Heike Wiese

What constitutes our number concept? What makes it possible for us to employ numbers the way we do; which mental faculties contribute to our grasp of numbers? What do we share with other species, and what is specific to humans? How does our language faculty come into the picture? This 2003 book addresses these questions and discusses the relationship between numerical thinking and the human language faculty, providing psychological, linguistic and philosophical perspectives on number, its evolution and its development in children. Heike Wiese argues that language as a human faculty plays a crucial role in the emergence of systematic numerical thinking. She characterises number sequences as powerful and highly flexible mental tools that are unique to humans and shows that it is language that enables us to go beyond the perception of numerosity and to develop such mental tools.

Numbers, Language, and the Human Mind

Paul Kerswill

This volume provides a systematic comparative treatment of urban contact dialects in the Global North and South, examining the emergence and development of these dialects in major cities in sub-Saharan Africa and North-Western Europe. The book’s focus on contemporary urban settings sheds light on the new language practices and mixed ways of speaking resulting from large-scale migration and the intense contact that occurs between new and existing languages and dialects in these contexts. In comparing these new patterns of language variation and change between cities in both Africa and Europe, the volume affords us a unique opportunity to examine commonalities in linguistic phenomena as well as sociolinguistic differences in societally multilingual settings and settings dominated by a strong monolingual habitus. These comparisons are reinforced by a consistent chapter structure, with each chapter presenting the linguistic and social context of the region, information on available data (including corpora), sociolinguistic and structural findings, a discussion of the status of the urban contact dialect, and its stability over time. The discussion in the book is further enriched by short commentaries from researchers contributing different theoretical and geographical perspectives. Taken as a whole, the book offers new insights into migration-based linguistic diversity and patterns of language variation and change, making this ideal reading for students and scholars in general linguistics and language structure, sociolinguistics, creole studies, diachronic linguistics, language acquisition, anthropological linguistics, language education and discourse analysis.

Insights from the Global North and South

Urban Contact Dialects and Language Change

Horst J. Simon

Every linguistic theory has to come to grips with a fundamental property of human language: the existence of exceptions, i.e. phenomena that do not follow the standard patterns one observes otherwise. The contributions to this volume discuss and exemplify a variety of approaches to exceptionality within different formal and non-formal frameworks. Topics include criteria for exceptionality, the diachronic rise of exceptions, the relevance of different grammatical subsystems and their interaction in the explanation of exceptions, and the crucial characteristics of grammatical models that can accommodate exceptions. A special feature of the book is that the articles are accompanied by peer-commentaries and responses thereupon, thus opening up the papers to further discussion.

Expecting the Unexpected: Exceptions in Grammar

"Machst du rote Ampel." "Danach ich ruf dich an." "Gibs auch 'ne Abkürzung." - Sätze wie diese sind nicht Horte von Sprachfehlern, sondern haben grammatische Eigenarten wie viele andere deutsche Dialekte auch. Anhand zahlreicher Beispiele zeigt die renommierte Sprachwissenschaftlerin Heike Wiese, dass Kiezdeutsch keine "Kanak Sprak" ist, kein Anzeichen mangelnder Integration und auch keine Gefahr für das Deutsche, sondern ein neuer, in dynamischer Entwicklung befindlicher Dialekt. Entwicklungen wie in Kiezdeutsch finden sich deswegen nicht nur dort, sondern auch in anderen Bereichen unserer Umgangssprache. Heike Wiese hört genau hin und analysiert, vor allem den Sprachgebrauch von Berliner Jugendlichen. Ihre Forschungen zeigen, mit welcher grammatischen Logik und sprachlichen Kreativität in Kreuzberg und anderen Kiezen Deutsch gesprochen wird - allen sozialpolitischen Vor- und Fehlurteilen zum Trotz.

ein neuer Dialekt entsteht

Kiezdeutsch

Jörg Meibauer

Rita Finkbeiner

Though “pejoration” is an important notion for linguistic analysis and theory, there is still a lack of theoretical understanding and sound descriptive analysis. In this timely collection, the phenomenon of pejoration is studied from a number of angles. It contains studies from phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and deals with diverse languages and their variants. The collection will appeal to all those linguists with a genuine interest in locating pejoration at the grammar-pragmatics interface.

Pejoration

“Wunderbar, das Deutsche. Wie es immer neue Varianten entwickelt und neue Wörter wie lassma oder ischwör. Oder wie dort das Wörtchen so auf ganz neue Weise eingesetzt wird: Die ist so blond so.“ Axel Hacke Kiezdeutsch ist keine „Kanak Sprak“, kein Anzeichen mangelnder Integration und auch keine Gefahr für das Deutsche, sondern ein neuer Dialekt mit grammatischen Eigenarten, die mit anderen deutschen Dialekten vergleichbar sind. Das zeigt die renommierte Sprachwissenschaftlerin Heike Wiese anhand zahlreicher Beispiele. Ihre Analyse ist ebenso lehrreich wie unterhaltsam und bietet reichlich Diskussionsstoff. „Heike Wiese ist eine außergewöhnlich gute Linguistin.“ Guy Deutscher, Autor von „Im Spiegel der Sprache: Warum die Welt in anderen Sprachen anders aussieht“

Heike Wiese

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