style. Style, for Orwell, was never simply a question of aesthetics; it was always inextricably linked to politics and to truth.'All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.When the general atmosphere is bad, language mu...(展开全部)

Dazzling...Pinker's big idea is that language is an instinct...as innate to us as flying is to geese...Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations' - "Independent". 'A marvelously readable book...illuminates every facet of human language: its biological origin, its uniqueness to humanity, its acquisition by children, its gramma...(展开全部)

Dazzling...Pinker's big idea is that language is an instinct...as innate to us as flying is to geese...Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations' - "Independent". 'A marvelously readable book...illuminates every facet of human language: its biological origin, its uniqueness to humanity, its acquisition by children, its gramma...(展开全部)

The first book in the Newmarket Shooting Script Series reissued with new material to coincide with the Warner Bros. theatrical re-release and special 10th anniversary DVD launch of this modern classic. This expanded edition draws from the many new extras that are being created for the DVD, including 90 minutes of commentary by Darabont, documentary material on the making o...(展开全部)

The first book in the Newmarket Shooting Script Series reissued with new material to coincide with the Warner Bros. theatrical re-release and special 10th anniversary DVD launch of this modern classic. This expanded edition draws from the many new extras that are being created for the DVD, including 90 minutes of commentary by Darabont, documentary material on the making o...(展开全部)