Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
The question of the genealogical proximity of Italic and Celtic has been an issue in Indo-European linguistics for a long time. Whereas most previous studies have looked at the innovations possibly...Show moreThe question of the genealogical proximity of Italic and Celtic has been an issue in Indo-European linguistics for a long time. Whereas most previous studies have looked at the innovations possibly shared by Italic and Celtic from a Proto-Indo-European perspective, this work takes a more bottom-up approach by attempting to reconstruct (parts of) the Proto-Italo-Celtic language on the basis of the attested linguistic data in both branches’ daughter languages. The areas under focus are Italo-Celtic phonology and verbal morphology. As the Italo-Celtic reconstructions of both of these sub-systems of the language are substantially different for the systems traditionally reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, I will argue that there is good reason to posit Italo-Celtic as a genetic unit that must have lasted for a substantial amount of time.Show less
Modern Chinese languages are tonal languages but they were not always so. As tones emerged in the language, speakers' awareness of them has grown as well. Two topics are discussed in this thesis....Show moreModern Chinese languages are tonal languages but they were not always so. As tones emerged in the language, speakers' awareness of them has grown as well. Two topics are discussed in this thesis. How the awareness of tone has developed, and what tonal information is revealed in the descriptions by poets and Chinese language learners of the time.Show less
