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In the context of a Nordic Conference on Bilingualism, it can be a rewarding task to look at issues such as language planning, policy and legislation from a perspective of the southern neighbours of the Nordic world. This paper therefore intends to point attention towards a case of societal multilingualism at the periphery of the Nordic world by dealing with recent developments in language policy and legislation with regard to the North Frisian speech community in the German Land of Schleswig-Holstein. As I will show, it is striking to what degree there are considerable differences in the discourse on minority protection and language legislation between the Nordic countries and a cultural area which may arguably be considered to be part of the Nordic fringe - and which itself occasionally takes Scandinavia as a reference point, e.g. in the recent adoption of a pan-Frisian flag modelled on the Nordic cross (Falkena 2006).
The main focus of the paper will be on the Frisian Act which was passed in the Parliament of Schleswig-Holstein in late 2004. It provides a certain legal basis for some political activities with regard to Frisian, but falls short of creating a true spirit of minority language protection and/or revitalisation. In contrast to the traditions of the German and Danish minorities along the German-Danish border and to minority protection in Northern Scandinavia (in particular to Sámi language rights), the approach chosen in the Frisian Act is extremely weak and has no connotation of long-term oriented language-planning, let alone a rights-based perspective.
The paper will then look at policy developments in the time since the Act was passed, e.g. in the Schleswig-Holstein election campaign in 2005, and on latest perceptions of the Frisian language situation in the discourse on North Frisian Policy in Schleswig-Holstein majority society. In the final part of the paper, I will discuss reasons for the differences in minority language policy discourse between Germany and the Nordic countries, and try to provide an outlook on how Frisian could benefit from its geographic proximity to the Nordic world.
Although there is a growing interest of policy makers in higher education issues (especially on an international scale), there is still a lack of theoretically well-grounded comparative analyses of higher education policy. Even broadly discussed topics in higher education research like the potential convergence of European higher education systems in the course of the Bologna Process suffer from a thin empirical and comparative basis. This paper aims to deal with these problems by addressing theoretical questions concerning the domestic impact of the Bologna Process and the role national factors play in determining its effects on cross-national policy convergence. It develops a distinct theoretical approach for the systematic and comparative analysis of cross-national policy convergence. In doing so, it relies upon insights from related research areas — namely literature on Europeanization as well as studies dealing with cross-national policy convergence.
The multiple gradations of German strong verbs are but manifestations of a rather uncomplicated system. There is a small number of ways to make up ablaut forms; these types of formation are identifiable in formal terms and, what is more, they have definite functions as morphological markers. Using classifications of stem forms according to quality, complexity and quantity of vowels, three types of operations involved in ablaut formation are identified. Ablaut always includes a change of quality type or a change of complexity type, and in addition it may include a change of quantity type. Ablaut forms are clearly distinguished as against bases (and against each other): their vocalism meets a defined standard of dissimilarity. On this basis, gradations are collected into inflectional classes that are defined in strictly synchronic terms. These classes continue the historical seven classes known from reference grammars. For the majority of strong verbs, membership in these classes (and thus ablaut) is predictable.
The present study examines the dynamics of the kanji combinations that form common (or general) and proper nouns in Japanese. The following three results were obtained. First, the degree of distribution results from two similar processes which are based on a steady-state of birth-and-death processes with different birth and death rates, resulting in a positive negative binomial distribution with the proper nouns and in a positive Waring distribution with common nouns. Second, all rank-frequency distributions follow the negative hypergeometric distribution used very frequently in ranking problems. Third, the building of kanji compounds follows a dissortative strategy. The higher the outdegree of a kanji, the more it prefers kanji with lower indegrees. A linear dependence can be observed with common nouns, whereas the relationship between compounded kanji is rather curvilinear with proper nouns. The actual analytical expression is not yet known.
In this paper the authors briefly outline editing functions which use methods from computational linguistics and take the structures of natural languages into consideration. Such functions could reduce errors and better support writers in realizing their communicative goals. However, linguistic methods have limits, and there are various aspects software developers have to take into account to avoid creating a solution looking for a problem: Language-aware functions could be powerful tools for writers, but writers must not be forced to adapt to their tools.
‘Linguistic relativity’ has become a major keyword in debates on the psychological significance of language diversity. In this context, the term ‘relativity’ was originally taken on loan from Einstein’s then-recent theories by Edward Sapir (1924) and Benjamin L. Whorf (1940). The present paper assesses how far the idea of linguistic relativity does analogically build on relevant insights in modern physics, and fails to find any substantial analogies. The term was used rhetorically by Sapir and Whorf, and has since been incorporated into a cognitivist research programme that seeks to answer whether ‘language influences thought’. Contemporary research on ‘linguistic relativity’ has developed into a distinct way of studying language diversity, which shares a lot with the universalistic cognitivist framework it opposes, but little with relational approaches in science.
In dem Beitrag werden jüngste Entwicklungen auf dem Gebiet der Sprachpolitik, der Bildungspolitik und der Integrationspolitik in Deutschland dargestellt, die ein neues Verhältnis zur Mehrsprachigkeit erkennen lassen und die Schaffung zweisprachiger Bildungseinrichtungen ermöglichen. Dieser Beitrag wurde auch in einer englischen Version mit dem Titel "The political framework for creation and development of bilingual Kindergartens in Berlin" veröffentlicht. Sie ist über den Dokumentenserver des IDS zugänglich. Die deutsche Version des Beitrags trägt den Titel "Politische Rahmenbedingungen für zweisprachige Kindertagesstätten in Berlin". Sie ist nicht veröffentlicht, aber ebenfalls über den Dokumentenserver des IDS erhältlich.