Browse Books
To browse by subfields of a subject, please start on the Subjects tab in the navigation bar/menu, then filter by subject-subcategory and by content type.
Information on Forthcoming Books can be found on the benjamins.com website.
/search?showRelevance=false&showRelevance=false&showRelevance=false&pageSize=50&showSortByTitle=true&showSortByTitle=true&showSortByTitle=true&page=2&value99=n&value99=n&value99=n&option99=pub_indexLetter&option99=pub_indexLetter&option99=pub_indexLetter&facetOptions=&facetNames=
51 - 100 of
152
results
Filter :
Filter by subject:
Filter by publication date:
Narrative and Identity Construction in the Pacific Islands
May 2015
Book
Editor(s):
Farzana Gounder
Comprising of more than twenty five percent of the world’s known languages the Pacific is considered to be the most linguistically diverse region in the world. What unifies the region is the culture of storytelling which provides a fundamental means for perpetuating cultural knowledge across generations. The volume brings together linguists literary theorists anthropologists and historians to explore the Pacific peoples’ constructions of identities through narrative. Chapters are organized under three themes: fine grained analysis at the storyworld level the interactional context of narrative telling and finally the interconnections between narrative and cultural memory. The volume reflects the Pacific region’s rich linguistic and cultural diversity with discussions on the narrativization patterns in Australian and New Zealand English Palmerston Island and Pitkern-Norfl’k English Fiji Hindi Hawaiian Samoan Solomon Island Pidgin the Australian Aboriginal languages Jaminjung and Kriol the Micronesian languages Mortlockese and Guam Chamorros and the Vanuatuan languages Auluan Neverver and Sa.
New Directions in Grammaticalization Research
Apr 2015
Book
Editor(s):
Andrew D.M. Smith,
Graeme Trousdale and
Richard Waltereit
The articles in this volume examine a number of critical issues in grammaticalization studies including the relationship between grammaticalization and pragmaticalization subjectification and intersubjectification and grammaticalization and language contact. The contributions consider data from a broad range of spoken and signed languages including Greek Japanese Nigerian Pidgin Swedish and Turkish Sign Language. The authors work in a variety of theoretical frameworks and draw on a number of research traditions. The volume will be of primary interest to historical linguists though the diversity of approaches and sources of data mean that the volume is also likely have considerable general appeal.
Narrative Matters in Medical Contexts across Disciplines
Mar 2015
Book
Editor(s):
Franziska Gygax and
Miriam A. Locher
This collection of original chapters gives center stage to the concept of ‘narrative’ in medical contexts. The contributors come from the disciplines of literary and cultural studies linguistics psychology and medicine and work with texts as diverse as autobiographies graphic novels Renaissance medical treatises and reports short stories reflective writing creative writing and online narratives. The interdisciplinary dialogue shows the richness and scope of the concept ‘narrative’ and demonstrates how crucial it is for practices in the medical context as well as in the contributing disciplines. The collection raises awareness of the great variety and multivocality of narratives on the experience of illness besides paying heed to the many different positions and angles from which these narratives can be perceived read and analyzed. The wide range of approaches assembled in this collection provides a comprehensive view on illness and health and on the multiple ways in which they are represented in narrative.
Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900 : A sociolinguistic and comparative perspective
Dec 2014
Book
Editor(s):
Gijsbert Rutten,
Rik Vosters and
Wim Vandenbussche
Historical sociolinguistics has successfully challenged the traditional focus on standardization in linguistic historiography. Extensive research on newly uncovered textual resources has shown the widespread variation in the written language of the past that was previously hidden or neglected. The time has come to integrate both perspectives and to reassess the importance of language norms standardization and prescription on the basis of sound empirical studies of large corpora of texts.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The chapters in this volume discuss the interplay of language norms and language use in the history of Dutch English French and German between 1600 and 1900. Written by leading experts in the field each chapter focuses on one language and one century. A substantial introductory chapter puts the twelve research chapters into a comparative perspective.<br/>The book is of interest to a wide readership ranging from scholars of historical linguistics sociolinguistics sociology and social history to (advanced) graduate and postgraduate students in courses on language variation and change.<br/>
Non-Nuclear Cases
Dec 2014
Book
Editor(s):
Nicole Delbecque,
Karen Lahousse and
Willy Van Langendonck
In contrast with the central arguments of the event structure which have been extensively studied much less attention has been given to non-arguments. To bridge this gap the present volume focuses on prepositional and adverbial phrases expressing instrumental causal spatial temporal roles and the like i.e. semantic roles which have been typically associated with oblique case. The various contributions show that case in general and oblique case in particular is at the intersection between form and meaning: at issue are the nuclear versus non-nuclear status of these phrases and the semantic roles they express. The import of these phrases on the event structure is described in a functional-cognitive perspective for Cora Nyulnyul German Dutch French and Spanish.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The specific analyses of empirical phenomena presented in this volume as well as their implications for linguistic theory in general will be of interest for scholars interested in syntax semantics and pragmatics.<br/>This is the sixth and final volume of the Case and Grammatical Relations across Languages project.<br/>
New Literary Hybrids in the Age of Multimedia Expression : Crossing borders, crossing genres
Nov 2014
Book
Editor(s):
Marcel Cornis-Pope
Begun in 2010 as part of the “Histories of Literatures in European Languages” series sponsored by the International Comparative Literature Association the current project on New Literary Hybrids in the Age of Multimedia Expression recognizes the global shift toward the visual and the virtual in all areas of textuality: the printed verbal text is increasingly joined with the visual often electronic text. This shift has opened up new domains of human achievement in art and culture. The international roster of 24 contributors to this volume pursue a broad range of issues under four sets of questions that allow a larger conversation to emerge both inside the volume’s sections and between them. The four sections cover 1) Multimedia Productions in Theoretical and Historical Perspective; 2) Regional and Intercultural Projects; 3) Forms and Genres; and 4) Readers and Rewriters in Multimedia Environments. The essays included in this volume are examples of the kinds of projects and inquiries that have become possible at the interface between literature and other media new and old. They emphasize the extent to which hypertextual multimedia and virtual reality technologies have enhanced the sociality of reading and writing enabling more people to interact than ever before. At the same time however they warn that as long as these technologies are used to reinforce old habits of reading/ writing they will deliver modest results. One of the major tasks pursued by the contributors to this volume is to integrate literature in the global informational environment where it can function as an imaginative partner teaching its interpretive competencies to other components of the cultural landscape.
Noun Valency
Jun 2014
Book
Editor(s):
Olga Spevak
Despite a recent spate of publications the valency of nouns is a topic that still remains in the shadow of the valency of verbs. This volume aims to contribute to the discussion of noun valency not only from a theoretical point of view as is often the case but also from an empirical one by presenting a series of studies focusing on particular questions and based on data-driven research. It explores properties of valency nouns in a variety of languages including Bulgarian Czech German Latin Romanian and Spanish. The specificity of this book consists in the diversity of the methodological approaches used. It includes empirical studies and it explores different theoretical frameworks: Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) the Minimalist Program within Generative Grammar Functional Generative Description (FGD) and Construction Grammar. Special attention is paid to deverbal nouns but nouns expressing quantity and “compound-like” constructions involving relationship and interactivity are also dealt with.
Number – Constructions and Semantics : Case studies from Africa, Amazonia, India and Oceania
Mar 2014
Book
Editor(s):
Anne Storch and
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal
This book is the outcome of several decades of research experience with contributions by leading scholars based on long-term field research. It combines approaches from descriptive linguistics anthropological linguistics socio-historical studies areal linguistics and social anthropology. The key concern of this ground-breaking volume is to investigate the linguistic means of expressing number and countable amounts which differ greatly in the world’s languages. It provides insights into common number-marking devices and their not-so-common usages but also into phenomena such as the absence of plurals or transnumeral forms. The different contributions to the volume show that number is of considerable semantic complexity in many languages worldwide expressing all kinds of extendedness multiplicity salience size and so on. This raises a number of challenging questions regarding what exactly is described under the slightly monolithic label of ‘number’ in most descriptive approaches to the languages of the world.
Nominal Classification : A history of its study from the classical period to the present
Dec 2013
Book
Author(s):
Marcin Kilarski
This book offers the first comprehensive survey of the study of gender and classifiers throughout the history of Western linguistics. Based on an analysis of over 200 genetically and typologically diverse languages the author shows that these seemingly arbitrary and redundant categories play in fact a central role in the lexicon grammar and the organization of discourse. As a result the often contradictory approaches to their functionality and semantic motivation encapsulate the evolving conceptions of such issues as cognitive and cultural correlates of linguistic structure the diverse functions of grammatical categories linguistic complexity agreement phenomena and the interplay between lexicon and grammar. The combination of a typological and historiographic perspective adopted here allows the reader to appreciate the detail and insight of earlier supposedly ‘prescientific’ accounts in light of the data now available and to examine contemporary discussions in the context of prevailing conceptions in the study of language at different points in its history since antiquity.
New Perspectives on English as a European Lingua Franca
Dec 2013
Book
Author(s):
Heiko Motschenbacher
This volume complements earlier work on English as a lingua franca (ELF) by providing an in-depth study of the phenomenon from a decidedly European perspective. Distancing itself from more traditional approaches to the study of English in Europe (linguistic imperialism and “Euro-English”) the study is theoretically grounded in more recent approaches namely the ELF paradigm and the postmodernist conceptualisation of “English”. Methodologically speaking the study analyses language use in Eurovision Song Contest press conferences as a community of practice of European salience. The ethnographically based analyses focus on various linguistic levels thereby producing a comprehensive picture of European ELF as a discursive formation. Various qualitative and quantitative methods are used to shed light on the following aspects: code-choice practices in ELF talk participants’ metalinguistic comments on the use of ELF complimenting behaviour via ELF and relativisation patterns. On the basis of this data the concluding section advances discussions revolving around the conceptualisation of ELF in general the connection between ELF and Europeanness and implications for European language policies.
New Perspectives on Bare Noun Phrases in Romance and Beyond
Nov 2013
Book
Editor(s):
Johannes Kabatek and
Albert Wall
This book envisions the study of bare noun phrases as a field of research in its own right rather than an accessory matter in the wider domain of nominal determination. Combining insights from different theoretical backgrounds and extending the empirical coverage of bare noun phenomena the ten contributions provide new perspectives on long-standing but still actively debated problems as well as investigations into previously ignored issues. The volume focuses on the wide range of bare noun phenomena in Romance languages including Spanish Catalan Brazilian and European Portuguese Italian and French; but also widens its inherently comparative perspective to languages such as Bulgarian and Modern Hebrew. The authors discuss the importance of cross-linguistic patterns in the modeling of the syntax and semantics of noun phrases and of common noun denotations the role of information structure as well as that of discourse traditions and coordination.
New Perspectives on the Origins of Language
Nov 2013
Book
Editor(s):
Claire Lefebvre,
Bernard Comrie and
Henri Cohen
The question of how language emerged is one of the most fascinating and difficult problems in science. In recent years a strong resurgence of interest in the emergence of language from an evolutionary perspective has been helped by the convergence of approaches methods and ideas from several disciplines. The selection of contributions in this volume highlight scenarios of language origin and the prerequisites for a faculty of language based on biological historical social cultural and paleontological forays into the conditions that brought forth and favored language emergence augmented by insights from sister disciplines. The chapters all reflect new speculation discoveries and more refined research methods leading to a more focused understanding of the range of possibilities and how we might choose among them. There is much that we do not yet know but the outlines of the path ahead are ever clearer.
Nonmanuals in Sign Language
Jun 2013
Book
Editor(s):
Annika Herrmann and
Markus Steinbach
In addition to the hands sign languages make extensive use of nonmanual articulators such as the body head and face to convey linguistic information. This collected volume focuses on the forms and functions of nonmanuals in sign languages. The articles discuss various aspects of specific nonmanual markers in different sign languages and enhance the fact that nonmanuals are an essential part of sign language grammar. Approaching the topic from empirical theoretical and computational perspectives the book is of special interest to sign language researchers typologists and theoretical as well as computational linguists that are curious about language and modality. The articles investigate phenomena such as mouth gestures agreement negation topicalization and semantic operators and discuss general topics such as language and modality simultaneity computer animation and the interfaces between syntax semantics and prosody.
Originally published in Sign Language & Linguistics 14:1 (2011).
Originally published in Sign Language & Linguistics 14:1 (2011).
Non-Canonical Passives
Mar 2013
Book
Editor(s):
Artemis Alexiadou and
Florian Schäfer
This volume contains a selection of papers dealing with constructions that have a passive-like interpretation but do not seem to share all the properties with canonical passives. The fifteen chapters of this volume raise important questions concerning the proper characterization of the universal properties of passivization and reflect the current discussion in this area covering syntactic semantic psycho-linguistic and typological aspects of the phenomenon from different theoretical perspectives and in different language families and backed up in most cases by extensive corpora and experimental studies.
New Perspectives on Irish English
Nov 2012
Book
Editor(s):
Bettina Migge and
Máire Ní Chiosáin
This volume brings together current research by international scholars on the varieties of English spoken in Ireland. The papers apply contemporary theoretical and methodological approaches and frameworks to a range of topics. A number of papers explore the distribution of linguistic features in Irish English including the evolution of linguistic structures in Irish English and linguistic change in progress employing broadly quantitative sociolinguistic approaches. Pragmatic features of Irish English are explored through corpus linguistics-based analysis. The construction of linguistic corpora using written and recorded material form the focus of other papers extending and analyzing the growing range of corpus material available to researchers of varieties of English including diaspora varieties. Issues of language and identity in contemporary Ireland are explored in several contributions using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The volume will be of interest to linguists generally and to scholars with an interest in varieties of English.
Noun Phrases and Nominalization in Basque : Syntax and semantics
Jun 2012
Book
Editor(s):
Urtzi Etxeberria,
Ricardo Etxepare and
Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria
This collective volume on nominal expressions in Basque a language isolate with no known relatives comprises original papers on the syntactic structure and the interpretation of both Noun Phrases and nominalization constructions – a traditionally neglected aspect of Basque linguistics. The minute attention to properties and paradigms previously overlooked and the analyses of them in the light of recent advances in syntactic theory make this book a valuable tool for syntacticians semanticists and morphologists. This work fills a gap in the theoretical study of Basque and the richness of data presented makes it interesting for any researcher from whatever particular theoretical persuasion. This volume is especially useful for researchers graduate students and advanced undergraduate students of comparative grammar typology and theoretical linguistics.
New Frontiers in Human–Robot Interaction
Dec 2011
Book
Editor(s):
Kerstin Dautenhahn and
Joe Saunders
Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) considers how people can interact with robots in order to enable robots to best interact with people. HRI presents many challenges with solutions requiring a unique combination of skills from many fields including computer science artificial intelligence social sciences ethology and engineering. We have specifically aimed this work to appeal to such a multi-disciplinary audience. This volume presents new and exciting material from HRI researchers who discuss research at the frontiers of HRI. The chapters address the human aspects of interaction such as how a robot may understand provide feedback and act as a social being in interaction with a human to experimental studies and field implementations of human–robot collaboration ranging from joint action robots practically and safely helping people in real world situations robots helping people via rehabilitation and robots acquiring concepts from communication. This volume reflects current trends in this exciting research field.
New Directions in Colour Studies
Oct 2011
Book
Editor(s):
Carole P. Biggam,
Carole Hough,
Christian Kay and
David R. Simmons
Colour studies attracts an increasingly wide range of scholars from across the academic world. Contributions to the present volume offer a broad perspective on the field ranging from studies of individual languages through papers on art architecture and heraldry to psychological examinations of aspects of colour categorization perception and preference. The chapters have been developed from papers and posters presented at a conference on Progress in Colour Studies (PICS08) held at the University of Glasgow. The volume both updates research reported at the earlier PICS04 conference (published by Benjamins in 2006 as Progress in Colour Studies volumes 1 and 2) and introduces new and exciting topics and developments in colour research. In order to make the articles maximally accessible to a multidisciplinary readership each of the six sections following the initial theoretical papers begins with a short preface describing and drawing together the themes of the chapters within that section. There are seventeen colour illustrations.
Nominalization in Asian Languages : Diachronic and typological perspectives
Jun 2011
Book
Editor(s):
Foong Ha Yap,
Karen Grunow-Hårsta and
Janick Wrona
Research on nominalization a process that gives rise to referring expressions has always played a central role in linguistic investigations. Over the years there has also been growing evidence that nominalization constructions often extend to non-referential domains. They participate in noun-modifying expressions (e.g. genitive and relative clauses) subordinate clauses and topic constructions finite structures with the nominalizers reanalyzed as TAM markers and stance constructions with evaluative attitudinal evidential and epistemic overtones. This volume brings together historical and crosslinguistic evidence from more than 20 different languages representing six different language families spanning the Asian continent and the Pacific and Indian oceans to elucidate the strategies and grammaticalization pathways that give rise to both referential and non-referential uses of nominalization constructions. This collection highlights the diversity of strategies and at the same time the robust cyclical nature of change within and across languages. The combined diachronic and typological analyses in this volume are particularly valuable for linguistic research on diachronic morphosyntax and linguistic ‘universals’ and are also an important supplementary cross-referencing tool for linguistic investigations of versatile and ubiquitous morphemes in under-documented languages.
The Noun Phrase in Romance and Germanic : Structure, variation, and change
Feb 2011
Book
Editor(s):
Petra Sleeman and
Harry Perridon
One of the recurrent questions in historical linguistics is to what extent languages can borrow grammar from other languages. It seems for instance hardly likely that each 'average European' language developed a definite article all by itself without any influence from neighbouring languages. It is on the other hand by no means clear what exactly was borrowed since the way in which definiteness is expressed differs greatly among the various Germanic and Romance languages and dialects. One of the main aims of this volume is to shed some light on the question of what is similar and what is different in the structure of the noun phrase of the various Romance and Germanic languages and dialects and what causes this similarity or difference.
Narrative Revisited : Telling a story in the age of new media
Nov 2010
Book
Editor(s):
Christian R. Hoffmann
The volume examines the role of narratives in old and new media. Its ten contributions firstly center on the various forms and functions narratives assume in computer-mediated environments e.g. websites weblogs message boards etc. In this light past and present approaches to the description of narratives are presented and reevaluated based on their ability to capture the conceptual and methodological exigencies of new media. Secondly the volume sheds new light upon the multimodal composition of new media narratives which typically feature multiple co-occurring semiotic modes such as speech sound text static or moving images. In this vein each paper explores a wide array of authentic examples from text genres as diverse as political speeches real-time narratives and contemporary feature films. Its wide scope should not only appeal to linguists interested in the discursive and pragmatic dimension of narratives but also to scholars and students in other scientific disciplines.
New Perspectives on Endangered Languages : Bridging gaps between sociolinguistics, documentation and language revitalization
Nov 2010
Book
Editor(s):
José Antonio Flores Farfán and
Fernando F. Ramallo
Understanding sociolinguistics as a theoretical and methodological framework hopefully could attempt to promote change and social development in human communities. Yet it still presents important political epistemological methodological and theoretical challenges. A sociolinguistics of development in which the revitalization of linguistic communities is the priority opens new perspectives for the emerging field of linguistic documentation in which the societal aspects of research stressed by sociolinguistics have frequently been marginal. The need to focus on the documentation of linguistic communities to contribute to the revitalization of these communities requires an in-depth revision of a number of different perspectives. Especially regarding the links between commonly separated fields of enquiry such as sociolinguistics documentation and revitalization. Instead of creating mere museum pieces of academic contemplation for the future as has been the major trend up to now in language documentation and even sociolinguistics there is a growing concern to join forces to revitalize the actual use of endangered languages in order to place languages as a main focus of a community’s development which constitutes a major challenge for both scholars civil society and speakers alike.
New Horizons in the Neuroscience of Consciousness
Oct 2010
Book
Editor(s):
Elaine K. Perry,
Daniel Collerton,
Fiona E.N. LeBeau and
Heather Ashton
A fascinating cornucopia of new ideas based on fundamentals of neurobiology psychology psychiatry and therapy this book extends boundaries of current concepts of consciousness. Its eclectic mix will simulate and challenge not only neuroscientists and psychologists but entice others interested in exploring consciousness. Contributions from top researchers in consciousness and related fields project diverse ideas focused mainly on conscious nonconscious interactions: <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>1. Paving the way for new research on basic scientific - physiological pharmacological or neurochemical - mechanisms underpinning conscious experience (‘bottom up’ approach); <br/>2. Providing directions on how psychological processes are involved in consciousness (‘top down’ approach); <br/>3. Indicating how including consciousness could lead to new understanding of mental disorders such as schizophrenia depression dementia and addiction;<br/> 4. More provocatively but still based on scientific evidence exploring consciousness beyond conventional boundaries indicating the potential for radical new thinking or ‘quantum leaps’ in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. (Series B)
New Adventures in Language and Interaction
Aug 2010
Book
Editor(s):
Jürgen Streeck
In this book sixteen international scholars of language and social interaction describe their distinct frameworks of analysis. Taking conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics as their points of departure and investigating ordinary conversation as well as institutions such as health care therapy and city council meetings they often incorporate gesture prosody and the listener's behavior in the analysis of talk. While some approaches are grounded in a critique of the major schools of interaction analysis others integrate the interactionist perspective with ideas from fields such as systemic-functional linguistics distributed cognition and the sociology of knowledge. Each chapter combines a statement of the terms and methods of analysis with an exemplary analysis of a moment of interaction. New Adventures in Language and Interaction gives an excellent overview of the novelty and diversity of interaction-focused perspectives on language and of the heterogeneity of approaches that have evolved from the pioneering work of Sacks and Schegloff Gumperz and their co-workers.
New Approaches to Slavic Verbs of Motion
May 2010
Book
Editor(s):
Victoria Hasko and
Renee Perelmutter
This volume unifies a wide breadth of interdisciplinary studies examining the expression of motion in Slavic languages. The contributors to the volume have joined in the discussion of Slavic motion talk from diachronic typological comparative cognitive and acquisitional perspectives with a particular focus on verbs of motion the nuclei of the lexicalization patterns for encoding motion. Motion verbs are notorious among Slavic linguists for their baffling idiosyncratic behavior in their lexical semantic syntactical and aspectual characteristics. The collaborative effort of this volume is aimed both at highlighting and accounting for the unique properties of Slavic verbs of motion and at situating Slavic languages within the larger framework of typological research investigating cross-linguistic encoding of the motion domain. Due to the multiplicity of approaches to the linguistic analysis the collection offers it will suitably complement courses and programs of study focusing on Slavic linguistics as well as typology diachronic and comparative linguistics semantics and second language acquisition.
Noam Chomsky and Language Descriptions
Apr 2010
Book
Editor(s):
John Ole Askedal,
Ian Roberts and
Tomonori Matsushita
For sale in all countries except Japan. For customers in Japan: please contact Yushodo Co.
The general aim of the Senshu University Project The Development of the Anglo-Saxon Language and Linguistic Universals is investigation of structural characteristics common to the Germanic languages such as English German and Norwegian and of works on and in the tradition of Generative Grammar founded by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. The central idea of Generative Grammar that the nature of natural-language syntax can be captured by a finite set of rules which are able to produce an infinite set of well-formed structures has been highly evaluated and influential even in related fields such as biolinguistics philosophy psychology and computer science. Noam Chomsky and Language Descriptions is a collection of articles that focus on the earliest but essential linguistic theory proposed by Noam Chomsky and articles that discuss specific topics pertaining to the study Germanic languages in particular English and German. It is divided into two parts: Part 1. Genesis of Generative Grammar; and Part 2. Current Issues in Language Descriptions. The present book will be of general interest to linguists who seek to understand the original idea of Generative Grammar and nature of the Germanic languages.
The general aim of the Senshu University Project The Development of the Anglo-Saxon Language and Linguistic Universals is investigation of structural characteristics common to the Germanic languages such as English German and Norwegian and of works on and in the tradition of Generative Grammar founded by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. The central idea of Generative Grammar that the nature of natural-language syntax can be captured by a finite set of rules which are able to produce an infinite set of well-formed structures has been highly evaluated and influential even in related fields such as biolinguistics philosophy psychology and computer science. Noam Chomsky and Language Descriptions is a collection of articles that focus on the earliest but essential linguistic theory proposed by Noam Chomsky and articles that discuss specific topics pertaining to the study Germanic languages in particular English and German. It is divided into two parts: Part 1. Genesis of Generative Grammar; and Part 2. Current Issues in Language Descriptions. The present book will be of general interest to linguists who seek to understand the original idea of Generative Grammar and nature of the Germanic languages.
Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond
Aug 2009
Book
Editor(s):
Norbert Cyffer,
Erwin Ebermann and
Georg Ziegelmeyer
This volume deals with issues on negation patterns in languages of West Africa and the adjacent north and east. The first aim is to provide data on various aspects of negation in African languages. Although the topics addressed here reflect a great diversity of negation patterns the following typological features have been identified to be prominent in our region: conflict or even incompatibility between negation and focus use of other indirect means of negating non-indicative mood (covered under the term ‘Prohibitive’) different negation patterns in different Tense-Aspect-Moods (e.g. Imperfective vs. Perfective) lack of negative indefinites and disjunctive negative marking (often referred to as ‘double negation’). The articles presented here show that areal factors have played a significant role in the development of negation strategies in the languages of West Africa and beyond. On the other hand genetic factors seem to be less prominent.
Named Entities : Recognition, classification and use
Jul 2009
Book
Editor(s):
Satoshi Sekine and
Elisabete Ranchhod
Named Entities provides critical information for many NLP applications. Named Entity recognition and classification (NERC) in text is recognized as one of the important sub-tasks of Information Extraction (IE). The seven papers in this volume cover various interesting and informative aspects of NERC research. Nadeau & Sekine provide an extensive survey of past NERC technologies which should be a very useful resource for new researchers in this field. Smith & Osborne describe a machine learning model which tries to solve the over-fitting problem. Mazur & Dale tackle a common problem of NE and conjunction; as conjunctions are often a part of NEs or appear close to NEs this is an important practical problem. A further three papers describe analyses and implementations of NERC for different languages: Spanish (Galicia-Haro & Gelbukh) Bengali (Ekbal Naskar & Bandyopadhyay) and Serbian (Vitas Krstev & Maurel). Finally Steinberger & Pouliquen report on a real WEB application where multilingual NERC technology is used to identify occurrences of people locations and organizations in newspapers in different languages.
The contributions to this volume were previously published in Lingvisticae Investigationes 30:1 (2007).
The contributions to this volume were previously published in Lingvisticae Investigationes 30:1 (2007).
New Directions in Cognitive Linguistics
Jun 2009
Book
Editor(s):
Vyvyan Evans and
Stéphanie Pourcel
Nearly three decades since the publication of the seminal Metaphors We Live By Cognitive Linguistics is now a mature theoretical and empirical enterprise with a voluminous associated literature. It is arguably the most rapidly expanding ‘school’ in modern linguistics and one of the most exciting areas of research within the interdisciplinary project known as cognitive science. As such Cognitive Linguistics is increasingly attracting a broad readership both within linguistics as well as from neighbouring disciplines including other cognitive and social sciences and from disciplines within the humanities. This volume contains over 20 papers by leading experts in cognitive linguistics which survey the state of the art and new directions in cognitive linguistics. The volume is divided into 5 sections covering all the traditional areas of study in cognitive linguistics as well as newer areas including applications and extensions. Sections include: Approaches to semantics; Approaches to metaphor and blending; Approaches to grammar; Language embodiment and cognition; Extensions and applications of cognitive linguistics.
Narrative Progression in the Short Story : A corpus stylistic approach
Jan 2009
Book
Author(s):
Michael Toolan
One of our most valuable capacities is our ability partly to predict what will come next in a text. But linguistic understanding of this remains very limited especially in genres such as the short story where there is a staging of the clash between predictability and unpredictability. This book proposes that a matrix of narrativity-furthering textual features is crucial to the reader’s forming of expectations about how a literary story will continue to its close. Toolan uses corpus linguistic software and methods and stylistic and narratological theory in the course of delineating the matrix of eight parameters that he sees as crucial to creating narrative progression and expectation. The book will be of interest to stylisticians narratologists corpus linguists and short story scholars.
Naturalness and Iconicity in Language
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Klaas Willems and
Ludovic De Cuypere
Iconicity and naturalness remain controversial concepts in recent linguistic research. The present volume aims to scrutinize unresolved issues of iconicity and naturalness in language. The studies discuss topics such as naturalism in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of linguistics linguistic iconicity in semiotics iconic structures in Sign Languages natural and unnatural sound patterns the iconic nature of parts of speech the relation between (un)markedness and naturalness and lexical and syntactic iconicity. The research conducted is based on sound (meta)theoretical analyses and/or original empirical research. The data and innovative views presented are bound to spark discussion in an age-old debate that has lost nothing of its significance.
New-Dialect Formation in Canada : Evidence from the English modal auxiliaries
Jan 2008
Book
Author(s):
Stefan Dollinger
This book details the development of eleven modal auxiliaries in late 18th- and 19th-century Canadian English in a framework of new-dialect formation. The study assesses features of the modal auxiliaries tracing influences to British and American input varieties parallel developments or Canadian innovations. The findings are based on the Corpus of Early Ontario English pre-Confederation Section the first electronic corpus of early Canadian English. The data which are drawn from newspapers diaries and letters include original transcriptions from manuscript sources and texts from semi-literate writers. While the overall results are generally coherent with new-dialect formation theory the Ontarian context suggests a number of adaptations to the current model. In addition to its general Late Modern English focus New-Dialect Formation in Canada traces changes in epistemic modal functions up to the present day offering answers to the loss of root uses in the central modals. By comparing Canadian with British and American data important theoretical insights on the origins of the variety are gained. The study offers a sociohistorical perspective on a still understudied variety of North American English by combining language-internal features with settlement history in this first monograph-length diachronic treatment of Canadian English in real time.
Noun Phrases in Creole Languages : A multi-faceted approach
Nov 2007
Book
Editor(s):
Marlyse Baptista and
Jacqueline Guéron
This volume offers a thorough examination of the syntactic semantic pragmatic and discourse properties of noun phrases in a wide variety of creole (and non-creole) languages including Cape Verdean Creole Santome Papiamentu Guinea-Bissau Creole Mindanao Chabacano Réunionnais Creole Lesser Antillean Haitian Creole Mauritian Creole Seychellois Sranan Jamaican Creole Berbice Dutch Creole and African American English. Comparative studies also consider the determiner systems of Middle and Modern French European Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese Spanish Ewe Fon and Gun. This compilation of 16 chapters brings together descriptive theoretical diachronic and synchronic studies that focus on the structure and interpretation of bare nouns in creoles. The contributions demonstrate the variety and complex nature of determiner systems in creoles and their widespread use of bare nouns in comparison to their source languages. This volume is evidence of the relevance of creole languages to theories of language creation language change and linguistic theory in general.
La négation dans les langues romanes
Oct 2007
Book
Editor(s):
Franck Floricic
Negation has always been and still is a central topic in typological studies and theoretical research. Its centrality shows itself in the fact that it is not restricted to a given linguistic field but compasses the whole domain of linguistic studies. Very often works on negation are brought about in a one-sided perspective which excludes other points of view. This book on the contrary puts together studies on negation based on various theoretical frameworks and aims to cover a wide range of theoretical perspectives. The book offers contributions on negation in Old Occitan in Old Italic languages and in several modern Romance languages (Italian Roumanian French Spanish Occitan Catalan among others). It covers the diachronic dimension of negation and explores the syntactic as well as the semantico-pragmatic side of the phenomenon; aspects of negative affixation provide the morphological dimension. The originality of this volume thus lies in the multidisciplinarity of the approaches and perspectives offered.La question de la négation a toujours été et demeure un sujet central dans les recherches en linguistique théorique et typologique. Son caractère central réside en ceci qu’elle n’est pas limitée à un domaine linguistique donné mais embrasse le champ entier de la recherche linguistique. Aussi les travaux sur la négation sont-ils très souvent réalisés dans une perspective donnée qui exclut de facto d’autres points de vue ou d’autres approches. Cet ouvrage prend au contraire le parti de réunir des études dont les postulats théoriques et méthodologiques sont variés couvrant ainsi un éventail de perspectives théoriques. Le présent volume propose donc des contributions sur la négation en Ancien Occitan dans les langues de l’Italie ancienne et dans diverses langues romanes contemporaines (notamment en Italien Roumain Français Espagnol Occitan Catalan). Il couvre ainsi la dimension diachronique de la négation et s’attache à en décrire le fonctionnement d’un point de vue syntaxique aussi bien que sémantico-pragmatique. La dimension morphologique de la négation est également abordée via la problématique de l’affixation négative. L’originalité de cet ouvrage réside donc dans la multidisciplinarité des approches et des perspectives qu’il offre.
Nominal Determination : Typology, context constraints, and historical emergence
Aug 2007
Book
Editor(s):
Elisabeth Stark,
Elisabeth Leiss and
Werner Abraham
The following theoretical-empirical points on the DP are discussed: Article and its referential-anaphoric properties by Abraham (Determiners in Centering Theory); Bartra (On bare NPs in Old Spanish and Catalan); identification of all functional nominal categories by Stvan (Bare singular count nouns); Kupisch & Koops (Specificity and negation); Jäger (History of German indefinite determiners); typological comparison of the interaction of nominal and verbal determination by Abraham (Discourse-functional crystallization of the original demonstrative); Leiss (Covert (in)definiteness and aspect in Old Icelandic Gothic Old High German); Lohndal (Double definiteness during Old Norse); emergence of DP in ontogeny/phylogeny by Osawa (DP TP and aspect in Old English and L1 acquisition); Bittner (Early functions of definites in L1 acquisition); Wood (Demonstratives and possessives emergent from Old English); Bauer ((in)definite articles in Indo-European) and Stark (Variation in nominal indefiniteness in Romance).
Natural Language Processing for Online Applications : Text retrieval, extraction and categorization. Second revised edition
Jun 2007
Book
Author(s):
Peter Jackson and
Isabelle Moulinier
This text covers the technologies of document retrieval information extraction and text categorization in a way which highlights commonalities in terms of both general principles and practical concerns. It assumes some mathematical background on the part of the reader but the chapters typically begin with a non-mathematical account of the key issues. Current research topics are covered only to the extent that they are informing current applications; detailed coverage of longer term research and more theoretical treatments should be sought elsewhere. There are many pointers at the ends of the chapters that the reader can follow to explore the literature. However the book does maintain a strong emphasis on evaluation in every chapter both in terms of methodology and the results of controlled experimentation. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>
Narrow Syntax and Phonological Form : Scrambling in the Germanic languages
May 2007
Book
Author(s):
Gema Chocano
‘Scrambling’ the kind of word order variation found in West Germanic languages has been commonly treated as a phenomenon completely unrelated to North Germanic ‘Object Shift’. This book questions this view and defends a unified analysis on the basis of strictly syntactic and phonological evidence. Given that its main conclusions are drawn from German data it also sheds light on several problematic aspects of the grammar of this language which have traditionally resisted a principled account. Prominent among these are: the inconsistent behaviour of German coherent infinitives with respect to extraction of their internal arguments; the existence of a less ‘liberal’ type of ‘Scrambling’ within topicalised VPs; the link between reordering possibilities and headfinalness; the asymmetry exhibited by monotransitive and ditransitive structures with respect to the interaction between ‘Scrambling’ and the unmarked word order and finally certain anomalies in the reordering of the lower arguments of ditransitive predicates that assign inherent case.
Narrative – State of the Art
Mar 2007
Book
Editor(s):
Michael Bamberg
Narrative – State of the Art which was originally published as a Special Issue of Narrative Inquiry 16:1 (2006) is edited by Michael Bamberg and contains 24 chapters (with a brief introduction by the editor) that look back and take stock of developments in narrative theorizing and empirical work with narratives. The attempt has been made to bring together researchers from different disciplines with very different concerns and have them express their conceptions of the current state of the art from their perspectives. Looking back and taking stock this volume further attempts to begin to deliver answers to the questions (i) What was it that made the original turn to narrative so successful? (ii) What has been accomplished over the last 40 years of narrative inquiry? (iii) What are the future directions for narrative inquiry? The contributions to this volume are deliberately kept short so that the readers can browse through them and get a feel about the diversity of current narrative theorizing and emerging new trends in narrative research. It is the ultimate aim of this edited volume to stir up discussions and dialogue among narrative researchers across these disciplines and to widen and open up the territory of narrative inquiry to new and innovative work.
The Nonverbal Shift in Early Modern English Conversation
Jan 2007
Book
Author(s):
Axel Hübler
This is the first historical investigation on the nonverbal component of conversation. In the courtly society of 16th and 17th century England it is argued that a drift appeared toward an increased use of prosodic means of expression at the expense of gestural means. Direct evidence is provided by courtesy books and personal documents of the time indirect evidence by developments in the English lexicon. The rationale of the argument is cognitively grounded; given the integral role of gestures in thinking-for-speaking it rests on an isomorphism between gestural and prosodic behavior that is established semiotically and elaborated by insights from neurocognitive frequency theory and task dynamics. The proposal is rounded off by an illustration from present-day conversational data and the proof of its adaptability to current theories of language change. The cross-disciplinary approach addresses all those interested in (historical) pragmatics cognitive linguistics cultural semantics semiotics or language change.
Norse-derived Vocabulary in late Old English Texts : Wulfstan's works, a case story
Jan 2007
Book
Author(s):
Sara M. Pons-Sanz
This book focuses on the Norse-derived vocabulary in the works of Archbishop Wulfstan II of York (d. 1023). A considerable advantage derives from studying Wulfstan's compositions because unlike most Old English texts they are closely dateable and to a certain extent localizable. Thus they offer excellent material for the examination of the process of integration and accommodation of Norse-derived vocabulary in Old English. After establishing the list of terms which can be accepted to be Norse-derived this book analyses their relations with their native synonyms both from a semantic and a stylistic point of view and their inclusion in the word-formation processes to which Wulfstan submitted his vocabulary native and borrowed alike. The information derived from this approach is used to explore the possible reasons for the archbishop's selection of the borrowed terms and the impact which his lexical practices had on contemporary and later English writers.
Non-definiteness and Plurality
Nov 2006
Book
Editor(s):
Svetlana Vogeleer and
Liliane Tasmowski
This collection of studies by leading scholars in the field focuses on the semantics of non-definite (bare and indefinite) plural NPs. The contributions in the first part concentrate on bare plurals and their cross-linguistic counterparts. They discuss applicability of the notion of ‘semantic incorporation’ to bare plurals by contrasting them to bare singulars with the aim of accounting for the interaction between the semantics of number and the degree of (in)dependency of the NP with respect to the verb. The articles in the second part examine the relationship between the semantics of number and the semantics of aspect. The contributions in the third part concentrate on non-definite numerical noun phrases by addressing a range of fundamental questions such as: the semantics of indefinite time-phrases numericals in classifier- and non-classifier languages scope interactions the at least- and exactly-readings referential properties of numericals. The volume will be welcomed by linguists interested in the semantics of number in non-definite NPs.
New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics : Vol. I: Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005
Aug 2006
Book
Editor(s):
Chiyo Nishida and
Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil
This is the first of two volumes emanating from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at the University of Texas at Austin in February 2005. It features the keynote address delivered by Denis Bouchard on exaptation and linguistic explanation as well as seventeen contributions by emerging and internationally recognized scholars of Spanish French Italian as well as Rumanian. While the emphasis bears on formal analyses the coverage is remarkably broad as topics range from morphology syntax semantics pragmatics and language acquisition. Each article seeks to represent a new perspective on these topics and a variety of frameworks and concepts are exploited: distributive morphology entailment theory grammaticalization information structure left-periphery polarity lattice spatial individuation thematic hierarchy etc. This volume will challenge anyone interested in current issues in theoretical Romance Linguistics.
New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics : Vol. II: Phonetics, Phonology and Dialectology. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005
Aug 2006
Book
Editor(s):
Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil
This is the second of two volumes emanating from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages held at the University of Texas at Austin in February 2005. It features the keynote addresses delivered by Prof. Jacques Durand on the Phonology of Contemporary French Project and Prof. John Charles Smith on skeuomorphy and refunctionalization. It also includes eleven contributions by reputed scholars on topics ranging from phonetics phonology morphophonology dialectology sociolinguistics and language variation. Formal phonology papers favor the model of Optimality Theory while phonetic measurements serve as the basis for sociolinguistic and dialectometric studies. Many of these studies emphasize new comparative typological approaches to Romance data (including many non-standard varieties of French Italian and Spanish). This volume will be of interest to all Romance linguists.
Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective
Sept 2005
Book
Author(s):
Marit Julien
This monograph presents a new model of the internal syntax of nominal phrases. The model is mainly based on Scandinavian since with the wide range of variation that Scandinavian displays in the nominal domain despite the close genetic relationship between the different varieties Scandinavian is particularly well-suited for explorations into nominal syntax. Among the topics covered are the basic syntactic structure of nominal phrases definiteness adjective phrases possessors relative clauses and nominal predicates. The model is however meant to be a tool for analysing the nominal phrases of any language. While the base-generated structure is taken to be universally uniform the model allows for variation in the feature makeup of individual elements in the phonological realisation of the features and in the movements that may or may not apply. Hence as shown in the final chapter patterns found in languages outside of Scandinavian can also be accounted for within the model.
Negotiation of Contingent Talk : The Japanese interactional particles ne and sa
Aug 2005
Book
Author(s):
Emi Morita
Observing naturally occurring talk-in-interaction in Japanese this book examines how Japanese speakers segment their talk into relevant interactional units and use particles such as ne and sa to accomplish local pragmatic work. The study provides a conversation analytic action-oriented account for the ubiquity of such particles in Japanese talk.
The study argues that such particles are important resources for Japanese speakers to negotiate and fine-tune particular conversational contingencies within the emerging sequential environment of the talk. Various examples show that prospective alignment and the negotiability of conversational next action are ever-present issues for Japanese conversationalists and are handled at the precise moment of their relevance through interlocutors’ deployment of ne and sa. This study thus adds to the literature on Japanese conversational interaction a novel understanding of particle use in its synthesis of functional linguistics and conversation analysis.
The study argues that such particles are important resources for Japanese speakers to negotiate and fine-tune particular conversational contingencies within the emerging sequential environment of the talk. Various examples show that prospective alignment and the negotiability of conversational next action are ever-present issues for Japanese conversationalists and are handled at the precise moment of their relevance through interlocutors’ deployment of ne and sa. This study thus adds to the literature on Japanese conversational interaction a novel understanding of particle use in its synthesis of functional linguistics and conversation analysis.
A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis : Theory, methodology and interdisciplinarity
Jul 2005
Book
Editor(s):
Ruth Wodak and
Paul Chilton
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has established itself over the past two decades as an area of academic activity in which scholars and students from many different disciplines are involved. It is a field that draws on social theory and aspects of linguistics in order to understand and challenge the discourses of our day. It is time for A New Agenda in the field. The present book is essential for anyone working broadly in the field of discourse analysis in the social sciences. The book includes often critical re-assessments of CDA's assumptions and methods while proposing new route-maps for innovation. Practical analyses of major issues in discourse analysis are part of this agenda-setting volume.
Narrative Interaction
Feb 2005
Book
Editor(s):
Uta M. Quasthoff and
Tabea Becker
Telling stories in conversations is intricately interwoven with the interactive and local functions of story telling. Telling stories demands a certain kind of context and in itself establishes a particular interactive reality. Thus narration is a specific kind of verbal interaction governed by contextualizing devices genre-specific cooperative regularities and corresponding verbal features. It plays an important role in institutional as well as in private modes of communication. The volume focuses on narration as a contextualized and contextualizing activity which allocates specific structural tasks to the participants in the narrative process (narrator co-narrator listener). Thus the research questions are oriented towards story telling under a functional and interactive perspective. The contributions analyze recordings of authentic narrations in different functions using different kinds of qualitative reconstructive methods. The data come from everyday as well as institutional settings and the languages covered are English German Greek Hungarian and Italian.
Non-nominative Subjects : Volume 2
Sept 2004
Book
Editor(s):
Peri Bhaskararao and
Karumuri V. Subbarao
Volume 2 of Non-nominative Subjects (NNSs) presents the most recent research on this topic from a wide range of languages from diverse language families of the world with ample data and in-depth analysis. A significant feature of these volumes is that authors with different theoretical perspectives study the intricate questions raised by these constructions. Some of the central issues include the subject properties of noun phrases with ergative dative accusative and genitive case case assignment and checking anaphor–antecedent coreference the nature of predicates with NNSs whether they are volitional or non-volitional possibilities of control coreference and agreement phenomena. These analyses have significant implications for theories of syntax and verbal semantics first language acquisition of NNSs convergence of case marking patterns in language contact situations and the nature of syntactic change.
Non-nominative Subjects : Volume 1
Sept 2004
Book
Editor(s):
Peri Bhaskararao and
Karumuri V. Subbarao
Volume 1 of Non-nominative Subjects (NNSs) presents the most recent research on this topic from a wide range of languages from diverse language families of the world with ample data and in-depth analysis. A significant feature of these volumes is that authors with different theoretical perspectives study the intricate questions raised by these constructions. Some of the central issues include the subject properties of noun phrases with ergative dative accusative and genitive case case assignment and checking anaphor–antecedent coreference the nature of predicates with NNSs whether they are volitional or non-volitional possibilities of control coreference and agreement phenomena. These analyses have significant implications for theories of syntax and verbal semantics first language acquisition of NNSs convergence of case marking patterns in language contact situations and the nature of syntactic change.
Narrative Counselling : Social and linguistic processes of change
Jul 2004
Book
Author(s):
Peter Muntigl
What actually happens in counselling interactions? How does counselling bring about change? <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>How do clients end up producing new and alternative stories of their lives and relationships? <br/>By addressing these questions and others Peter Muntigl explores the narrative counselling process in the context where it is enacted: the unfolding conversation between counsellor and clients. Through a transdisciplinary approach that combines conversation analysis and systemic functional linguistic theory Muntigl demonstrates how language is used in couples counselling how language use changes over the course of counselling and how this process provides clients with new linguistic resources that help them change their social relationships. <br/>This book will be a valuable resource not only for linguists and discourse analysts but also for researchers and practitioners in the fields of counselling psychotherapy psychology and medicine.