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Second-language Discourse in the Digital World
Author(s): Ilona VandergriffPublication Date August 2016More LessSecond-language Discourse in the Digital World illustrates a new, practice-driven approach to technology in second-language (L2) learning that begins with what L2 users do when they connect with others online. With its rich set of examples from a number of different languages and a variety of digital platforms, in and beyond the classroom, this book provides a structured account of L2 computer-mediated discourse. The book is divided into four sections. Section I considers how new media have changed language learning. Section II is about L2 participation in digital forms and practices in online communities. Sections III centers around L2 linguistic and other semiotic practices, including the use of multimodal and multilingual resources while section IV analyzes social practices to explore how networked L2 users build, maintain and challenge relationships. Written in accessible style, the volume will be an important read to anyone interested in L2 use and learning in Web 2.0.
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Seduction, Community, Speech
Editor(s): Frank Brisard, Michael Meeuwis and Bart VandenabeelePublication Date December 2004More LessThis volume unites various contributions reflecting the intellectual interests exhibited by Professor Herman Parret (Institute of Philosophy, Leuven), who has continued to observe, and often critically assess, ongoing developments in pragmatics throughout his career. In fact, Parret’s contributions to philosophical and empirical/linguistic pragmatics present substantive proposals in the epistemics of communication, while simultaneously offering meta-comments on the ideological premises of extant pragmatic analyses. In a lengthy introduction, an overview is provided of his achievements in promoting an integrated, “maximalist” pragmatics, as well as of the links between his own work in philosophy of language and in semiotics and aesthetics. The remaining 12 essays address relevant pragmatic themes or look into the relation between pragmatics and neighboring disciplines. They deal with grammatical deixis (Brisard, Ikegami) and mood (van der Auwera & Schalley), performativity (Harnish, Holdcroft), speech-act types and their praxeological dimensions (Roulet, Van Overbeke), Wittgensteinian language games (Marques, Parisi), cultural and intercultural identities (Vandenabeele, Verschueren), and the visual arts (Wildgen).
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Seeing through Multilingual Corpora
Author(s): Stig JohanssonPublication Date February 2007More LessThrough electronic corpora we can observe patterns which we were unaware of before or only vaguely glimpsed. The availability of multilingual corpora has led to a renewal of contrastive studies. We gain new insight into similarities and differences between languages, at the same time as the characteristics of each language are brought into relief. The present book focuses on the work in building and using the English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus and the Oslo Multilingual Corpus. Case studies are reported on lexis, grammar, and discourse. A concluding chapter sums up problems and prospects of corpus-based contrastive studies, including applications in lexicography, translator training, and foreign-language teaching. Though the main focus is on English and Norwegian, the approach should be of interest more generally for corpus-based contrastive research and for language studies in general. Seeing through corpora we can see through language.
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Segmental and prosodic issues in Romance phonology
Editor(s): Pilar Prieto, Joan Mascaró and Maria-Josep SoléPublication Date April 2007More LessThis volume is a collection of cutting-edge research papers written by well-known researchers in the field of Romance phonetics and phonology. An important goal of this book is to bridge the gap between traditional Romance linguistics — with its long and rich tradition in data collection, cross-language comparison, and phonetic variation — and laboratory phonology work. The book is organized around three main themes: segmental processes, prosody, and the acquisition of segments and prosody. The various articles provide new empirical data on production, perception, sound change, first and second language learning, rhythm and intonation, presenting a state-of-the-art overview of research in laboratory phonology centred on Romance languages. The Romance data are used to test the predictions of a number of theoretical frameworks such as gestural phonology, exemplar models, generative phonology and optimality theory. The book will constitute a useful companion volume for phoneticians, phonologists and researchers investigating sound structure in Romance languages, and will serve to generate further interest in laboratory phonology.
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Sein – Reflexion – Freiheit
Editor(s): Christoph AsmuthPublication Date April 1997More LessDas Denken Johann Gottlieb Fichtes (1762-1814) gehört zu den großen Entwürfen der europäischen Philosophie. Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre entwickelte erstmals eine Theorie des absoluten Ich als Grundlage aller Wissenschaften. Damit schuf er das Fundament für die Entstehung des sog. Deutschen Idealismus. Der politische Denker Fichte nahm Stellung sowohl zur Französischen Revolution als auch zu den Napoleonischen Kriegen. Seine Sprachphilosophie hatte wesentlichen Einfluß auf W. von Humboldt. Seine Religionsphilosophie, namentlich die Anweisung zum seligen Leben (1806), gab wichtige Impulse für Philosophie und Theologie bis ins 20. Jahrhundert.
Die Beiträge dieses Bandes zeigen ein facettenreiches Bild der Philosophie Fichtes. Neben einer biographischen Einleitung steht zunächts das Verhältnis Fichtes zu Schelling, Hegel und Hölderlin im Zentrum. Weitere Beiträge widmen sich der frühen Wissenschaftslehre sowie der Natur-, Sprach- und Religionsphilosophie. Schließlich stellen einige Beiträge das Denken Fichtes in den größeren Rahmen der Philosophiegeschichte.
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Selbst – Singularität – Subjektivität
Editor(s): Theo Kobusch, Burkhard Mojsisch and Orrin F. SummerellPublication Date November 2002More LessThis anthology examines stations in the development of Neoplatonist thought between its origins in late antiquity and its modern culmination in the philosophy of German Idealism. Aspects of the latter receive extensive treatment, in contrast to other anthologies on the Neoplatonic tradition. This volume's unique focus lies in its highlighting of the ways in which Neoplatonist thought breaks the conceptual ground for modern notions of subjectivity and self-consciousness. In doing so, it makes a distinctive contribution to the current scholarly discussion of the Neoplatonic roots of German Idealism. This anthology should provoke interest among those interested in the history of philosophy and theology as well as those interested in mysticism.
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Selected Lexical and Grammatical Issues in the Meaning–Text Theory
Editor(s): Leo WannerPublication Date February 2007More LessThe Meaning Text Theory (MTT) is a lexicon-centred and dependency-based theory for the description of language using a holistic model that incorporates semantics, syntax, morphology and lexis. This volume, prepared on the occasion of Igor Mel'čuk’s 70th birthday, offers a cross-section of the current advances in MTT and its applications. The first part of the book focuses on lexical phenomena that are still largely neglected in mainstream linguistics: sound symbolism as manifested by ideophones, and idiosyncratic lexical relations as manifested by lexical functions (LFs). In particular, LFs are addressed from different angles (including the introduction of new “standard” LFs, the argument structure and semantic decomposition of lexical relations captured by LFs, automatic recognition of LF-instances in corpora, and the use of LFs in terminology and natural language processing). The second part of the book deals with such prominent model-oriented issues as semantic paraphrasing in MTT, the role of phrase structure in MTT and syntactic analysis within MTT.
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Selected papers from the XIIIth Linguistic Symposium on Romance
Editor(s): Larry D. King and Catherine A. MaleyPublication Date January 1985More LessThe papers in this volume are a selection from the paper presented at the 13th Annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (1983). The languages discussed include Romance in general, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Gascon. The diversity of the topics encompassed by these papers conforms to the principal goal of the LSRL conferences: to contribute to the synchronic and diachronic description and analysis of the Romance Languages within the context of current developments in linguistic theory.
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Self- and Other-Reference in Social Contexts
Editor(s): Minna Nevala and Minna Palander-CollinPublication Date March 2024More LessThe chapters in this volume study the construction, representation and negotiation of a variety of social roles through self- and other-reference markers or the discussion of reference as a tool for identification. The chapters uncover new insights both from a historical and present-day perspective and show how positioning the self and other varies, what kind of reference choices language users make and what follows from these choices. The data come from a variety of public texts, private encounters and questionnaires, and the methodologies range from macro to micro perspectives, including combinations of qualitative close-reading and quantitative corpus methods, and synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The findings enhance our understanding and use of reference practices in the context of global, institutional, political and multicultural, as well as media texts.
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Self-Preservation in Simultaneous Interpreting
Author(s): Claudia MonacelliPublication Date May 2009More LessThe image of the tightrope walker illustrates the interpreter’s balancing act. Compelled to move forward at a pace set by someone else, interpreters compensate for pressures and surges that might push them into the void. The author starts from the observation that conference interpreters tend to see survival as being their primary objective. It is interpreters’ awareness of the essentially face-threatening nature of the profession that naturally induces them to seek what the author calls “dynamic equilibrium”, a constantly evolving state in which problems are resolved in the interests of maintaining the integrity of the system as a whole. By taking as a starting point the more visible interventions interpreters make (comments on speed of delivery, on exchanges between the chair and the floor), the author is able to explore the interpreter’s instinct for self-preservation in an inherently unstable environment.
This volume is an insightful and refreshing account of interpreters’ behavior from the other side of the glass-fronted booth.
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Self-Reference and Self-Awareness
Editor(s): Andrew Brook and Richard C. DeVidiPublication Date December 2001More LessRich in precursors (Kant and Frege) and stimulated by Castañeda’s study in the logic of self-consciousness and Shoemaker’s seminal paper ‘Self-reference and self-awareness’, the work of the past thirty-five years on self-reference and self-awareness has generated a wealth of deep, sophisticated philosophy. This volume explores the historical anticipations in Kant and Frege, brings four classic contributions together in one place, and offers five new studies. (Series A)
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Selves and Identities in Narrative and Discourse
Editor(s): Michael Bamberg, Anna De Fina and Deborah SchiffrinPublication Date December 2007More LessThe different traditions that have inspired the contributors to this volume can be divided along three different orientations, one that is rooted predominantly in sociolinguistics, a second that is ethnomethodologically informed, and a third that came in the wake of narrative interview research. All three share a commitment to view self and identity not as essential properties of the person but as constituted in discursive practices and particularly in narrative. Moreover, since self and identity are held to be phenomena that are contextually and continually generated, they are defined and viewed in the plural, as selves and identities. In the attempt of moving closer toward a process-oriented approach to the formation of selves and identities, this volume sets the stage for future discussions of the role of narrative and discourse in this generation process and for how a close analysis of these processes can advance an understanding of the world around us and within this world, of identities and selves.
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Selves in Two Languages
Author(s): Michèle KovenPublication Date September 2007More LessBilinguals often report that they feel like a different person in their two languages. In the words of one bilingual in Koven’s book, “When I speak Portuguese, automatically, I'm in a different world…it's a different color.” Although testimonials like this abound in everyday conversation among bilinguals, there has been scant systematic investigation of this intriguing phenomenon. Focusing on French-Portuguese bilinguals, the adult children of Portuguese migrants in France, this book provides an empirically grounded, theoretical account of how the same speakers enact, experience, and are perceived by others to have different identities in their two languages. This book explores bilinguals’ experiences and expressions of identity in multicultural, multilingual contexts. It is distinctive in its integration of multiple levels of analysis to address the relationships between language and identity. Koven links detailed attention to discourse form, to participants’ multiple interpretations how such forms become signs of identity, and to the broader macrosociolinguistic contexts that structure participants’ access to those signs. The study of how bilinguals perform and experience different identities in their two languages sheds light on the more general role of linguistic and cultural forms in local experiences and expressions of identity.
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Semantic and Lexical Universals
Editor(s): Cliff Goddard and Anna WierzbickaPublication Date May 1994More LessThis set of papers represents a unique collection; it is the first attempt ever to empirically test a hypothetical set of semantic and lexical universals across a number of genetically and typologically diverse languages. In fact the word 'collection' is not fully appropriate in this case, since the papers report research undertaken specifically for the present volume, and shaped by the same guidelines. They constitute parallel and strictly comparable answers to the same set of questions, coordinated effort with a common aim, and a common methodology.The goal of identifying the universal human concepts found in all languages, is of fundamental importance, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, since these concepts provide the basis of the “psychic unity of mankind”, underlying the clearly visible diversity of human cultures. They also allow us to better understand that diversity itself, because they provide a common measure, without which no precise and meaningful comparisons are possible at all. A set of truly universal (or even near-universal) concepts can provide us with an invaluable tool for interpreting, and explaining all the culture-specific meanings encoded in the language-and-culture systems of the world. It can also provide us with a tool for explaining meanings across cultures — in education, business, trade, international relations, and so on.
The book contains 13 chapters on individual languages including Japanese (by Masayuki Onishi), Chinese (by Hilary Chappel), Thai (by Anthony Diller), Ewe (Africa, by Felix Ameka), Miskitu languages of South America (by Kenneth Hall), Australian Aboriginal languages Aranda, Yankunytjatjara and Kayardild (by Jean Harkins & David Wilkins, Cliff Goddard, and Nicholas Evans), the Austronesian languages Samoan, Longgu, Acehnese and Mangap-Mbula (by Ulrike Mosel, Deborah Hill, Mark Durie and Robert Bugenhagen), the Papuan language Kalam (by Andrew Pawley), and, last but not least French (by Bert Peters).In addition to the chapters on individual languages the book includes three theoretical chapters; “Semantic theory and semantic universals” (by Goddard), “Introducing lexical primitives” (by Goddard and Wierzbicka), and “Semantic primitives across languages: a critical review” (by Wierzbicka).
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Semantic Issues in Romance Syntax
Editor(s): Esthela Treviño and José LemaPublication Date May 1999More LessAll of the articles in this volume focus on the interaction of form and meaning. Most of them are developed under the principal thesis of the Minimalist Program. These works show that the theoretical linguistic trend is to discover semantic aspects which are assumed to have visible syntactic repercussions through morphosyntactic and morphosemantic features.
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Semantic Plurality
Author(s): Laure GardellePublication Date November 2019More LessThis monograph proposes a comparative approach to all the ways of denoting ‘more than one’ entity, from collective and aggregate nouns (with the first-ever typology), to count plurals, partly substantivised adjectives and conjoined NPs. This semantic feature approach to plurality, which cuts across number, the count/non-count distinction, and lexical/NP levels, reveals a very consistent Scale of Unit Integration, which establishes clear-cut boundaries for collective nouns, and accommodates cases such as three elephant, cattle or a chain of islands. The study also offers a refined understanding of aggregate nouns (a category nearly as large as that of collective nouns) and quantification in pseudo-partitives, develops Guillaume’s notion of ‘internal plurality’, and proposes the innovative concept of ‘hyperonyms of plural classes’ (e.g. furniture). The Animacy Hierarchy is also found to be influential, beyond hybrid agreement. The book aims to be accessible to scholars of any theoretical background interested in these topics.
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Semantic Primes and Universal Grammar
Editor(s): Bert PeetersPublication Date August 2006More LessThis volume is part of a research program which started with the publication, in 1972, of Anna Wierzbicka’s groundbreaking work on Semantic Primitives. The first within the program to focus on a number of typologically similar languages, it proposes a French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian version of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) elaborated over the years by Wierzbicka and colleagues. Repetition is avoided through teamwork: a number of authors working on the languages under examination have had equal input in a set of five papers dealing with distinct parts of the metalanguage. Some of the findings presented here invite us to have a fresh look at what has already been achieved, and to amend some of the working hypotheses of the NSM approach accordingly. The volume also contains six case studies (on Italian sfogarsi, Portuguese saudades, Spanish crisis, French certes, Spanish expressions of sincerity and Italian and Spanish diminutives, respectively).
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Semantic Structure in English
Author(s): Jim FeistPublication Date September 2016More LessSyntax puts our meaning (“semantics”) into sentences, and phonology puts the sentences into the sounds that we hear and there must, surely, be a structure in the meaning that is expressed in the syntax and phonology. Some writers use the phrase “semantic structure”, but are referring to conceptual structure; since we can express our conceptual thought in many different linguistic ways, we cannot equate conceptual and semantic structures.
The research reported in this book shows semantic structure to be in part hierarchic, fitting the syntax in which it is expressed, and partly a network, fitting the nature of the mind, from which it springs. It is complex enough to provide for the emotive and imaginative dimensions of language, and for shifts of standard meanings in context, and the “rules” that control them.
Showing the full structure of English semantics requires attention to many currently topical issues, and since the underlying theory is fresh, there are fresh implications for them. The most important of those issues is information structure, which is given full treatment, showing its overall structure, and its relation to semantics and the whole grammar of English.
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The Semantic Structure of Spanish
Author(s): Larry D. KingPublication Date November 1992More LessIn recent years, linguistics has become increasingly more willing to allow some type of representation of 'meaning' in the study of language. However, most approaches deal with sentence or utterance meaning and thereby ignore the meaning of linguistic form. Yet no description of linguistic semantics can be complete without a comprehensive account between meaning and form. This study returns to the problem of form and meaning by presenting a detailed account of certain forms in Spanish which have traditionally been called grammatical forms, or grammatical categories, and associated with grammatical meaning. It is suggested that not all linguistic forms represent the same kind of 'meaning', and that a subset of grammatical forms constitute a highly organized system that parallels phonology and syntax in its capacity to explain variation at the level of discourse. The book opens with an introductory chapter, which is followed by five chapters on the analysis of the Spanish verbal system. In Chapter 7 problems of the noun phrase (the meaning of determiners and grammatical number) are discussed. Chapter 8 offers an explanation of the meaning of the direct object, and in Chapter 9 a crosslinguistic study of the semantics of Spanish and English is presented. A summary of findings is given in Chapter 10, along with a further consideration of the goals and procedures of semantic analysis.
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Semantic Theories in Europe, 1830–1930
Author(s): Brigitte NerlichPublication Date March 1992More LessIt is widely believed by historians of linguistics that the 19th-century was largely devoted to historical and comparative studies, with the main emphasis on the discovery of soundlaws. Syntax is typically portrayed as a mere sideline of these studies, while semantics is seldom even mentioned. If it comes into view at all, it is usually assumed to have been confined to diachronic lexical semantics and the construction of some (mostly ill-conceived) typologies of semantic change. This book aims to destroy some of these prejudices and to show that in Europe semantics was an important, although controversial, area at that time. Synchronic mechanisms of semantic change were discovered and increasing attention was paid to the context of the sentence, to the speech situation and the users of the language. From being a semantics of transformations', a child of the biological-geological paradigm of historical linguistics with its close links to etymology and lexicography, the field matured into a semantics of comprehension and communication, set within a general linguistics and closely related to the emerging fields of psychology and sociology.
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