Showing titles in Linguistics

Why does writing exist? What does it mean to those who write? Born from the interplay of natural and cultural history, the seemingly magical act of writing has continually expanded our consciousness. Portrayed in mythology as either a gift from heroes or a curse from the gods, it has been used as both an instrument of power and a channel of the divine, a means of social bonding and of individual self-definition.

Mr. Royston is driving his hansom through the night-time streets of Melbourne when he is hailed by a man supporting a slumped, intoxicated figure and requesting that the cabman take the unfortunate fellow home - before proceeding to drop his burden and make a rapid exit.

毎日あたりまえに使っている日本語。だが、ふと疑問に思うことはないだろうか。そもそも漢字はいつから日本にあるのか?「シミュレーション」を「シュミレーション」とつい発音してしまうのはなぜだろ

Soon I felt something alive moving along my leg and up my body to my face, and when I looked down, I saw a very small human being, only 15 centimetres tall . . . I was so surprised that I gave a great shout. ’But that is only the first of many surprises which Gulliver has on his travels. He visits a land of giants and a flying island, meets ghosts from the past and horses which talk. An Oxford Bookworms Library reader for learners of English, adapted from the Jonathan Swift original by Clare West.

Frank Delaney's language based panel quiz game series revolves around the English language. This upbeat, fun word battle sees a host of well-known contributors battling to say the word first. The series is filmed in front of a live audience at a wide range of literary festivals in the UK and live in the BBC Studios.

Leaves of Grass is the written expression of Whitman's view of life and humanity in the form of poetry. The author masterfully connects each poem in some way, while infusing his prose with his own philosophy. This collection is unique for its time due to the emphasis the author puts on pleasures of the flesh, without resorting to symbolism to any great extent.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was first published anonymously in 1821 in the London Magazine and was published in book form a year later. A revised edition was published in 1846. It is an account by the author of his addiction to laudanum and the effects it had on his life. This recording presents an abridged version of the 1856 edition.

This is the handwritten book that Carroll wrote for private use before being urged to develop it later into Alice in Wonderland. It was meant to entertain his family and friends. When a sick child in a hospital enjoyed it so much, the mother wrote him saying it had distracted her for a bit from her pain and led eventually to Carroll expanding the story.

Manon is just about to enter a convent when she meets the young Chevalier des Grieux, a philosophy student. They flee to Paris together, where they live extravagantly off the money the Chevalier makes cheating at cards, until they are robbed of their possessions. Manon becomes mistress to a wealthy nobleman, and she and the Chevalier steal his money. They are captured and sent to a penal colony in Louisiana.

Hanney, an expatriated Scot, returns from a long stay in South Africa to his flat in London. One night he is buttonholed by an American who appears to know of an anarchist plot to destabilise Europe, and claims to be in fear for his life. Hannay lets the American hide in his flat, and returns later to find that another man has been found shot dead in the same building, apparently a suicide. Four days later Hannay finds the American stabbed to death...

The crew of a European ship discovers the utopian island of Bensalem, having gotten lost in the Pacific Ocean somewhere near Peru. The crew spend time learning about the ways of the people of Bensalem, a very chaste group of Christians. The most important part of the island is their university, a state-sponsored scientific institution known as Salomon's House. The narrator is chosen from amongst the crew to get a one-on-one explanation of the way their society works, and he learns about the various buildings and jobs that exist on Bensalem.

Rosmersholm is a play surrounding the deep and intense political and cultural change in Norway in the middle of the 1880s, a period during which the traditional ruling class were forced to relinquish their right to impose their ideals on the rest of society. We follow Johannes Rosmer, a pastor who has resigned from his position; Rebecca West, a woman who sees Rosmer's potential and believes she can help him to realize his dream of creating a world of "happy, noble people"; and Headmaster Kroll, Rosmer's former best friend.

In this ambitious book, Jieun Kiaer explores the lives of English words in the twenty-first century, when the creation and use of language has become an increasingly dynamic, interactive, and diverse process in which ordinary people have taken leading roles—offering such coinages as "flexitarian," "MeToo," "glow up," and "shitizen" to "No sabo kids" and beyond. As English language grows ever more diverse, Kiaer believes, we need a paradigm shift.

There are no direct records of the original Indo-European speech. By comparing the vocabularies of its various descendants, however, it is possible to reconstruct the basic Indo-European roots with considerable confidence. In The Origins of English Words, Shipley catalogues these proposed roots and follows the often devious, always fascinating, process by which some of their offshoots have grown.

In The Dictionary Wars, Peter Martin recounts the patriotic fervor in the early American republic to produce a definitive national dictionary that would rival Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. But what began as a cultural war of independence from Britain devolved into a battle among lexicographers, authors, scholars, and publishers, all vying for dictionary supremacy and shattering forever the dream of a unified American language.

This monumental work made the Arthurian cycle available for the first time in English. Malory took a body of legends from Celtic folklore that had been adapted into French literature, gave them an English perspective, and produced a work which ever since has had tremendous influence upon literature.

George Horace Lorimer is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post, where he was credited with promoting and discovering authors like Jack London. Lorimer compiled his life advice into the fictional letters from John "Old Gorgon" Graham to his son Pierrepont. John Graham is a Chicago-based pork and finance baron. In the letters Pierrepont receives advice for his different stages of life. Old Gorgon's advice is packed throughout the book, easy to understand, and still rings true today.

In Highly Irregular, Arika Okrent tells the story of the many influences - from invading French armies to stubborn Flemish printers - that made our language the way it is today. Both an entertaining send-up of linguistic oddities and a deeply researched history of English, Highly Irregular is essential for anyone who has paused to wonder about our marvelous mess of a language.

In this Very Short Introduction, Simon Horobin investigates how we have arrived at the English we know today and celebrates the way new speakers and new uses mean that it continues to adapt. Engaging with contemporary concerns about correctness, Horobin considers whether such changes are improvements or evidence of slipping standards.

It's a good thing that Time Agents are intensively trained. When Ross Murdock and Gordon Ashe set up a time gate on the alien world of Hawaika for an exploration into its troubling past, they didn't anticipate that a storm would sweep them and their helper Karara Trehern and her two dolphins through it unprepared...and then collapse the gate. Trapped in a time of sword-and-spear technology, they rapidly discover that each of the world's cultures appear to be trying to wipe one another out.