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This volume deals with the relations between grammar and interaction from different perspectives with the aim of unraveling the way in which a language — through the different forms of discourse from which it emerges — reflects certain social and community-based schemas; that is how language originates within the space shared by the speaker and the addressee(s). The first part (“Grammar and Interaction”) concerns how interaction may intervene in grammar; the second part (“The Grammar of Interaction”) approaches both notions and linguistic structures which are anchored in interaction while revolving around epistemicity evidentiality and modality. The third part (“Interaction as a Model for Discourse”) concerns how certain constructions emerge from interaction and are further used to model discourse. Finally the fourth and last part of the book (“Interaction as a Driver for Change”) focuses on how interaction may help to delimit linguistic categories.

This volume celebrates Hans Frede Nielsen’s contribution to the field of Germanic studies and his work as founding editor of the journal and book series North-Western European Language Evolution. Twenty peer-reviewed articles explore a broad range of topics involving North and West Germanic languages. Some studies focus on early runic inscriptions others deal with features of modern varieties. All align in one way or another with Nielsen’s fields of interest especially historical linguistics and cover aspects of phonology syntax morphology etymology toponyms ethnonyms dialectology text linguistics linguistic historiography and language contact.

This book presents a 100% novel approach to phraseology: A language-universal deductive calculus of all theoretically possible phraseological expressions (= phrasemes) is proposed implemented in 51 rigorously defined notions. Nine major classes of phrasemes are established and illustrated: lexemic idioms (shoot the breeze) lexemic collocations (pay a visit; helicopter parents) lexemic nominemes (the Northern Palmyra) and lexemic clichés (What’s your name?; to put it differently); morphemic idioms (forget) morphemic collocations (Londoner ~ Muscovite) morphemic nominemes (Greenland) and morphemic clichés (antidepressant); and syntactic idioms (Her be late?!?). An additional class of pragmatically constrained lexemic expressions is described: pragmatemes (No parking; At attention!; Roger.). Each phraseme class is supplied with precise methodology for a lexicographic description; a number of lexical entries for representatives of all classes are given. The language data come from English and Russian. General Phraseology: Theory and Practice is meant as a contribution towards the elaboration of a unified notional system for linguistics.

World Englishes and English in postcolonial contexts have been curiously neglected in an otherwise abundant research literature on text types and genres in English. This volume looks at the adaptation transformation and emergence of genres in the particular cultural context of the Anglophone Caribbean. A comprehensive framework for the investigation of text production in postcolonial and global English communities is followed by empirically based case studies on specific text formats such as recipes death notices and obituaries letters to the editor newspaper advice columns radio phone-in programmes online forums and the music genre calypso. Influences from oral versus literate culture as well as status and function of English versus Creole are considered by highlighting written spoken and digital genres. All chapters present surveys from a historical and cross-cultural perspective before exploring specific linguistic and cultural features in the Caribbean texts. This volume will be highly relevant for researchers in World Englishes and Caribbean studies postcolonial pragmatics genre and media studies as well as linguistic anthropology.

The completely redesigned Grammar of Spoken and Written English is a comprehensive corpus-based reference grammar. GSWE describes the structural characteristics of grammatical constructions in English as do other reference grammars. But GSWE is unique in that it gives equal attention to describing the patterns of language use for each grammatical feature based on empirical analyses of grammatical patterns in a 40-million-word corpus of spoken and written registers.

Grammar-in-use is characterized by three inter-related kinds of information: frequency of grammatical features in spoken and written registers frequencies of the most common lexico-grammatical patterns and analysis of the discourse factors influencing choices among related grammatical features. GSWE includes over 350 tables and figures highlighting the results of corpus-based investigations. Throughout the book authentic examples illustrate all research findings.

The empirical descriptions document the lexico-grammatical features that are especially common in face-to-face-conversation compared to those that are especially common in academic writing. Analyses of fiction and newspaper articles are included as further benchmarks of language use. GSWE contains over 6000 authentic examples from these four registers illustrating the range of lexico-grammatical features in real-world speech and writing. In addition comparisons between British and American English reveal specific regional differences.

Now completely redesigned and available in an electronic edition the Grammar of Spoken and Written English remains a unique and indispensable reference work for researchers language teachers and students alike.

This cognitive contrastive study of ten languages (Chinese Dalabon English French Spanish Romanian Kurdish Khmer Polish Tibetan) focuses on the concept of giving from six main points of view namely argument structure lexical semantics and event structure role marking in the three argument construction and in other constructions lexicalization grammaticalization and constructionalization of the verb from a cognitive construction grammar point of view and central and extended meanings. It is proposed that a continuum approach to grammar and lexicon is needed in order to describe the typological and historical facts. The volume argues for a concrete and abstract transfer ‘cluster model’ involving coverage of lexical and grammatical extension or bleaching phenomena and that the semantic extensions (metaphorical and otherwise) exploit various portions of this schema. The volume is deeply anchored in the Cognitive Construction Grammar theoretical movement and proposes analyses of constructional phenomena to illustrate a grammar to lexicon continuum in synchrony and diachrony: language change grammaticalization chains constructionalization analysis and an invariant hypothesis of giving as a basic activity in human cognition.

The polarity of a sentence is crucial for its meaning. It is thus hardly surprising that languages have developed devices to highlight this meaning component and to contrast statements with negative and positive polarity in discourse. Research on this issue has started from languages like German and Dutch where prosody and assertive particles are systematically associated with polarity contrast. Recently the grammatical realization of polarity contrast has been at the center of investigations in a range of other languages as well. Core questions concern the formal repertoire and the exact meaning contribution of the relevant devices the kind of contrast they evoke and their relation to information structure and sentence mood. This volume brings together researchers from a theoretical an empirical and a typological orientation and enhances our understanding of polarity with the help of in-depth analyses and cross-linguistic comparisons dealing with the syntactic semantic pragmatic and/or prosodic aspects of the phenomenon.

This volume deals with the children’s socialization on the Trobriands. After a survey of ethnographic studies on childhood the book zooms in on indigenous ideas of conception and birth-giving the children’s early development their integration into playgroups their games and their education within their `own little community’ until they reach the age of seven years. During this time children enjoy much autonomy and independence. Attempts of parental education are confined to a minimum. However parents use subtle means to raise their children. Educational ideologies are manifest in narratives and in speeches addressed to children. They provide guidelines for their integration into the Trobrianders’ “balanced society” which is characterized by cooperation and competition. It does not allow individual accumulation of wealth – surplus property gained has to be redistributed – but it values the fame acquired by individuals in competitive rituals. Fame is not regarded as threatening the balance of their society.

This collection brings together two areas of research that are currently receiving great attention in both scientific and public spheres: cognitive aging and bilingualism. With ongoing media focus on the aging population and the need for activities to forestall cognitive decline experiences that appear effective in maintaining functioning are of great interest. One such experience is lifelong bilingualism. Moreover research into the cognitive effects of bilingualism has increased dramatically in the past decade making it an exciting area of study. This volume combines these issues and presents the most recent research and thinking into the effects of bilingualism on cognitive decline in aging. The contributors are all leading scholars in their field. The result is a state-of-the art collection on the effect of bilingualism on cognition in older populations for both healthy aging and aging with dementia. The papers will be of interest to researchers students and health professionals.

This volume aims to demonstrate that the centre/periphery tension allows for a theory of gender understood as a power relationship with implications for a political analysis of language structures language uses and linguistic resistances. All of the 12 chapters included in this volume work on understudied languages such as Moldovan Lakota Cantonese Bajjika Croatian Hebrew Arabic Ciluba Cantonese Cypriot Greek Korean Malaysian Basque and Belarusian and they all explore from the margins different dimensions of social gender in grammar. The diversity of languages is reflected in the range of theoretical frameworks (linguistic anthropology systemic functional linguistics contrastive syntactical analysis to name a few) used by the authors in order to apprehend the fluidity of gender(-ed) language and identity to highlight the social constraints on daily discourse and to identify discourses that resist gender norms. This book will be highly relevant for students and researchers working on the interface of gender with morpho-syntax semantics pragmatics and discourse analysis.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>