Imke Mendoza - Böcker

Standardisation is not a natural form of language change. The aim of such efforts is usually to create a largely uniform standard, often backed by a strong standard language ideology. However, standard languages are sometimes Janus-faced. Additional standard varieties emerge, leading to situations with «double standards» or even «multiple standards».This volume brings together fifteen contributions on «double standards» in twelve languages – and various standard varieties thereof – from three language families, thus providing a novel comparative view on standardisation. Three main aspects of the «double standards» concept are identified: the descriptive vs prescriptive notion of standards, the coexistence of standard varieties in pluricentric or pluriareal settings, and the impact of the cohabitation of several standards in native or foreign language teaching.

The impact of the ecclesiastical languages Greek, Latin and Church Slavonic on the Slavic standard languages still lacks a systematic analysis in the theoretical framework of contact linguistics. Based on corpus data, this volume offers an account in the light of “literacy language contact”, i.e. contact between varieties that are used only in a written variant and only in formal registers. Latin was used as literary language in medieval Slavia Romana; Greek was the source language for Church Slavonic, which, in turn, was the literary language for many Slavonic speaking communities and thus had an enormous impact on the development of the modern Slavonic standard languages. The book offers in-depth analyses of the impact of Latin on pre-Standard Slavonic varieties, the influence of Greek on (Old) Church Slavonic and the role of Church Slavonic as a source language for Old and Modern Russian. The contributions discuss (morpho)syntactic phenomena such as non-finite clauses, relative clauses, word order, the use and function of case and tense forms. The volume addresses Slavists, General linguists and scholars of Classical Philology interested in language contact and syntactic issues.

The impact of the ecclesiastical languages Greek, Latin and Church Slavonic on the Slavic standard languages still lacks a systematic analysis in the theoretical framework of contact linguistics. Based on corpus data, this volume offers an account in the light of “literacy language contact”, i.e. contact between varieties that are used only in a written variant and only in formal registers. Latin was used as literary language in medieval Slavia Romana; Greek was the source language for Church Slavonic, which, in turn, was the literary language for many Slavonic speaking communities and thus had an enormous impact on the development of the modern Slavonic standard languages. The book offers in-depth analyses of the impact of Latin on pre-Standard Slavonic varieties, the influence of Greek on (Old) Church Slavonic and the role of Church Slavonic as a source language for Old and Modern Russian. The contributions discuss (morpho)syntactic phenomena such as non-finite clauses, relative clauses, word order, the use and function of case and tense forms. The volume addresses Slavists, General linguists and scholars of Classical Philology interested in language contact and syntactic issues.