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200 Years of Syntax
Author(s): Giorgio GraffiPublication Date April 2001More LessThis book argues convincingly against the widespread opinion that very few syntactic studies were carried out before the 1950s. Relying on the detailed analysis of a large amount of original sources, it shows that syntactic matters were in fact carefully investigated throughout both the 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century. Moreover, it illustrates how the enormous development of syntactic research in the last fifty years has already condemned even several recent ideas and analyses to oblivion, and deeply influenced current research programs. The wealth of research undertaken over the last two centuries is presented here in a systematic way, taking as its starting point the relationship of syntax with psychology throughout this period. The critical ideas expressed in the text are based on a detailed illustration of the different syntactic models and analyses rather than on the polemics between the different schools.
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Be and Equational Sentences in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic
Author(s): Mohamed Sami AnwarPublication Date January 1979More LessThe volume attempts to deal with equational sentences in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and their remote structure. In this unique monograph Mohamed Sami Anwar oes to show that equational sentences in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic are derived from underlying sentences that have transitive or intransitive verbs and that the verb be in its overt form is only a tense marker. The chapter following the introduction deals with the equational sentences functioning as conveyers of stative ideas. The third chapter deals with the verb be in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and how it functions only as a tense marker. The fourth chapter is an analysis of determination as regards the subject and why in some cases the predicate, at the surface structure, has to occur before the subject. The final chapter deals with the predicate slot and its types of fillers, and analyzes also the remote structure of the equational sentences to interpret the phenomenon of the presence and absence of agreement in number and gender between the subject and the predicate.
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Die Disputatio de anima rationali secundum substantiam des Nicolaus Baldelli S.J. nach dem Pariser Codex B.N. lat. 16627
Author(s): Henrik WelsPublication Date August 2000More LessThe Disputationes in libros De anima, contained in the Paris Codex B.N. lat. 16627, were recorded for centuries under the name Cesare Cremonini. This study shows the Disputationes to be a transcript of a lecture held by the Jesuit Nicolaus Baldelli (1573-1655) and so, on the basis of the only known manuscript, makes accessible a text instructive for the standard and method of the Aristoteles interpretation pursued at the Collegium Romanum during the early 17th century. The edition of the third Disputatio de anima rationali secundum substantiam that follows shows in exemplary fashion the position taken by the author to the three most important and controversial disputes in rational psychology: Is the rational soul of man only a forma assistens, as contended by Averroes, or, as canonically laid down since the Council of Vienna, a genuine forma informans? Is the soul mortal, as Alexander of Aphrodisias asserted, or, since the Fifth Lateran Council’s article of faith, immortal? Is the possible intellect, as assumed by Averroes, the same in all men, or is it individually different? The study categorizes Baldelli’s teachings on these issues into the Latin Aristotelianism doxographically. An index nominum completes the volume.Die in dem Pariser Codex B.N. lat. 16627 enthaltenen Disputationes in libros De anima wurden jahrhundertelang unter dem Namen Cesare Cremoninis geführt. Die vorliegende Studie erweist die Disputationes als Nachschrift einer Vorlesung des Jesuiten Nicolaus Baldelli (1573-1655) und macht damit einen für das Niveau und die Methode der Aristoteleserklärung am Collegium Romanum im frühen 17. Jahrhundert aufschluîreichen Text nach der einzigen Handschrift zugänglich. Die sich anschlieîende Edition der dritten Disputatio de anima rationali secundum substantiam zeigt exemplarisch die Stellung des Autors zu den drei wichtigsten Streitfragen der rationalen Psychologie: Ist die vernünftige Seele des Menschen mit Averroes nur eine forma assistens oder, wie seit dem Konzil von Vienne kanonisch, eine echte forma informans? Ist sie mit Alexander von Aphrodisias sterblich oder, wie seit dem fünften Laterankonzil Glaubenssatz, unsterblich? Ist der mögliche Intellekt, wie Averroes annimmt, einer in allen Menschen, oder ist er individuell in jedem verschieden? Die Studie ordnet Baldellis Lehrinhalte in diesen Fragen doxographisch in den lateinischen Aristotelismus ein. Der Band wird durch einen Index nominum erschlossen.
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Einleitung in die Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (1884–1890) together with Zur Literatur der Sprachenkunde Europas (Leipzig, 1887)
Author(s): August Friedrich PottPublication Date January 1974More LessThis volume contains August Friedrich Pott's Einleitung in de Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, which appeared between 1884 and 1890 in F. Techmer's Internationale Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (Leipzig). In addition, the volume contains Pott's Zur Literatur der Sprachenkunde Europas (Leipzig 1887), the obituary by Paul Horn (Göttingen 1888), and a preface to this new edition by E.F.K. Koerner.
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Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues
Author(s): Terry WalkerPublication Date May 2007More LessThis book is a corpus-based study examining thou and you in three speech-related genres from 1560–1760, a crucial period in the history of second person singular pronouns, spanning the time from when you became dominant to when thou became all but obsolete. The study embraces the fields of corpus linguistics, historical pragmatics, and historical sociolinguistics. Using data drawn from the recently released A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 and manuscript material, the aim is to ascertain which extra-linguistic and linguistic factors highlighted by previous research appear particularly relevant in the selection and relative distribution of thou and you. Previous research on thou and you has tended to concentrate on Drama and/or been primarily qualitative in nature. Depositions in particular have hitherto received very little attention. This book is intended to help fill a gap in the literature by presenting an in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of pronoun usage in Trials, Depositions, and, for comparative purposes, Drama Comedy.
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Wh-Movement and the Theory of Feature-Checking
Author(s): Andrew SimpsonPublication Date June 2000More LessWh-movement and the theory of feature-checking argues that cross-linguistic variation in wh-constructions reduces to the availability of different lexical instantiations of a +wh C0 both across languages and within a single language, and the way in which such lexical elements are syntactically identified, either via movement or base-generation. Evidence from a wide range of patterns including wh-expletive questions leads to the conclusion that wh-feature checking may sometimes be effected non-locally and ‘at a distance’ (long-distance wh-agreement), and that movement in general takes place for two related but discrete reasons: both to identify and activate an underspecified licensing head and in order for an element to occur in the checking domain projected by its relevant licensing head. Developing and generalizing the proposals beyond wh-phenomena, the study also goes on to argue for a Minimalist model of syntax in which feature-dependencies are in fact all licensed in the overt syntax and where there is no need for any further level of LF.
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Wh-Scope Marking
Editor(s): Uli Lutz, Gereon Müller and Arnim von StechowPublication Date September 2000More LessThis volume is the first comprehensive overview of the syntax and semantics of wh-scope marking. Wh-scope marking constructions have recently received a lot of attention; their very existence and their intricate properties have important consequences for syntax, semantics, and the syntax–semantics interface (e.g., with respect to the wh-criterion, the wh-movement parameter, feature checking, the theory of locality, the interpretation of wh-phrases and why-chains, and the nature of LF). The fifteen contributions share the basic assumptions of the Chomskyan approach to syntax and the model-theoretic approach to semantics; they address a variety of languages (among them German, Hindi, Hungarian, English, Frisian, Kikuyu, and Malay). A recurrent theme in all articles is whether wh-scope marking should be analyzed in terms of a direct, indirect, or mixed dependency. The wealth of cross-linguistic empirical evidence and the theory-independent relevance of the conclusions should make this book the ultimate source of information on wh-scope marking for years to come.
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You Know
Author(s): Jan-Ola ÖstmanPublication Date January 1981More LessThe basic function the expression you know serves in conversational discourse is said to be that of a pragmatic particle used when the speaker wants the addressee to accept as mutual knowledge (or at least be cooperative with respect to) the propositional content of his utterance. The fact that you know is even used when the addressee is assumed not to know what the speaker is talking about, suggests that it functions at the deference level of politeness, as a striving towards attaining a camaraderie relationship between speaker and hearer. You know is found to be more often used by women than by men in spontaneous conversation, and the manner in which it is used is significantly different from male usage. Ontogenetically, the age of four seems to be crucial for initial steps to use and master pragmatic particles including you know. Data for the study were derived from tape-recorded conversations and interviews.
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A History of the English Language
Author(s): Elly van GelderenPublication Date August 2006More LessThis edition has been replaced by a new edition and is no longer available for purchase.
This exceptionally clear text focuses on internal changes in the English language. It outlines the history of English from pre-Old English times to the present. Not only does it present the traditional morphological descriptions of the various stages of the language, it provides many example sentences, texts, and cartoons that are analyzed for the benefit of the student and which make this book ideal for class use. Some language-external topics are covered such as early printing and authorship debates. Tables and figures complement the material covered and exercises review the main points as well as ask further, more challenging, questions. Answers to the exercises are provided, as is a time line listing some of the external events, and some guidance on how to use the OED. Complementary web site information is provided throughout the book, and a companion web site accompanies the book.
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A0 – The Lexical Status of Adjectives
Editor(s): Phoevos Panagiotidis and Moreno MitrovićPublication Date November 2022More LessThis volume brings together seven eminently original attempts to answer a sorely neglected question: What are adjectives? Although the positioning of adjectives as well as aspects of their semantics have been investigated in depth, their actual status as a lexical category has generally been treated superficially in the linguistic literature.
In this volume, the different approaches to the categorial identity of adjectives put forward include their position in the inventory of lexical categories, the elusive noun-adjective link, the functional entourage of adjectives and their relational character, the role of concord and possession – and so on. The contributors bring different viewpoints as well as a variety of language data into the discussion, from Chinese to Indo-European, and on to Niger-Congo languages.
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Abduction, Belief and Context in Dialogue
Editor(s): Harry Bunt and William BlackPublication Date November 2000More LessLanguage is always generated and interpreted in a certain context, and the semantic, syntactic, and lexical properties of linguistic expressions reflect this. Interactive language understanding systems, such as language-based dialogue systems, therefore have to apply contextual information to interpret their inputs and to generate appropriate outputs, but are in practice very poor at this. This book contains a number of studies in Computational Pragmatics, the newly emerging field of study of how contextual information can be effectively brought to bear in language understanding and generation. The various chapters center around the conceptual, formal and computational modeling of context in general, of the relevant beliefs of dialogue participants in particular, and of the reasoning that may be applied to relate linguistic phenomena to aspects of the dialogue context.
These issues are discussed both from a theoretical point of view and in relation to their roles in prototypical language understanding systems.
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Abhandlung über die bedeutsamen Verhaltensweisen der Sprache. [Tractatus de Modis significandi.]
Author(s): Thomas von Erfurt and Stephan GrotzPublication Date December 1998More LessDer lange dem Duns Scotus zugeschriebene Traktat des Thomas von Erfurt wird hier erstmals in einer deutschen Übersetzung vorgestellt. Er gilt als der abschließende Höhepunkt der spekulativen Grammatik, einer der gewichtigsten Ausformungen der spätmittelalterlichen Sprachtheorie. Von Bedeutung dürfte dieser Text aber nicht nur für Mediävisten sein. Daî der Traktat auch in neueren sprachtheoretischen Ansätzen eine zentrale Rolle spielt, zeigt seine Wiederentdeckung durch Charles S. Peirce, Martin Heidegger oder den Strukturalisten Roman Jakobson. Übersetzung und Einleitung verstehen sich deshalb nicht nur als eine Verständnishilfe für den Traktat, sondern auch als ein Hinweis auf seinen historischen wie systematischen Grundlagencharakter.
Grundlagencharakter hat hier vor allem Thomas’ Theorie von einer grammatischen Bedeutsamkeit der Sprache. Danach finden sich in allen Sprachen dieselben grammatischen Formen und Funktionen und können insofern universal als die bedeutsamen Verhaltensweisen »der« Sprache (modi significandi) beschrieben werden. Freilich ist dies die Sicht eines mittelalterlichen Universalismus, der einem heutigen Sprachverständnis kaum mehr Stand hält. Von daher liegt die wirkliche Herausforderung des Traktats, die nicht nur bei den Zeitgenossen für heftige Abwehrreaktionen sorgte, sondern die auch heute nichts von ihrer Provokanz eingebüßt hat, in seiner Einsicht, daß die grammatischen Formen eine prinzipiell andere Bedeutungsstruktur besitzen als das lexikalische Inventar einer Sprache. Mit der Herausarbeitung einer solchen grammatischen Signifikationsstruktur bietet der Traktat einen äußerst lehrreichen Einblick in die Genese dessen, was mittlerweile unter dem Schlagwort der »Semantik von Formen« eine facttenreiche Wirkung entfaltet hat.
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Above and Beyond the Segments
Editor(s): Johanneke Caspers, Yiya Chen, Willemijn Heeren, Jos Pacilly, Niels O. Schiller and Ellen van ZantenPublication Date December 2014More LessAbove and Beyond the Segments presents a unique collection of experimental linguistic and phonetic research. Mainly, it deals with the experimental approach to prosodic, and more specifically melodic, aspects of speech. But it also treats segmental phonetics and phonology, second language learning, semantics and related topics.
Apart from European languages and dialects (including Dutch, English, Greek, Danish, and dialects from Italy and The Netherlands) there also are chapters on regions as widespread as China, Russia, South Africa, South Sudan, and Surinam. These all testify the enormous diversity of language and speech in the world.
This book is of special interest to linguists working on prosodic aspects of speech in general and to those studying non-Western languages in particular.
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The Abstraction Engine
Author(s): Michael FortescuePublication Date April 2017More LessThe main thesis of this book is that abstraction, far from being confined to higher forms of cognition, language and logical reasoning, has actually been a major driving force throughout the evolution of creatures with brains. It is manifest in emotive as well as rational thought. Wending its way through the various facets of abstraction, the book attempts to clarify – and relate – the often confusing meanings of the word ‘abstract’ that one may encounter even within the same discipline. The unusual synoptic approach, which draws upon research in psychology, neural network theory, child language acquisition, philosophy and consciousness studies, as well as a variety of linguistic disciplines, cannot be compared directly to other books on the market that touch upon just one particular aspect of abstraction. It is aimed at a wide readership – anyone interested in the nature of abstraction and the cognitive processing and purpose behind it. (series A)
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Academic and Professional Discourse Genres in Spanish
Editor(s): Giovanni ParodiPublication Date May 2010More LessThis volume offers a description and a deep examination of discourse genres across four disciplines (Psychology, Social Work, Industrial Chemistry, and Construction Engineering), in academic and professional settings. The study is based on one of the largest available corpus on disciplinary written discourse in Spanish (PUCV-2006 Corpus of Spanish containing almost 60 million words). Twelve chapters range from the theoretical guiding principles of the research in terms of genre conception, the detailed description of each corpus (academic and professional), computational analysis from multi-dimensional perspectives, and the qualitative analysis of two specialized genres (University Textbook and Disciplinary Text) in terms of their rhetorical macro-moves and moves. Theoretically speaking, a multi-dimensional perspective (social, linguistic and cognitive) is emphasized and special attention to the cognitive nature of discourse genres is supported.
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The Academic Discourse of Mechanical Engineering
Author(s): Thi Ngoc Phuong Le, Minh Man Pham and Michael BarlowPublication Date March 2023More LessThis volume examines rhetorical conventions employed in mechanical engineering research to understand the knowledge-making principles of the discipline, as well as their expression within the research article. In particular, the study analyses the organisational patterns of mechanical engineering research articles using Swales’s conceptualisation of moves and steps. In addition, the research identifies the phraseology associated with specific moves and steps. The study draws on a corpus of 120 mechanical engineering research articles, equally distributed across two sub-disciplines (mechanical systems and thermal-fluids engineering), three research traditions (experimental, theoretical and mixed methods), and two publication periods (2002–2006 and 2012–2016). It adopts an integrated methodology, intertwining various approaches and perspectives including corpus linguistics, move analysis, discourse analysis and interviews to address two main strands of research enquiry: (i) What are the properties of the rhetorical structures in terms of range, frequency, and length for each section of mechanical engineering research articles? (ii) What effect does sub-discipline, research tradition and publication date have on the rhetorical structure of research articles?
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Academic Voices
Author(s): Kjersti Fløttum, Trine Dahl and Torodd KinnPublication Date August 2006More LessThis book explores how the voices of authors and other researchers are manifested in academic discourse, and how the author handles the polyphonic interaction between these various parties. It represents a unique study of academic discourse in that it takes a doubly contrastive approach, focusing on the two factors of discipline and language at the same time. It is based on a large electronic corpus of 450 research articles from three disciplines (economics, linguistics and medicine) in three languages (English, French and Norwegian). The book investigates whether disciplines and languages may be said to represent different cultures with regard to person manifestation in the texts. What is being studied is thus cultural identities as tendencies in linguistic practices. For the majority of the features focused on (e.g. metatext and bibliographical references), the discipline factor turns out to contribute more strongly to the variation observed than the language factor. However, for some of the features (e.g. pronouns and negation), the language factor is also quite strong.
Additional background information on the investigations reported in this book can be found at www.uib.no/kiap/.
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Academic Writing
Editor(s): Eija Ventola and Anna MauranenPublication Date March 1996More LessWriting is crucial to the academic world. It is the main mode of communication among scientists and scholars and also a means for students for obtaining their degrees. The papers in this volume highlight the intercultural, generic and textual complexities of academic writing. Comparisons are made between various traditions of academic writing in different cultures and contexts and the studies combine linguistic analyses with analyses of the social settings in which academic writing takes place and is acquired. The common denominator for the papers is writing in English and attention is given to native-English writers’ and non-native writers’ problems in different disciplines. The articles in the book introduce a variety of methodological approaches for analyses and search for better teaching methods and ways of improving the syllabi of writing curricula. The book as a whole illustrates how linguists strive for new research methods and practical applications in applied linguistics.
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Accessibility and Acceptability in Technical Manuals
Author(s): Inger LassenPublication Date May 2003More LessAccessibility and Acceptability in Technical Manuals is written for an audience with a general interest in readability studies, linguistics and technical writing. With the main emphasis on technical manuals the book is primarily targeted at those who have a special interest in the design and use of utility texts and how these texts are received and understood by a multifaceted audience. Accessibility is not a new research area and many explanations have been offered over the past years as to why non-experts often have difficulties in comprehending texts written by technological experts. This book offers a new approach to accessibility studies by exploring not only style, but also attitudes to style, by asking text consumers which style they prefer for different parts of the manual. A key role is played by the Systemic Functional Linguistics' notion of grammatical metaphor, a stylistic choice that is commonly used in technical literature. Grammatical metaphor — although apparently obstructing the comprehension process of some readers — is a common element in the preferred style that separates the ‘insiders’ from the ‘outsiders’. An explanation of this rather surprising result is offered by resorting to Critical Discourse Analysis.
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The Aconceptual Mind
Author(s): Pauli PylkköPublication Date July 1998More LessAccording to Heidegger, naturalistic thinking is naive and unable to deal with its own essence and limitations. It can only serve the veiled interests of modern Western technology in its inherent inclination to attain global dominance. But these eight thematically intertwined essays face Heidegger’s critique of naturalistic thinking habits. The author develops a holistic and antirealistic version of naturalism. This ‘holistic naturalism’ does not approach nature as a set of entities or things which can be used for technological purposes. Instead, nature is approached as human experience which originally lacks conceptual structure and which can therefore not be fully controlled by a rational subject. (Series A)
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