John M. Peterson Bücher

Das Thema Sprache und Migration - und damit auch Mehrsprachigkeit - spielt inzwischen eine zentrale Rolle in der Diskussion um die Integration hier lebender Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund. Unser Verständnis der Mehrsprachigkeit bildet die Basis für alle bildungspolitischen Entscheidungen zu diesem Thema, Entscheidungen, die oft weitreichende Folgen haben. Der vorliegende Band richtet sich speziell an Studierende philologischer und sprachwissenschaftlicher Fächer ab dem dritten Fachsemester, die über Grundkenntnisse der Bereiche Phonologie, Morphologie, Syntax und Orthographie verfügen. Das Buch befasst sich zunächst mit einigen heute noch weit verbreiteten Mythen über Mehrsprachigkeit und zeigt die komplexen Beziehungen zwischen Sprache, Ethnie, Nationalität und Register auf. Zu den weiteren Themen gehören u. a. Codeswitching, d. h. die Verwendung von zwei oder mehr Sprachen während eines Gesprächs, „Kiezdeutsch“, die Rolle von Mehrsprachigkeit beim Schriftspracherwerb, mehrsprachiger Unterricht u. v. m.

Minimum Measures and Industry Effects by John M. Peterson deals with the adverse effects of minimum wages on employment by industry. By means of an improved measure, the author shows greater adverse effects than have been indicated by previous studies. According to this study, the conventional measure of the minimum wage is distorted by a feedback of effects and leads to underestimation of elasticity, the economist's measure of disemployment effects. The author proposes a new measure, the relative minimum-wage impact. While most recent studies have focused on effects on different types of workers, this study presents empirical evidence on the effects on industries, showing that the new measure works better than the old one. With the modest minimum-wage levels historically imposed, the economy-wide disemployment effects are barely discernible. When broken down by industry, however, the employment losses show up more clearly for low-wage categories, especially in retail trade. Within the high-wage manufacturing division, adverse employment effects also occur in the six lowest-wage industry groups, in both the North and the South.

This book is a detailed study of the grammatical relations of Pali, a Middle Indo-Aryan language which is also the canonical language of the therava-da-Buddhists of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. On the basis of this data, the author takes a new look at the concept of 'subject' in Pali, as well as the emergence of ergativity in Indo-Aryan. The book includes a summary of much of the previous literature on the syntax of Old and Middle Indo-Aryan, as well as that of a number of works dealing with the origin of ergativity in Indo-Aryan and the concept of 'subject' in general. Following this is a detailed look at the treatment of various grammatical operations in the major verbal constructions of Pali - i.e., the finite categories, the periphrastic perfect and the gerundival construction. These include coordination and subordination, the control of reflexivization and pronominalization, as well as a description of the coding properties and the dispensability of the various arguments in each construction. Unlike most previous studies, the author comes to the conclusion that the present-day ergative constructions of most Indo-Aryan languages do not result from an earlier passive construction. Instead, he proposes a model for the periphrastic perfect which in many ways resembles that of the more familiar development of the perfect in west European languages.