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Benjamins Current Topics
Special issues of established journals tend to circulate within the orbit of the subscribers of those journals. For the Benjamins Current Topics series a number of special issues of various journals have been selected containing salient topics of research with the aim of finding new audiences for topically interesting material, bringing such material to a wider readership in book format.
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Corpus Approaches to Language, Thought and Communication
Editor(s): Wei-lun Lu, Naděžda Kudrnáčová and Laura A. JandaPublication Date August 2021More LessThe studies in the present volume illustrate the current state-of-the-art in the corpus-based approach in cognitive linguistics, which seeks to motivate linguistic phenomena through the combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. By focusing on language use in different contexts from a variety of perspectives, each of the contributions in this volume presents its own unique take on the intertwined relationship between language, thought, and communication. Thus, each article shows how a combination of quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques helps shed new light on old issues, reflecting the usage-based nature of cognitive linguistics and illustrating the explanatory adequacy of corpus-based methods. Originally published as special issue of Review of Cognitive Linguistics 17:1 (2019).
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Corpus Studies in Contrastive Linguistics
Editor(s): Stefania Marzo, Kris Heylen and Gert de SutterPublication Date September 2012More LessContrastive Linguistics, like other linguistic disciplines, is becoming more and more data-oriented, relying increasingly on the statistical analysis of corpus data to reveal and investigate the similarities and dissimilarities between languages. The volume Corpus Studies in Contrastive Linguistics illustrates this current trend with a representative sample of contrastive linguistic case studies. These cover a range of linguistic phenomena (syntax, modality and discourse) and pursue different types of research questions (grammaticalization, pragmatic function, stylistic function, typological profile). Accordingly, they use different types of corpora: contemporary and historical texts, written and spoken discourse, and various text types, such as academic discourse and political discourse. Five different languages are represented (English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Lithuanian) with English as a language of comparison in each contribution. The studies all show that quantitative analyses are not at odds with insightful qualitative interpretations or functional approaches to language, but rather complement each other. This volume was orginally published as a special issue of International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 15:2 (2010).
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Creole Languages and Linguistic Typology
Editor(s): Parth Bhatt and Tonjes VeenstraPublication Date December 2013More LessIt is generally assumed that Creole languages form a separate category from the rest of the world’s languages. The papers in this volume, written by internationally renowned scholars in the field of Creole studies, seek to explore more deeply this commonly held assumption by comparing the linguistic properties of specific Creole languages to each other and also to non-Creole languages. Using a variety of methodological and analytical approaches, the contributions to this volume show that the linguistic classification of Creole languages continues to be a topic of intense debate that requires the re-examination of the premises of linguistic typology. What is the linguistic motivation for considering that languages are related or unrelated? How and why do common linguistic properties arise? Are Creoles indeed exceptional? This volume examines these questions and provides a strong foundation for continued research into the phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic features found in Creole languages. Most of these articles were previously published in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 26:1 (2011). The article by Jeff Good was previously published in the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 27:1 (2012).
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Cross-linguistic Transfer in Reading in Multilingual Contexts
Editor(s): Elena Zaretsky and Mila SchwartzPublication Date October 2016More LessThis book represents concurrent attempts of multiple researchers to address the issue of cross-linguistic transfer in literacy. It includes broad spectrum of languages and reflects a new generation of conceptualizations of cross-linguistic transfer, offering a different level of complexity by studying children who are trilingual and even learning a fourth language.
The collection of papers in this volume tried to capture the dynamic developmental changes in cross-linguistic transfer that include such factors as age of acquisition, typological proximity of L1 and L2 (and L3, L4), intensity of exposure to language and reading in ambient and newly acquired language(s), quality of input and home literacy. More stringent methodological considerations allowed to isolate specific constructs that suggest either primary levels of children’s metalinguistic abilities (phonological awareness that can be applied cross-linguistically) or a more language-specific constructs (morphological awareness) that relies on various factors, including typological proximity, language proficiency and task demands.
Originally published in Written Language & Literacy, Vol. 17:1 2014.
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Current Issues in Phraseology
Editor(s): Sebastian Hoffmann, Bettina Fischer-Starcke and Andrea SandPublication Date July 2015More LessIn this stimulating collection of papers, leading researchers from Europe and North America demonstrate the theoretical and methodological importance of corpus studies of phraseology and show how data-intensive case studies provide new perspectives on language use. One of the main theoretical findings of recent linguistics is that phraseology is central to language organization. The authors show how software and statistical techniques can reveal phraseological patterns in different text types – literary, academic and commercial – and also typical paths of language change across the last 200 years. These patterns are revealed only when computational methods are applied to corpora consisting of hundreds of millions of running words, collected from thousands of authentic texts. A major feature of the book is its critical comparison and evaluation of different quantitative and statistical tools, which readers can use for their own empirical work. Originally published in International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, Vol. 18:1 (2013).
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Describing Cognitive Processes in Translation
Editor(s): Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Birgitta Englund Dimitrova, Séverine Hubscher-Davidson and Ulf NorbergPublication Date October 2015More LessThis volume addresses translation as an act and an event, having as its main focus the cognitive and mental processes of the translating or interpreting individual in the act of translating, while opening up wider perspectives by including the social situation in explorations of the translation process. First published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies (issue 8:2, 2013), the chapters in this volume deal with various aspects of translators’ and interpreters’ observable and non-observable processes, thus encouraging further research at the interface of cognitive and sociological approaches in this area. In terms of those distinctions, the chapters can be characterized as studies of the actual cognitive translation acts, of other processes related to the translation acts, or of processes that are related to the sociological translation event.
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Development of Pragmatic and Discourse Skills in Chinese-Speaking Children
Editor(s): Zhu Hua and Lixian JinPublication Date May 2014More LessFor many years, studies of the development of pragmatic and discourse skills in young children have predominantly focused on English and other European languages, as with the field of child language development in general. This volume, originally published in Chinese Language and Discourse 3:1 (2012), brings together a team of researchers from China, the UK, USA, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. It explores the development of pragmatic and discourse skills among Chinese-speaking children by investigating the development of pragmatic features specific to the Chinese language and culture (i.e. the use of null forms and overt forms in self/other reference and time expressions), socio-cultural factors in child-directed speech and comprehension of semiotic resources in children’s early childhood. The studies reported in the volume draw upon data of different kinds including recorded spontaneous speech, corpus, questionnaires and experimental data. The findings not only highlight a number of developmental patterns which may be attributed to the Chinese language(s) and culture, but also contribute to the understanding of some key issues in the development of pragmatic and discourse skills irrespective of linguistic backgrounds.
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Development of Tense and Aspect Systems
Editor(s): Jadranka GvozdanovićPublication Date August 2022More LessLinguistic construal of time lies at the center of language and language use; it is also one of the cognitive foundations of culture. The focus of the papers in this volume is on historical developments of genetically different aspect and tense systems across continents, with contributions on the Sogeram languages of Papua New Guinea, the Arandic languages of Australia, Kisikongo Bantu, and Japanese. In addition, two prototypical Indo-European tense-aspect systems, those of Vedic and Latin, are analyzed in a comparative perspective. Across language groups and continents, the general principles revealed by the studies presented here contribute towards a novel and deepening understanding of tense and aspect. They contribute not only to modelling and theory, but also to a better understanding of processes in individual languages.
Originally published as special issue of the Journal of Historical Linguistics 10:2 (2020).
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Diachronic Treebanks for Historical Linguistics
Editor(s): Hanne Martine Eckhoff, Silvia Luraghi and Marco PassarottiPublication Date August 2020More LessOver the last few decades, the widespread diffusion of digital technology has increased availability of primary textual sources, radically changing the everyday life of scholars in the humanities, who are now able to access, query and process a wealth of empirical evidence in ways not possible before.
Also for ancient languages, corpora enhanced with increasingly complex layers of metalinguistic information, such as part-of-speech tagging and syntactic annotation (called 'treebanks') are now available. In particular, diachronic treebanks, which provide data for a language across several historical stages of a given language, allow for a new approach to diachronic studies of syntactic phenomena where scholars previously had to content themselves with empirical work on a much smaller scale.
This volume brings together a set of papers that report research on various diachronic matters supported by evidence from diachronic treebanks. The contents of the papers cover a wide range of languages, including English, French, Russian, Old Church Slavonic, Latin and Ancient Greek. Originally published as special issue of Diachronica 35:3 (2018).
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Discourse Analysis in Translation Studies
Editor(s): Jeremy Munday and Meifang ZhangPublication Date July 2017More LessDiscourse analytic approaches are central to translator training and translation analysis, but have been somewhat overlooked in recent translation studies. This volume sets out to rectify this marginalization. It considers the evolution of the use of discourse analysis in translation studies, presents current research from ten leading figures in the field and provides pointers for the future. Topics range from close textual analysis of cohesion, thematic structure and the interpersonal function to the effects of global English and the discourses of cyberspace. The inherent link between discourse and the construction of power is evident in many contributions that analyse institutional power and the linguistic resources which mark translator/interpreter positioning. An array of scenarios and languages are covered, including Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Korean and Spanish. Originally published as a special issue of Target 27:3 (2015).
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Discourse and Human Rights Violations
Editor(s): Christine Anthonissen and Jan BlommaertPublication Date April 2007More LessFirst published as a Special Issue of the Journal of Language and Politics 5:1 (2006), this collection of papers focuses, from a number of different disciplinary perspectives, on aspects of language and communication in official processes of dealing with traumatic pasts. It is a text that belongs to the genre of talking about pain, about state violence, about uncovering suppressed truths. Linguists and a number of other social scientists investigate discourses, mostly ones generated during hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), scrutinizing them for how trauma is articulated and sometimes overcome, for how confrontational discourses are publicly managed, for how, after gross human rights violations, reconciliation can be mediated. Language is viewed as an instrument of confronting a traumatic past, of negotiating conflict, and of initiating processes of healing for individuals as well as in communities.
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Discourse and Socio-political Transformations in Contemporary China
Editor(s): Paul Chilton, Hailong Tian and Ruth WodakPublication Date September 2012More LessChina’s opening up to the West, its extraordinary economic rise, and the subsequent internal and global issues, are an object of huge interest and concern. Discourse and Socio-political Transformations in Contemporary China focuses on one aspect of the contemporary Chinese phenomenon, one that is so obvious that it is generally ignored in the mainstream academic departments – that politics, society and transformation are the product of myriad collective linguistic interchanges, some stabilized, some competing, some agonistic, some new and emerging.
As an outcome of dialogue between Chinese and Western scholars, the present volume contains case studies that offer a survey of the discourse aspect of Chinese society in social stratification, government service, policy consultancy, higher education, foreign policy, and TV. The conceptual reflections on discourse and critique in different cultures offer new considerations for discourse analysis, including critical discourse analysis, in the context of Chinese society today.
This volume was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Language and Politics 9:4 (2010).
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Distributed Language
Editor(s): Stephen J. CowleyPublication Date October 2011More LessThe volume presents language as fully integrated with human existence. On this view, language is not essentially ‘symbolic’, not represented inside minds or brains, and most certainly not determined by micro-social rules and norms. Rather, language is part of our ecology. It emerges when bodies co-ordinate vocal and visible gesture to integrate events with different histories. Enacting feeling, expression and wordings, language permeates the collective, individual and affective life of living beings. It is a profoundly distributed, multi-centric activity that binds people together as they go about their lives. Distributed Language pursues this perspective both theoretically and in relation to empirical work. Empirically, it reports studies on the anticipatory dynamics of reading, its socio-cognitive consequences, Shakespearean theatre, what images evoke (in brain and word), and solving insight problems. Theoretically, the volume challenges linguistic autonomy from overlapping theoretical positions. First, it is argued that language exploits a species specific form of semiotic cognition. Second, it is suggested that the central function of language lies in realizing values that derive from our ecosystemic existence. Third, this is ascribed to how cultural and biological symbols co-regulate the dynamics that shape human activity. Fourth, it is argued that language, far from being organism-centred, gives us an extended ecology in which our co-ordination is saturated by values and norms that are derived from our sociocultural environment. The contributions to this volume expand on those originally published in Pragmatics & Cognition 17:3 (2009).
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Doing Justice to Court Interpreting
Editor(s): Miriam Shlesinger and Franz PöchhackerPublication Date October 2010More LessFirst published as a Special Issue of Interpreting (10:1, 2008) and complemented with two articles published in Interpreting (12:1, 2010), this volume provides a panoramic view of the complex and uniquely constrained practice of court interpreting. In an array of empirical papers, the nine authors explore the potential of court interpreters to make or break the proceedings, from the perspectives of the minority language speaker and of the other participants. The volume offers thoughtful overviews of the tensions and conflicts typically associated with the practice of court interpreting. It looks at the attitudes of judicial authorities towards interpreting, and of interpreters towards the concept of a code of ethics. With further themes such as the interplay of different groups of "linguists" at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and the language rights of indigenous communities, it opens novel perspectives on the study of interpreting at the interface between the letter of the law and its implementation.
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The Emergence of Protolanguage
Editor(s): Michael A. Arbib and Derek BickertonPublication Date September 2010More LessSomewhere and somehow, in the 5 to 7 million years since the last common ancestors of humans and the great apes, our ancestors “got” language. The authors of this volume all agree that there was no single mutation or cultural innovation that took our ancestors directly from a limited system of a few vocalizations (primarily innate) and gestures (some learned) to language. They further agree to use the term “protolanguage” for the beginnings of an open system of symbolic communication that provided the bridge to the use of fully expressive languages, rich in both lexicon and grammar. But here consensus ends, and the theories presented here range from the compositional view that protolanguage was based primarily on words akin to the nouns and verbs, etc., we know today with only syntax lacking to the holophrastic view that protolanguage used protowords which had no meaningful subunits which might nonetheless refer to complex but significantly recurrent events.
The present volume does not decide the matter but it does advance our understanding. The lack of any direct archaeological record of protolanguage might seem to raise insuperable difficulties. However, this volume exhibits the diversity of methodologies that can be brought to bear in developing datasets that can be used to advance the debate.
These articles were originally published as Interaction Studies 9:1 (2008).
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Errors and Disfluencies in Spoken Corpora
Editor(s): Gaëtanelle Gilquin and Sylvie De CockPublication Date May 2013More LessThe papers brought together in this volume illustrate how spoken corpora (be they native or learner corpora) can provide insights into various aspects of errors and disfluencies such as pauses and discourse markers. They show, among others, that such phenomena can be influenced by factors like gender, age or genre, and that they can correlate with, e.g., informativeness and syntactic complexity. Crucially, they also demonstrate that items which are often dismissed as mere disfluencies can fulfil important functions and thus play an essential role in the management of spoken discourse. The book should appeal to linguists who are interested in spoken language in general and in errors and disfluencies in speech in particular, as well as to specialists in second language acquisition and language testing who want to know more about the nature of fluency and accuracy. Originally published in International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 16:2 (2011)
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Eurocentrism in Translation Studies
Editor(s): Luc van Doorslaer and Peter FlynnPublication Date October 2013More LessIn the wake of post-colonial and post-modernist thinking, ‘Eurocentrism’ has been criticized in a number of academic disciplines, including Translation Studies. First published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 6:2 (2011), this volume re-examines and problematizes some of the arguments used in such criticism. It is argued here that one should be wary in putting forward such arguments in order not to replace Eurocentrism by a confrontational geographical model characterized precisely by a continentalization of discourse, thereby merely reinstituting under another guise. The work also questions the relevance of continent-based theories of translation as such along with their underlying beliefs and convictions. But since the volume prefers to keep the debate open, its concluding interview article also provides the opportunity to those criticized to respond and provide well-balanced comments on such points of criticism.
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Evidentiality in Interaction
Editor(s): Janis B. Nuckolls and Lev MichaelPublication Date June 2014More LessIn recent decades, linguists have significantly advanced our understanding of the grammatical properties of evidentials, but their social and interactional properties and uses have received less attention. This volume, originally published as a special issue of Pragmatics and Society (issue 3:2, 2012), draws together complementary perspectives on the social and interactional life of evidentiality, drawing on data from diverse languages, including Albanian, English, Garrwa (Pama-Nyungan, Australia), Huamalíes Quechua (Quechuan, Peru), Nanti (Arawak, Peru), and Pastaza Quichua (Quechuan, Ecuador). The language-specific studies in this volume are all based on the close analysis of discourse or communicative interaction, and examine both evidential systems of varying degrees of grammaticalization and 'evidential strategies' present in languages without grammaticalized evidentials. The analyses presented draw on conversational analysis, ethnography of communication, ethnopoetics, pragmatics, and theories of deixis and indexicality, and will be of interest to students of evidentiality in a variety of analytical traditions.
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The Evolution of Pronunciation Teaching and Research
Editor(s): John M. Levis, Tracey M. Derwing and Murray J. MunroPublication Date May 2022More LessInspired by Murray Munro and Tracey Derwing’s 1995 seminal study of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness, this book revisits the insights of their original research and presents subsequent studies extending this work to new ways of understanding second language speech. By rejecting the nativeness approach upon which previous pronunciation research and teaching were built, Munro and Derwing’s paper became the catalyst for a new paradigm of pronunciation and speech research and teaching. For the first time, pronunciation researchers had an empirically-motivated set of dimensions for assessing L2 speech. Results of many subsequent studies showed that the original insights of three partially-independent measures are indispensable to language teaching, language assessment, social evaluations of speech, and pedagogical priorities. This monograph offers 9 diverse chapters by leading researchers, all of which focus on intelligibility and or comprehensibility. This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in up-to-date coverage of L2 pronunciation matters. Originally published as special issue of Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 6:3 (2020)
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Experimental Semiotics
Editor(s): Bruno Galantucci and Simon GarrodPublication Date September 2012More LessIn the early twentieth century, Ferdinand de Saussure envisioned "a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life". About a century later, a science has emerged that is very much in the spirit of that envisioned by de Saussure. Researchers who are developing this science, which has been labeled Experimental Semiotics, conduct controlled studies in which human adults develop novel communication systems or impose novel structure on systems provided to them. This volume offers a primer to Experimental Semiotics and presents a set of studies conducted within this new discipline. The volume is an ideal text complement for an advanced graduate seminar and it will be of interest to anyone who wonders how humans assemble and develop new ways to communicate with one another.
Originally published in Interaction Studies 11:1 (2010).
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