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Annual Review of Linguistics - Volume 5, 2019
Volume 5, 2019
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The Austronesian Homeland and Dispersal
Vol. 5 (2019), pp. 417–434More LessThe Austronesian language family is the second largest on Earth in number of languages, and was the largest in geographical extent before the European colonial expansions of the past five centuries. This alone makes the determination of its homeland a research question of the first order. There is now near-universal agreement among both linguists and archaeologists that the Austronesian expansion began from Taiwan, somewhat more than a millennium after it was settled by Neolithic rice and millet farmers from Southeast China. The first “long pause,” between the settlement of Taiwan and of the northern Philippines, may have been due to inadequate sailing technology, an obstacle that was overcome by the invention of the outrigger canoe complex. The second “long pause,” between the settlement of Fiji–Western Polynesia and of the rest of Triangle Polynesia, may also have been due to inadequate sailing technology, an obstacle that was overcome by the invention of the double-hulled canoe.
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Language Variation and Change in Rural Communities
Vol. 5 (2019), pp. 435–453More LessDespite the difficulty of delineating the rural from the urban according to economic or demographic criteria, this distinction has powerful cultural resonances, and language plays a key role in constructing the cultural divide between rural and urban. Sociolinguists have generally devoted more attention to urban communities, but substantial research has explored language variation and change in rural areas, and this scholarship complements the perspective gained from studies of metropolitan speech. This article reviews research on rural speech communities that examines the linguistic dimensions of the urban/rural divide as well as social dynamics driving language variation and change in rural areas. One theme emerging from this literature is the role of dialect contact and how its effects are shaped by material as well as attitudinal factors.
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Language, Gender, and Sexuality
Vol. 5 (2019), pp. 455–475More LessResearch on language and gender encompasses a variety of methods and focuses on many aspects of linguistic structure. This review traces the historical development of the field, explicating some of the major debates, including the need to move from a reductive focus on difference and dichotomous views of gender to more performative notions of identity. It explains how the field has come to include language, gender, and sexuality and how queer theory and speaker agency have influenced research in the field.
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