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In recent years ethnic ways of speaking by young people with migrant background have become an important research object in sociolinguistics; work on these ways of speaking has been prospering in many European countries. This work is continued in the present volume with the aim of bringing together various research designs which explore the phenomenon from different perspectives: correlational methodology of sociolinguistic research conversation analytical and interactional linguistic methodology and an ethnographic perspective on language use and the construction of social identities and social relations. The aim of the volume is to explore the scope of these different methodologies and to provide a basis for the discussion and evaluation of the theories of language variation associated with them. All papers focus on the description of the linguistic characteristics that constitute the non-standard structures of ethnic styles of speaking and look into their various functions in discourse.

Brought together in this volume are fourteen studies using a range of modern instrumental methods – acoustic and articulatory – to investigate the phonetics of several North African and Middle Eastern varieties of Arabic. Topics covered include syllable structure quantity assimilation guttural and emphatic consonants and their pharyngeal and laryngeal mechanisms intonation and language acquisition. In addition to presenting new data and new descriptions and interpretations a key aim of the volume is to demonstrate the depth of objective analysis that instrumental methods can enable researchers to achieve. A special feature of many chapters is the use of more than one type of instrumentation to give different perspectives on phonetic properties of Arabic speech which have fascinated scholars since medieval times. The volume will be of interest to phoneticians phonologists and Arabic dialectologists and provides a link between traditional qualitative accounts of spoken Arabic and modern quantitative methods of instrumental phonetic analysis.

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.

This monograph presents a view on grammaticalisation radically different from standard views centering around the cline of grammaticality. Grammar is seen as a complex sign system and as a consequence grammatical change always comprises semantic change. What unites morphology topology (word order) constructional syntax and other grammatical subsystems is their paradigmatic organisation. The traditional concept of an inflexional paradigm is generalised as the structuring principle of grammar. Grammatical change involves paradigmatic restructuring and in the process of grammatical change morphological topological and constructional paradigms often connect to form complex paradigms. The book introduces the concept of connecting grammaticalisation to describe the formation restructuring and dismantling of such complex paradigms. Drawing primarily on data from Germanic Romance and Slavic languages the book offers both a broad general discussion of theoretical issues (part one) and three case studies (part two).

As of March 2017 this e-book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. It is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. 

The studies in Language Change in Contact Languages showcase the contributions that the study of contact language varieties make to the understanding of phenomena such as relexification transfer reanalysis grammaticalization prosodic variation and the development of prosodic systems. Four of the studies deal with morphosyntactic issues while the other three address questions of prosody. The studies include data from the Atlantic creoles (Saramaccan Sranan Haitian Creole Jamaican Creole Trinidadian Creole Papiamentu) as well as Singapore English. This volume originally published as special issue of Studies in Language 33:2 (2009) aims to make the work of several language contact experts available to a wider audience. The studies will be of use to any student or scholar interested in different approaches to contact-induced language processes particularly as they relate to morphosyntax and prosody.

The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics thereby attempting to divide up its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While the other volumes select specific philosophical cognitive grammatical social cultural discursive variational or interactional angles this 9th volume focuses on what pragmatics is good for – beyond the very discipline of pragmatics as such. The chapters in the volume thus address the importance of taking a pragmatic perspective on traditional fields of applied linguistics (contrastive and error analysis translation) and they address the core of pragmatics as the study of language use (with phenomena ranging from irony and emphasis to literacy and mass media and with approaches to the function of language like rhetoric stylistics corpus analysis and general semantics). The volume contains chapters not only on the spoken and written modes of communication but also on signed language pragmatics and on computer-mediated communication. The impact and usefulness of taking a pragmatic perspective on language for a deeper understanding of clinical and rehabilitation practices has recently received ever more focus; in this volume aspects of this direction of research are dealt with in the chapter on clinical pragmatics. In most of the chapters in the volume ethics has a core role to play not only in issues of authenticity in general in relation to research on language use but also in issues that have a direct influence on the (linguistic) culture and society we live in irrespective of whether we are part of a (linguistic) majority or a minority or a minority within a minority: language policy and language planning language ecology and language in relation to legal matters. In all of these fields we see the importance of research within pragmatics as a discipline dealing with how language influences our everyday lives. All in all the volume presents different perspectives on how research in pragmatics not only can be put to practice but how pragmatics is used as a tool to gain a better understanding of the world we live in.

This volume which was originally published in Terminology 15:1 (2009) presents and reflects on experiences dealing with terminology training from a theoretical practical and professional perspective. Terminology is part of the programmes of several (post)graduate courses such as Translating and Interpreting Applied Languages Information Science and other disciplines. Especially terminology practice has changed drastically over the years and training in terminology must adapt to this new reality. Drawing on years of experience in teaching this subject at various academic levels and in diverse ways we explore what to teach about terminology how to teach it how it is learned what experiences are put into practice with what result and how to connect the knowledge taught at universities and other institutions to the practical skills that are required from professionals in different areas e.g. translators information scientists knowledge engineers with respect to their knowledge of terminology.

When a reader picks up a book the essence of the text has been translated into the visual space of the cover. Using Umberto Eco’s bestseller The Name of the Rose as a case study this is the first study of book cover design as a form of intersemiotic translation based on the purposeful selection of visual signs to represent verbal signs. As an act of translation the cover of a book ought to be an ‘equivalent representation’ of the text. But in the absence of any established interpretive criteria how can equivalence between the visual and the verbal be determined and interpreted? Re-Covered Rose tackles this question in an original and creative way laying the foundation for a new research trend in Translation Studies.

Marco Sonzogni is Senior Lecturer in Italian School of Languages and Cultures Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand. A widely published academic and an award-winning editor poet and literary translator he is the Director of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation/Te Tumu Whakawhiti Tuhinga.

Construction Grammar is enthusiastically embraced by a growing group of linguists who find it a natural way to formulate their analyses. But so far there is no widespread formalization of construction grammar with a solid computational implementation. Fluid Construction Grammar attempts to fill this gap. It is a fully operational computational framework capturing many key concepts in construction grammar. The present book is the first extensive publication describing this framework. In addition to general introductions it gives a number of concrete examples through a series of linguistically challenging case studies including phrase structure case grammar and modality. The book is suited both for linguists who want to know what Fluid Construction Grammar looks like and for computational linguists who may want to use this computational framework for their own experiments or applications.

From the beginning of the Scientific Revolution around the late sixteenth century to its final crystallization in the early eighteenth century hardly an observational result an experimental technique a theory a mathematical proof a methodological principle or the award of recognition and reputation remained unquestioned for long. The essays collected in this book examine the rich texture of debates that comprised the Scientific Revolution from which the modern conception of science emerged. Were controversies marginal episodes restricted to certain fields or were they the rule in the majority of scientific domains? To what extent did scientific controversies share a typical pattern which distinguished them from debates in other fields? Answers to these historical and philosophical questions are sought through a close attention to specific controversies within and across the changing scientific disciplines as well as across the borders of the natural and the human sciences philosophy theology and technology.