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Displacement (of linguistic expressions) is a ubiquitous phenomenon in natural language. In the generative tradition displacement is modelled in terms of transformation or more precisely movement which establishes dependencies among syntactic constituents in a phrase structure. This book probes the question regarding to what extent movement theories can be unified. Specifically I address issues surrounding the debate of the distinction between head movement and phrasal movement over the past few decades. The distinction presupposes that structural complexity of the moving element is correlated with its movement properties. The goal of this book is to show that this is an unwarranted assumption. Based on a number of case studies on verb displacement phenomena in Cantonese I attempt a unified theory of movement by abandoning the head/phrase distinction in movement theories. These case studies converge on the conclusion that the phrase structure status of syntactic constituents bears a minimal role in theorizing displacement phenomena in natural language. This volume represents a minimalist pursuit of a unified theory of movement.

Urban Panamanian English presents the first detailed account of the English used by the descendants of the Afro-Caribbean builders of the Panama Canal. It offers an up-to-date sociolinguistic account of the Panamanian West Indian community of Panama City and Colón including empirical coverage of the advanced state of language shift taking place among bilinguals. The book also showcases spoken interview data and takes stock of the variety’s grammatical features. In particular it provides an advanced quantitative study of variation in the use of verbal -s which contributes to longstanding discussions regarding the principles constraining this variable in Englishes world-wide. This work of documentation and description richly complements existing research on Panamanian Creole English and spotlights Panama as part and parcel of the English-speaking Caribbean. As such this book is of interest to all scholars and students of language contact variation and change.

This edited volume is a collection of theoretical and empirical overviews of second language (L2) proficiency based on four skills: reading writing listening and speaking. Each skill is reviewed in terms of how it has been conceptualized measured and studied over the years in relation to relevant (sub-) constructs of the language skill under discussion. This is followed by meta-analyses of correlation coefficients that examine the relationship between the L2 skill in question and its component variables. Unlike most meta-analyses that have a limited range of variables under investigation our meta-analyses are much larger in scope to better clarify such relationships. By combining theoretical and empirical approaches the book is helpful in deepening the understanding of how subcomponents or various variables are related to a particular L2 skill.

The chapters in this volume focus on how we might understand the concept of ‘unit’ in human languages. It is an analytical notion that has been widely adopted by linguists of various theoretical and applied orientations but has recently been critically examined by both typologically oriented and interactional linguistics. This volume contributes to and extends this discussion by examining the nature of units in actual usage in a range of genetically and typologically unrelated languages English Finnish Indonesian Japanese and Mandarin engaging with fundamental theoretical issues. The chapters show that categories originally created for the description of Indo-European languages have limited usefulness if our goal is to understand the nature of human language in general. The authors thus question the status of traditionally accepted linguistic units especially their static understanding as a priori entities and suggest instead that an emergent and interactional view of both structure and function offers a better fit with the data from the languages examined. Originally published as special issue 43:2 (2019) of Studies in Language.

The goal of the volume is to shed fresh light on Modern Hebrew from perspectives aimed at readers interested in the domains of general linguistics typology and Semitic studies. Starting with chapters that provide background information on the evolution and sociolinguistic setting of the language the bulk of the book is devoted to usage-based studies of the morphology lexicon and syntax of current Hebrew. Based primarily on original analyses of authentic spoken and online materials these studies reflect varied theoretical frames-of-reference that are largely model-neutral in approach. To this end the book presents a functionally motivated dynamic approach to actual usage rather than providing strictly structuralist or formal characterizations of particular linguistic systems. Such a perspective is particularly important in the case of a language undergoing accelerated processes of change in which the gap between prescriptive dictates of the Hebrew Language Establishment and the actual usage of educated literate but non-expert speaker-writers of current Hebrew is constantly on the rise.

Die färöische Gegenwartsorthographie ging nicht wie die moderne Rechtschreibung vieler Sprachen aus einer jahrhundertelangen Schrifttradition hervor sondern wurde im Wesentlichen im 19. Jh. neu erschaffen. Ihre Gründungsdokumente bestehen aus vier färöischen Zaubersprüchen die in einer bis Mitte des 19. Jh. üblichen relativ orthophonen Schreibweise gefasst sind. Als die Zaubersprüche 1846 veröffentlicht werden sollten wurden sie schrittweise in eine stark historisierende Schreibweise überführt die in der färöischen Gegenwartsorthographie resultiert hat. Diese Orthographie ist bemerkenswert weil mit ihr synchron gesehen ein sehr großer Abstand zwischen Graphemik und Phonemik sprachplanerisch erfolgreich eingeführt werden konnte obwohl gerade solche Verhältnisse ansonsten vielfach als reformbedürftig gelten. Das vorliegende Buch enthält eine Edition aller relevanten Handschriften und ordnet diese in ihren kulturhistorischen Kontext ein. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Unlike the modern orthography of many other languages Modern Faroese spelling did not emerge from centuries of literary tradition but was re-created mainly in the 19th century. Its founding documents consist of four Faroese spells written in a relatively orthophone spelling that was common up until the middle of the 19th century. Prior to their publication in 1864 the spells were converted step by step into a spelling with orthographic depth along diachronic lines which eventually resulted in Modern Faroese spelling. This spelling is remarkable since it represents the successful normative implementation of an orthographic system which seen from a synchronic point of view maintains a vast gap between graphemes and phonemes a state of affairs that in most cases would be a reason for not a result of spelling reforms. The present book contains an edition of all relevant manuscripts and situates them in their cultural and historical context.

This volume is the first book length study into the essive a relatively unknown case marker like English ‘as (a child)’. It focuses on the distribution of the essive in contemporary Uralic languages with special attention to the opposition between permanent and impermanent state. The volume presents large sets of new data and insights into the use of the essive in nineteen Uralic languages on the basis of a typological linguistic questionnaire. The typological variation is discussed within the linguistic domains of non-verbal main predication secondary predication complementation and manner temporal and circumstantial adverbial phrases. The descriptions and analyses are presented in such a way that they are accessible to linguists in general descriptive and theoretical linguists and specialists in Uralic and/or linguistic typology. The data and approach offer many starting points for further investigations within but also outside the Uralic language family.

Ugandan English is a variety that has scarcely been noticed in past research. This timely volume brings together African and European scholars in a first-ever collection of articles that offer comprehensive discussions of the historical and present-day sociolinguistics of English in Uganda and fine-grained analyses of the structural characteristics of and attitudes to this hitherto largely unknown variety. Using rich archive corpus and interview data as well as ethnographic and observational methods the various contributions paint a comprehensive picture of Ugandan English as distinct from other East African Englishes and as characterized by nativisation despite a still strong exonormative orientation reflecting the modern nation’s status as a post-protectorate under the influence of globalisation. Apart from advancing our understanding of Ugandan English itself the individual chapters contribute to theoretical debates on language contact and variation as regards the influence of substrate languages founder populations language ideologies and socio-economic factors.

This volume illustrates the process of conducting interdisciplinary multi-cultural research into the relationship between patient language use and chronic disease management. The ten chapters in this book provide a model for interdisciplinary research in health discourse from start to finish. Part I describes in detail the conceptualization and design of a multi-year research project exploring language use among people living with diabetes. Part II offers a sampler of a variety of qualitative quantitative and contrastive methodologies that have considerable potential in the study of health discourse. Part III brings the research process full circle by discussing issues related to adapting research protocols to diverse cultural contexts translating results into practice and working in interdisciplinary teams.

This volume brings together papers that take usage-based approaches to study the nature of human language with a focus on the grammar of Japanese. The 12 chapters provide a rich array of data and methodologies with topics ranging from phonology modality and grammatical morphemes to sentential construction and discourse-level phenomena such as turn-taking speech register and language change. As a whole they demonstrate that usage-based linguistics illuminates various phenomena in the language that could not have been well accounted for by resorting solely to a formal theory such as the Universal-Grammar-based approach. Reflecting theoretical methodological and technological advancements made in and outside the field of cognitive-functional linguistics in recent years the papers contained in this volume both individually and collectively have significant implications towards linguistics in general and Japanese linguistics in particular as we as Japanese language teaching.