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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.
1 - 50 of 124 results
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The Acquisition of French as a Second Language
Editor(s): Christina Lindqvist and Camilla BardelPublication Date May 2014More LessWithin the field of second language acquisition, interest in the acquisition of French as a second language has a long-standing tradition, especially in the European context. The aim of this book is to offer a synthesis of current research within this area. It contains contributions from different researchers in the field, including studies on the acquisition of grammar, formulaic language, lexis and pragmatic devices, and covering interlanguage development from beginner level up to very advanced, presumably near-native levels of proficiency. The learners in the studies reported in the volume represent different L1 backgrounds and age groups. The chapters shed light on current issues in research on second language acquisition from different theoretical perspectives, and contribute to a better understanding of L2 French and SLA in general. The volume should be of interest for students, teachers and researchers of L2 French and SLA.
Originally published in Language, Interaction and Acquisition 3:1 (2012).
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Advances in Frame Semantics
Editor(s): Mirjam Fried and Kiki NikiforidouPublication Date December 2013More LessThis volume presents some of the latest research in Frame Semantics, including work in computational lexicography as developed within the FrameNet project. Using varied material from English, Italian, and Japanese, the contributions collectively expand the theoretical, conceptual, and computational apparatus of Frame semantics, by studying a range of issues concerning not only lexical structure, associated with cognitive frames, but also the less studied interactional frames and their relationship to grammatical organization. While addressing a number of linguistic phenomena, such as verbs of visual perception, metaphoric language, subordinating connectives, paraphrasing, honorifics, certain pragmatic particles, basic speech acts, and the semantic structuring of legal texts, the analyses also highlight the broader question of integrating frames within rich lexical and grammatical descriptions, whether in the context of lexicon-building resources, models for knowledge representation, experimental modeling of language acquisition and processing, conceptual metaphor theory, paraphrase research, or the communicative grounding of linguistic structure.
Originally published in Constructions and Frames Vol. 3:1 (2011) and Vol. 2:2 (2010).
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Advances in Research on Semantic Roles
Editor(s): Seppo Kittilä and Fernando ZúñigaPublication Date June 2016More LessEspecially in functional-typological linguistics, semantic roles have been studied thoroughly, because they constitute a good starting point for any study on argument marking due to their semantically defined nature. However, the very concept of semantic roles is far from being without problems, and there is still no consensus on how the roles are best defined. In this volume, the notion will be discussed from novel perspectives with the aim of providing new insights into our understanding of semantic roles. Two of the papers deal with semantic role clusters, one with semantic roles in verbless constructions, one with diachrony of semantic roles and two with individual semantic roles that have not been studied in too much detail in previous studies. The book may not offer answers to all questions the readers may have, but at least it raises interesting further questions relevant to arriving at a better understanding of semantic roles.
Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 38:3 (2014).
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Application-Driven Terminology Engineering
Editor(s): Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan, Anne Condamines and Teresa CabréPublication Date March 2007More LessA common framework under which the various studies on terminology processing can be viewed is to consider not only the texts from which the terminological resources are built but particularly the applications targeted. The current book, first published as a Special Issue of Terminology 11:1 (2005), analyses the influence of applications on term definition and processing. Two types of applications have been identified: intermediary and terminal applications (involving end users). Intermediary applications concern the building of terminological knowledge resources such as domain-specific dictionaries, ontologies, thesaurus or taxonomies. These knowledge resources then form the inputs to terminal applications such as information extraction, information retrieval, science and technology watch or automated book index building. Most of the applications dealt with in the book fall into the first category. This book represents the first attempt, from a pluridisciplinary viewpoint, to take into account the role of applications in the processing of terminology.
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Applying Cognitive Linguistics
Editor(s): Ana María Piquer-Píriz and Rafael Alejo-GonzálezPublication Date August 2018More LessIn recent years, Cognitive Linguistics (CL) has established itself not only as a solid theoretical approach but also as an important source from which different applications to other fields have emerged. In this volume we identify some of the current, most relevant topics in applied CL-oriented studies – analyses of figurative language (both metaphor and metonymy) in use, constructions and typology –, and present high-quality research papers that illustrate best practices in the research foci identified and their application to different fields including intercultural communication, the psychology of emotions, second and first language acquisition, discourse analysis and translation studies. It is also shown how different methodologies –the use of linguistic corpora, psycholinguistic experiments or discourse analytic procedures– can shed some light on the basic premises of CL as well as providing insights into how CL can be applied in real world contexts. Finally, all the studies included in the volume are based on empirical data and there are some analyses of languages other than English (Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Danish, German and Polish), thus overcoming the contentions that CL-theoretically-based research is often based on linguistic intuition and focused only on the English language.
We hope that the present volume will not only contribute to a better understanding of how CL can be applied but that it will also help to encourage, even further, more robust empirical research in this field.
Originally published as a special issue of Review of Cognitive Linguistics 14:1 (2016).
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Approaches to Learning, Testing and Researching L2 Vocabulary
Editor(s): Stuart WebbPublication Date August 2020More LessThis volume brings together a collection of chapters focused on the learning, testing, and researching of L2 vocabulary by leading international researchers including Paul Nation, Batia Laufer, Frank Boers, Elke Peters, Ana Pellicer-Sánchez, Anna Siyanova-Chanturia, and Stuart Webb. Questions that are examined include: Is it useful to read a book to learn vocabulary? Which types of input encountered outside of the classroom contribute most to vocabulary knowledge? What are the most useful words to learn to understand the academic spoken language in mathematics, biology, and engineering lectures? Does writing words contribute to vocabulary learning? What should a test measuring the skill of guessing from context consist of? Should loan words be included in vocabulary tests? How should we evaluate vocabulary learning that occurs through watching captioned video? How has eye-tracking been used in vocabulary research? Together, the chapters in this volume highlight innovation in vocabulary studies and many directions for researching, testing, and learning words. Originally published as special issue of ITL – International Journal of Applied Linguistics 169:1 (2018)
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Aptitude for Interpreting
Editor(s): Franz Pöchhacker and Minhua LiuPublication Date October 2014More LessFirst published as a Special Issue of Interpreting (issue 10:1, 2011) and complemented with two articles published in Interpreting issue 16:1, 2014, this volume provides a comprehensive view of the challenge of identifying and measuring aptitude for interpreting. Following a broad review of the existing literature, the array of eight empirical papers captures the multiple dimensions of aptitude, from personality traits and soft skills such as motivation, anxiety and learning styles to aspects of cognitive performance. The populations studied, with experimental as well as survey research designs, include students and professionals of sign language interpreting as well as spoken-language interpreting, and valuable synergies emerge. While pointing to the need for much further work, the papers brought together in this volume clearly represent the cutting edge of research into aptitude for interpreting, and should prove a milestone on the way toward supplying educators with reliable methods for testing applicants to interpreter training programs.
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Aptitude-Treatment Interaction in Second Language Learning
Editor(s): Robert M. DeKeyserPublication Date April 2021More LessThis volume brings together seven empirical studies about aptitude-treatment interactions (ATI), i.e., about how (second language) learners with different aptitudes match or don’t match with different educational treatments; and aptitude-testing interactions, i.e., about how learners with different aptitudes perform better or worse depending on the way their knowledge and skills are tested. The authors are all established researchers or rising stars in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), who believe that little can be said about the effectiveness of teaching and testing methods or techniques without taking individual differences into account. Many of the studies corroborate in SLA what has become a central finding in the psychological and educational research about ATI: the more a method puts the burden of information processing on the student, the bigger the role of the corresponding aptitudes. The kinds of findings documented in this volume contribute to a scientific basis for the art of language teaching that will become increasingly useful as emerging technologies make adaptation to individuals and groups more feasible. Originally published as special issue of Journal of Second Language Studies 2:2 (2019).
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Argumentation and Health
Editor(s): Sara Rubinelli and Francisca Snoeck HenkemansPublication Date July 2014More LessIn recent years, there has been a growing interest in the role of argumentation in the health care domain. Argumentation and Health is a collection of essays by argumentation theorists reflecting on the way in which the institutional context of health care shapes the argumentative interaction. The volume provides for the first time an overview of the most important recent developments and achievements of the study of argumentation in medical and public oriented health communication. In Argumentation and Health , attention is paid to argumentation in different forms of health communication, such as the medical consultation, direct-to-consumer drug advertising, health brochures and health risk communication.
This book is of interest to argumentation theorists, (health) communication scholars, healthcare practitioners, students of medicine and health-related fields, and all other researchers and practitioners interested in the function and characteristics of argumentation in health communication. Originally published in Journal of Argumentation in Context, Vol. 1:1 (2012).
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Argumentation in Political Deliberation
Editor(s): Marcin Lewiński and Dima MohammedPublication Date July 2015More LessThe goal of this volume is to further the examination of the role, shape, and quality of argumentation in political deliberation. The chapters collected in the volume employ the concepts and methods developed within argumentation theory to investigate the specifics of political discourse across various deliberative arenas: from debates in the European Parliament, consensus conferences and public hearings in France, discussions in Dutch online forums, to exchanges of comments in online versions of British newspapers. In this way, the studies reveal the inner workings of argumentative interactions that constitute deliberative discourse – and thus importantly contribute to the study of public deliberation. This should be of interest to the students of argumentation, deliberation, and political discourse. In addition, the volume problematizes and theorizes some vital issues related to the study of situated argumentation, thus advancing the study of argumentation in context.
Originally published in Journal of Argumentation in Context, Vol. 2:1 (2013).
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Audiovisual Translation
Editor(s): Yves Gambier and Sara Ramos PintoPublication Date June 2018More LessThe exponential growth of Audiovisual Translation (AVT) in the last three decades has consolidated its place as an area of study within Translation Studies (TS). However, AVT is still a young domain currently exploring a number of different lines of inquiry without a specific methodological and theoretical framework.
This volume discusses the advantages and drawbacks of ten approaches to AVT and highlights the potential avenues opened up by new methods. Our aim is to jumpstart the discussion on the (in)adequacy of the methodologies imported from other disciplines and the need (or not) for a conceptual apparatus and framework of analysis specific to AVT.
This collective work relates to recent edited volumes that seek to take stock on research in AVT, but it distinguishes itself from those publications by promoting links in what is now a very fragmented field. Originally published as a special issue of Target 28:2 (2016).
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Audiovisual Translation in Applied Linguistics
Editor(s): Laura Incalcaterra McLoughlin, Jennifer Lertola and Noa TalavánPublication Date November 2020More LessIn recent years, interest in the application of audiovisual translation (AVT) techniques in language teaching has grown beyond unconnected case studies to create a lively network of methodological intertextuality, cross-references, reviews and continuation of previous trials, ultimately defining a recognisable and scalable trend. Whilst the use of AVT as a support in language teaching is not new, this volume looks at a different application of AVT, with learners involved in the audiovisual translation process itself, performing tasks such as subtitling, dubbing, or audio describing. It therefore presents a sample of the current research in this field, with particular reference to case studies that either have a large-scale or international dimension, or can be scaled and replicated in various contexts. It is our hope that these contributions will arouse the interest of publishers of language learning material and other stakeholders and ultimately lead to the mainstreaming of AVT in language education. Originally published as special issue of Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 4:1 (2018).
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Case Studies in Fluid Construction Grammar
Editor(s): Luc Steels and Katrien BeulsPublication Date October 2019More LessConstruction grammar enjoys great popularity among empirical linguists, typologists, psycholinguists, and language educators, because it puts meaning and function of language at the forefront of linguistic analysis. This book shows that construction grammar gives us also a powerful new way to conceive and implement operational parsing and production systems, which could be used as a basic component of a wide range of Artificial Intelligence applications, such as dialog systems, language tutoring applications, or translation assistants. The book focuses on a particular formalism, Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG), that has emerged recently as a solid platform for writing and testing grammars from a constructional point of view. It introduces the basics of FCG and illustrates its use through a number of case studies all centering around the verb phrase. The case studies consider the verb phrase in different languages (Dutch, English, Spanish, Russian) and examine different challenging linguistic phenomena, ranging from word order flexibility, language change, and language acquisition, to the complex semantics of the verb phrase, particularly for aspect. The book is intended for those who want a first contact with FCG and see how different non-trivial analyses of language phenomena can be expressed. It is also an excellent first step for those who want to explore FCG to build language applications.
Originally published as special issue of Constructions and Frames 9:2 (2017).
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Cognition Distributed
Editor(s): Itiel E. Dror and Stevan HarnadPublication Date December 2008More LessOur species has been a maker and user of tools for over two million years, but "cognitive technology" began with language. Cognition is thinking, and thinking has been "distributed" for at least the two hundred millennia that we have been using speech to interact and collaborate, allowing us to do collectively far more than any of us could have done individually. The invention of writing six millennia ago and print six centuries ago has distributed cognition still more widely and quickly, among people as well as their texts. But in recent decades something radically new has been happening: Advanced cognitive technologies, especially computers and the Worldwide Web, are beginning to redistribute cognition in unprecedented ways, not only among people and static texts, but among people and dynamical machines. This not only makes possible new forms of human collaboration, but new forms of cognition. This book examines the nature and prospects of distributed cognition, providing a conceptual framework for understanding it, and showcasing case studies of its development. This volume was originally published as a Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition (14:2, 2006).
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Cognitive Sociolinguistics
Editor(s): Martin Pütz, Justyna A. Robinson and Monika ReifPublication Date May 2014More LessThis volume is intended to be a contribution to the rapidly growing field of research into Cognitive Sociolinguistics which draws on the convergence of methods and theoretical frameworks typically associated with Cognitive Linguistics and Sociolinguistics. The papers in this volume, written by internationally renowned scholars in the fields of sociolinguistics (e.g. Labov) and cognitive sociolinguistics, seek to explore and systematize the key theoretical and epistemological bases for the emergence of this socio-cognitive paradigm. More specifically, the papers, originally published in Review of Cognitive Linguistics 10:2 (2012), focus on terms and concepts which are foundational to the discussion of Cognitive Sociolinguistics such as the role of cognition in the sociolinguistic enterprise; the social recontextualization of cognition; variability in cognitive systems; usage-based conceptions of language; pragmatic variation and cultural models of thought; cultural conceptualizations and lexicography as well as cognitive processing models and perceptual dialectology. All the papers are anchored in instrumental empirical data analysis.
The volume provides a welcome contribution to the field for anyone interested in Cognitive Linguistics and its new developments. The seven papers included in this book were originally presented at the 34th International LAUD Symposium on Cognitive Sociolinguistics, which took place in March 2010 at the University of Koblenz-Landau (Germany).
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Cognitive Technologies and the Pragmatics of Cognition
Editor(s): Itiel E. DrorPublication Date August 2007More LessTechnology has long been a helpful aid in human cognitive activities. With its growing sophistication and usage, technology is now taking a more intrinsic and active role in human cognition. The shift from an external aid to being an internal component of cognitive processing reflects a revolution in technology, cognition, and their interaction. The creation of such ‘cognitive technologies’ transforms the traditional instrumental function of technology to a constitutive role that shapes and defines cognition itself. This book, which was originally published as a Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition 13:3 (2005), explores the new horizon of these ‘cognitive technologies’ and their interactions with humans.
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Construction Grammar across Borders
Editor(s): Tiago Timponi Torrent, Ely Edison da Silva Matos and Natália Sathler SigilianoPublication Date July 2022More LessSince its foundation in the 1980's, Construction Grammar has been crossing the traditionally imposed borders. From superimposed levels of analysis to the lexicon-grammar continuum, the constructionist approach to language has been built by, quoting Charles Fillmore, "the insistence on seeing specific grammatical patterns as serving given semantic (and often pragmatic) purposes, and in the effort to construct a uniform theory capable of presenting both the simplest and most general aspects of language and the large world of complex grammatical structures". In this volume, five chapters derived from the plenary talks at the 9th International Conference on Construction Grammar provide a sample of the bridges the insistence and effort of construction grammarians have built in the past three decades with other analytical models – namely Cognitive Grammar and Collostructional Analysis –, perspectives – Diachronic Construction Grammar – and applications – Language Pedagogy and Natural Language Understanding.
Originally published as special issue of Constructions and Frames 12:1 (2020).
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Constructions across Grammars
Editor(s): Martin Hilpert and Jan-Ola ÖstmanPublication Date March 2016More LessUp to now, most research in Construction Grammar has focused on single languages, most notably English. This volume aims to broaden the scope of Construction Grammar towards issues in bi- and multilingualism, second language learning, and generalizations across different languages and language varieties. The contributions in this volume show that speakers entertain generalizations across their repertoire of languages, which holds important implications for a multilingual Construction Grammar.
Originally published in Constructions and Frames 6:2 (2014).
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Contemporary Discourses of Hate and Radicalism across Space and Genres
Editor(s): Monika KopytowskaPublication Date November 2017More LessThis unique volume brings together various academic voices and critical reflections on discursive manifestations of hate and radicalism in contemporary public discourses. The authors venture into an array of socio-political contexts and public spaces, providing a compelling overview of similarities and divergences, continuities and discontinuities, outward hatred and the “politics of denial”, the use of collective symbols and construction of individual identities. Multiple genres are taken under scrutiny, including blogs, forums, internet websites and newspaper coverage, political speeches and debates, news reports and broadcast interactions, with a view to capturing the themes and pragma-rhetorical strategies within texts abundant with radical and hateful messages. In addition to examining discourse dynamics and the underlying logic of such texts, the contributors to this monograph explore the ideological motivations and the consequences they might have for social actions on both an individual and collective level.
Highly relevant in the contemporary world, divided by conflicts, power and resource struggles, right-wing extremism, and crusades against the imaginary Other, the book presents state-of-the-art interdisciplinary research that should be of interest to specialists in pragmatics, rhetoric, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, as well as media and communication studies.
Originally published as a special issue of Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 3:1 (2015).
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Contrastive Pragmatics
Editor(s): Karin AijmerPublication Date June 2011More LessWe have recently seen a broadening of pragmatics to new areas and to the study of more than one language. This is illustrated by the present volume on Contrastive Pragmatics which brings together a number of articles originally presented at the 10th International Pragmatics Conference in Göteborg in 2007. The contributions deal with pragmatic phenomena such as speech acts, discourse markers and modality in different language pairs using theoretical approaches such as politeness theory, Conversation Analysis, Appraisal Theory, grammaticalization and cultural textology. Also discourse practices and genres may differ across cultures as illustrated by the study of TV news shows in different countries. Contrastive pragmatics also includes the comparative study of pragmatic phenomena from a foreign language perspective, a new area with implications for language teaching and intercultural communication. The contributions to this volume were originally published in Languages in Contrast 9:1 (2009).
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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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Exploring Language Aggression against Women
Editor(s): Patricia Bou-FranchPublication Date June 2016More LessExploring Language Aggression against Women presents a collection of systematic studies that delve into the critical role of language in constructing violence, creating inequality, and justifying discrimination against women. Drawing on a range of discourse analytic methods, this volume subjects to scrutiny mediated and non-mediated (re)tellings and reactions to rape and sexual assault, newspaper reports of intimate partner abuse, YouTube responses to public service advertising for abuse prevention, and verbal sexism on Twitter and in legal and parliamentary contexts. Special attention is paid to the multiple forms that verbal violence against women can take, and its pervasiveness in contemporary Western societies, precisely at a time when the need for, and usefulness of, feminism are continuously being questioned. Exploring Language Aggression against Women will be of relevance to scholars and students interested in gender, language and sexuality, discourse, media, feminism, and communication. Most articles were originally published in Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict Vol. 2:2 (2014).
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Exploring the Situational Interface of Translation and Cognition
Editor(s): Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow and Birgitta Englund DimitrovaPublication Date August 2018More LessThe contributions of this volume explore the dynamics of the interface between the cognitive and situational levels in translation and interpreting. Until relatively recently, there has been an invisible line in translation and interpreting studies between cognitive research (e.g., into mental processes or attitudes) and sociological research (e.g., concerning organization, status, or institutions). However, rapid developments in translation and interpreting practices (professional, non-professional) have brought to the fore the need to rethink theoretical perspectives and to apply new research methods. The chapters in this volume aim to contribute to this discussion through conceptual and/or empirical research. Drawing on different theoretical and methodological frameworks, they offer insights into diverse translation and interpreting situations, in a number of different countries and cultures, and their consequences for individual and collective cognition. Originally published as special issue of Translation Spaces 5:1 (2016).
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Expressing and Describing Surprise
Editor(s): Agnès Celle and Laure LansariPublication Date July 2017More LessAmong emotions, surprise has been extensively studied in psychology. In linguistics, surprise, like other emotions, has mainly been studied through the syntactic patterns involving surprise lexemes. However, little has been done so far to correlate the reaction of surprise investigated in psychological approaches and the effects of surprise on language. This cross-disciplinary volume aims to bridge the gap between emotion, cognition and language by bringing together nine contributions on surprise from different backgrounds – psychology, human-agent interaction, linguistics. Using different methods at different levels of analysis, all contributors concur in defining surprise as a cognitive operation and as a component of emotion rather than as a pure emotion. Surprise results from expectations not being met and is therefore related to epistemicity. Linguistically, there does not exist an unequivocal marker of surprise. Surprise may be either described by surprise lexemes, which are often associated with figurative language, or it may be expressed by grammatical and syntactic constructions. Originally published as a special issue of Review of Cognitive Linguistics 13:2 (2015)
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First Language Attrition
Editor(s): Monika S. Schmid and Barbara KöpkePublication Date May 2013More LessThis volume consists of a collection of papers that focus on structural/grammatical aspects of the process of first language attrition. It presents an overview of current research, methodological issues and important questions regarding first language attrition. In particular, it addresses the two most prominent issues in current L1 attrition research: Can attrition effects impact on features of core syntax, or are they limited to interface phenomena?, and; What is the role of age at onset (pre-/post-puberty) in this regard?
By investigating attrition in a variety of settings, from a case study of a Spanish-speaking adoptee in the US to an empirical investigation of more than 50 long-term attriters of Turkish in the Netherlands, the investigations presented take a new perspective on these issues.
Originally published in Language, Interaction and Acquisition - Langage, Interaction et Acquisition 2:2 (2011).
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Gaze in Human-Robot Communication
Editor(s): Frank Broz, Hagen Lehmann, Bilge Mutlu and Yukiko NakanoPublication Date December 2015More LessGaze in Human-Robot Communication is a volume collecting recent research studying gaze behaviour in human-robot interaction (HRI). The selected articles draw inspiration from related research into gaze in human-human interaction in fields ranging from ethnography to neuroscience. The major themes of these articles include: the experimental investigation of human responses to robot gaze, the investigation of the impact of coordinating gaze acts with speech, and the development of hardware and software technologies for enabling robot gaze. This volume provides an excellent introduction to the depth and breadth of this growing research area in HRI. The highly interdisciplinary nature of the work presented should make it of interest both to robotics researchers and to researchers from other fields with an interest in the role of gaze in communication.
Originally published in Interaction Studies Vol. 14:3 (2013).
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Genre- and Register-related Discourse Features in Contrast
Editor(s): Marie-Aude Lefer and Svetlana VogeleerPublication Date July 2016More LessThis volume contributes to filling a gap in corpus-based research by investigating the ways in which linguistic features vary across genres/registers cross-linguistically. It brings together insightful chapters by leading scholars in the field, fruitfully exploiting genre- or register-controlled multilingual parallel and comparable corpora to: (i) problematize cross-register variation in a multilingual perspective, (ii) address methodological and theoretical issues raised by register-oriented contrastive and translation studies, (iii) investigate the cross-linguistic and cross-genre variation of specific linguistic features, such as lexical bundles, sentence-initial adverbials and tag questions, (iv) identify cross-cultural and cross-linguistic dissimilarities in expressing a functional category, viz. Appraisal, in the field of opinion mining. The book offers new cutting-edge research that should be of interest to specialists in contrastive linguistics, translation studies and cross-cultural studies. Originally published as a special issue of Languages in Contrast 14:1 (2014).
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Gestural Communication in Nonhuman and Human Primates
Editor(s): Katja Liebal, Cornelia Müller and Simone PikaPublication Date November 2007More LessResearch into gestures represents a multifaceted field comprising a wide range of disciplines and research topics, varying methods and approaches, and even different species such as humans, apes and monkeys. The aim of this volume (originally published as a Special Issue of Gesture 5:1/2 (2005)) is to bring together the research in gestural communication in both nonhuman and human primates and to explore the potential of a comparative approach and its contribution to the question of an evolutionary scenario in which gestures play a significant role. The topics covered include the spontaneous natural gesture use in social groups of apes and monkeys, but also during interactions with humans, gestures of preverbal children and their interaction with language, speech-accompanying gestures in humans as well as the use of sign-language in human and nonhuman great apes. It addresses researchers with a background in Psychology, Primatology, Linguistics, and Anthropology, but it might also function as an introduction and a documentation state of the art for a wider less specialised audience which is fascinated by the role gestures might have played in the evolution of human language.
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Gesture and Multimodal Development
Editor(s): Jean-Marc Colletta and Michèle GuidettiPublication Date June 2012More LessWe gesture while we talk and children use gestures prior to words to communicate during the first year. Later, as words become the preferred form of communication, children continue to gesture to reinforce or extend the spoken messages or even to replace them. This volume, originally published as a Special Issue of Gesture 10:2/3 (2010), brings together studies from language acquisition and developmental psychology. It provides a review of common theoretical, methodological and empirical themes, and the contributions address topics such as gesture use in prelinguistic infants with a special and new focus on pointing, the relationship between gestures and lexical development in typically developing and deaf children and even how gesture can help to learn mathematics. All in all, it brings additional evidence on how gestures are related to language, communication and mind development.
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Gestures in Language Development
Editor(s): Marianne Gullberg and Kees de BotPublication Date December 2010More LessGestures are prevalent in communication and tightly linked to language and speech. As such they can shed important light on issues of language development across the lifespan. This volume, originally published as a Special Issue of Gesture Volume 8:2 (2008), brings together studies from different disciplines that examine language development in children and adults from varying perspectives. It provides a review of common theoretical and empirical themes, and the contributions address topics such as gesture use in prelinguistic infants, the relationship between gestures and lexical development in typically and atypically developing children and in second language learners, what gestures reveal about discourse, and how all languages that adult second language speakers know can influence each other. The papers exemplify a vibrant new field of study with relevance for multiple disciplines.
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Grammaticalization and First Language Acquisition
Editor(s): Dominique Bassano-Bonhommo and Maya HickmannPublication Date May 2013More LessGrammaticalization and lexicalization are at the heart of first language acquisition. Understanding how these processes begin and evolve is a major challenge for current theories and has implications for applications in teaching or clinical contexts. This volume examines the relative weight of cognitive and linguistic determinants of acquisition with particular attention to two questions. The first one concerns the origins of grammar and the processes underlying its development. Is grammatical knowledge innate or constructed by the child? Is it modular or does it interact with other capacities? How can we account for continuity and discontinuity in development? What is the role of input? Second, considerable variation is observed in lexical and grammatical development across child languages. Is the process of acquisition similar in all children or do language-specific factors impact its rhythm and course? Do typological factors determine children’s reliance on lexical or grammatical means of expression in some domains? Originally published in Language, Interaction and Acquisition - Langage, Interaction et Acquisition 2:1 (2011).
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