Books

This 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.

Der 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.

The 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)

This 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?

Writing 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.

Accessibility 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.

The study of how linguistic variation is acquired is considered a nascent field in both psycho- and sociolinguistics. Within that research context, this book aims at two objectives. First, it wants to help bridging the gap between researchers working on acquisition from different theoretical backgrounds. The book therefore includes contributions by both psycho- and sociolinguists, and by representatives of further relevant sub-disciplines of linguistics, including historical linguistics and dialectology. Second, in order to enable cross-linguistic comparison, the book brings together research carried out in different sociolinguistic constellations, as most obviously found in different language areas or different countries.

Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics provides readers with a much-needed insight into the development of pragmatic competence, an area of research long neglected in interlanguage pragmatics. The longitudinal investigation which provides the basic material for this book consists of a corpus of requests, offers and refusals of offers elicited from Irish learners of German over a ten-month study abroad period using production questionnaires and a variety of metapragmatic instruments. The analysis focuses on developments in these learners’ knowledge of discourse structure, pragmatic routines and internal modification. Findings present valuable information pertaining to the process of acquisition of pragmatic competence. They also point to the favourable but imperfect nature of the study abroad context for the development of pragmatic competence. A comprehensive discussion of theoretical and methodological issues, an in-depth analysis and an extensive bibliography make this book of interest to both researchers and students in interlanguage pragmatics, cross-cultural pragmatics, German as a foreign language and study abroad research.

This book offers the first systematic study of the early phases in the acquisition of derivational morphology from a cross-linguistic and typological perspective.

It presents ten empirical longitudinal studies in genealogically and typologically diverse languages (Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Altaic) with different degrees of derivational complexity. Data collection, analysis and systematic comparison between child speech and parental child-directed speech are strictly parallel across the chapters. In order to identify the productivity of a derivational pattern, signalling the crucial developmental stage in its acquisition, the concept of the mini-paradigm criterion was applied.

Similar developmental processes can be observed in all children, independent of the language they acquire, but the children’s courses of development also show obvious typological differences. This points towards an important impact of the structural properties of the specific language on emergence, use and the early course of development of derivational patterns.

This cross-linguistic volume innovates research of the acquisition of diminutives in the inflecting-fusional languages Lithuanian, Russian, Croatian, Greek, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch, the agglutinating languages Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish and in the introflecting Hebrew. These languages differ in various aspects relevant for the acquisition of diminutives and the development of pragmatics in early child language. Diminutive formation often tends to be the first pattern of word formation to emerge. The main reason for this seems to lie in the pragmatic functions of endearment, empathy, and sympathy, which make diminutives particularly appropriate for child-centred communication. A main topic of this book is the relation of emergence and early development between diminutives and other categories of word formation and inflection. The greater degree of morphological productivity and transparency, as well as phonological saliency, favors the use of diminutives. In this case diminutives may facilitate the acquisition of inflection.

In the present-day context of cross-linguistic perspectives on language acquisition, The Acquisition of Dutch offers a much needed overview of the wealth of Dutch child language research that was hitherto lacking. Its comprehensive coverage in terms of topics, its many new theoretical contributions and its focus on providing a solid basis for cross-linguistic comparisons will be of interest to linguists and psycholinguists studying child language everywhere. The volume consists of four thematic chapters preceded by an introductory overview. The thematic chapters cover early speech development in the first year of life, the acquisition of phonology, the lexicon and syntax. The consolidated list of references cover most of the work on Dutch child language in the last few decades.

This book presents a thorough description of morphosyntactic knowledge developed by learners of French in four different learning situations — first language (L1) acquisition, second (L2) language acquisition, bilingualism, and acquisition by children with Specific Language Impairment — within the theoretical framework of generative grammar. This approach allows for multiple comparisons across acquisition contexts, which provides the reader with invaluable insights into the nature of the acquisition process. The book is divided into four parts each dealing with a major morphosyntactic domain of acquisition: the verbal domain, the pronominal domain, the nominal domain, and the CP domain. Each part contains four chapters, the first one presenting an overview of the basic facts and analyses of the relevant properties of French, and the next three focusing on the different acquisition contexts. This book will be useful to anyone interested in the acquisition of French and in language development in general. It is also meant to stimulate cross-linguistic research from a theoretical perspective.

This volume is a collection of studies by some of the foremost researchers of French acquisition in the generative framework. It provides a unique perspective on cross-learner comparative research in that each chapter examines the development of one component of the grammar (functional categories) across different contexts in French learners: i.e. first language acquisition, second language acquisition, bilingual first language acquisition and specifically-language impaired acquisition. This permits readers to see how similar issues and morphosyntactic properties can be investigated in a range of various acquisition situations, and in turn, how each context can contribute to our general understanding of how these morphosyntactic properties are acquired in all learners of the same language. This state-of-the-art collection is enhanced by an introductory chapter that provides background on current formal generative theory, as well as a summary and synthesis of the major trends emerging from the individual studies regarding the acquisition of different functional categories across different learner contexts in French.

Most studies on the acquisition of verbal inflection have examined languages with a single verb suffix. This book offers a study on the acquisition of verb inflections in Q’anjob’al Maya. Q’anjob’al has separate inflections for aspect, subject and object agreement, and status suffixes. The subject and object inflections display a split ergative pattern. The subjects of intransitive verbs with aspect markers take absolutive markers, whereas the subjects of aspectless intransitive verbs take ergative markers. The acquisition of three types of clauses is explored in detail (imperatives, indicatives, and aspectless complements). The data come from longitudinal spontaneous speech of three monolingual Q’anjob’al children aged 1;8–3;5. This book contributes unique data to the debate on the acquisition of finite and non-finite verbs as well as adding to our understanding of the acquisition of split ergative patterns. The book is of interest to researchers and students working on linguistics and language acquisition.

This book marks the first-ever collection of papers in English on the acquisition of Japanese as a second language. Its overarching goal is to broaden and deepen the field of SLA research by focusing on Japanese rather than on more commonly studied European languages. Broad in scope and eclectic in approach with chapters by leading scholars in the field, The Acquisition of Japanese as a Second Language offers a survey of the far-ranging field of SLA research as it applies to Japanese. Chapters include studies on input and interaction, research into the evaluation of L2 proficiency, and investigations of the grammatical system that is the product of second language learning.

This work is based on an investigation of language acquisition process, particularly in regard to syntax, among Mauritian children learning to speak Mauritian Creole as their first language. As such, it is the first major study of the development of child grammar in a Creole context. Mauritian Creole, in common with many Creole languages, emerged under extreme conditions and, as an isolating language, Mauritian Creole is typologically different from languages where syntax is predominantly tied to morphology. There is thus an opportunity to broaden perspectives on language acquisition since until now most work has focused on languages such as English, French, German, Italian. The analysis proceeds within the GB framework of generative grammar, and discussion emanates from psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and theoretical linguistic viewpoints. The data also provide a means for evaluating Bickerton's theory, especially his conclusion that the acquisition of radical Creoles takes place with fewer errors than is the case for other languages, given that Creole languages are in harmony with the 'Bioprogram'.

This book describes the repertoire and uses of referring expressions by French-speaking children and their interlocutors in naturally occurring dialogues at home and at school, in a wide range of communicative situations and activities. Through the lens of an interactionist and dialogical perspective, it highlights the interaction between the formal aspects of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes, the discourse-pragmatic dimension, and socio-discursive, interactional and dialogical factors. Drawing on this multidimensional theoretical and methodological framework, the first part of the book deals with the relation between reference and grammar, while the second part is devoted to the role of the communicative experience. Progressively, a set of arguments is brought out in favor of a dialogical and interactionist account of children’s referential development. This theoretical stance is further discussed in relation to other approaches of reference acquisition. Thus, this volume provides researchers and students with new perspectives and methods for the study of referring expressions in children.

This is the first book on the acquisition of Spanish that provides a state-of-the-art comprehensive overview of Spanish morphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual situations. Its content is organized around key grammatical themes that form the empirical base of research in generative grammar: nominal and verbal inflectional morphology, subject and object pronouns, complex structures involving movement (topicalizations, questions, relative clauses), and aspects of verb meaning that have consequences for syntax. The book argues that Universal Grammar constrains all instances of language acquisition and that there is a fundamental continuity between monolingual, bilingual, child and adult early grammatical systems. While stressing their similarities with respect to linguistic representations and processes, the book also considers important differences between these three acquisition situations with respect to the outcome of acquisition. It is also shown that many linguistic properties of Spanish are acquired earlier than in English and other languages. This book is a must read for those interested in the acquisition of Spanish from different theoretical perspectives as well as those working on the acquisition of other languages in different contexts.

This book is the third to appear in the SIBIL series based on results from the European Science Foundation's Additional Activity on the second language acquisition of adult immigrants. It analyses from a longitudinal and cross-linguistic perspective the acquisition of the linguistic means to express spatial relations in the target languages English, French and German. Learners' progress in the expression of spatial relations is closely followed over a period of 30 months using a wide range of oral data, and the factors determining both the specifics of individual source/target language pairings, and the general characteristics of all cases of acquisition studied, are carefully described. In particular, a basic system for the expression of spatial relations common to all learners from all language backgrounds is identified. The book is of particular significance for the field of second language acquisition in that this is the first time that results are presented in English on the acquisition of L2 means to express the basic cognitive — and communicational — category of space from a comparative linguistic point of view.

This book provides a number of studies of different aspects of Swedish child language. Some of the thematic chapters present original, unpublished data: on the acquisition of tense, on the range and frequency of different word order patterns in early child Swedish, related to the input, meaning the language of adults talking to the children or in the presence of the children. The remaining chapters present overviews of previous research: on the acquisition of word formation rules, the noun phrase, and wh-questions. The introduction to this volume contains a concise overview of the basic features of Swedish grammar and a comprehensive overview of different Swedish child language corpora. The main body of research proceeds within a generative framework, but the text is designed to be accessible to researchers of different theoretical paradigms.

This is the second volume of the SiBil series to present results from the European Science Foundation's project 'Second language acquisition by adult immigrants'. It deals specifically with the acquisition of temporality in five European languages: Dutch, English, French, German and Swedish, providing a detailed account of how adult learners who have little or no exposure to classroom teaching, express temporality at any given stage of the acquisition process, how they proceed from one stage to the next, and what factors determine both their progress and their final levels of proficiency. The guiding hypotheses, methodology, and theoretical framework for analysing temporality from a cross-linguistic perspective are given in Chapters 1 and 2. The detailed longitudinal analyses of Chapters 3-7 form the backbone of the book. Chapter 8 contains the cross-linguistic generalizations, the factors which account for them, and the wider theoretical implications of the study.

This is the first book on the acquisition of the German case system by foreign language learners. It explores how learners in their interlanguage progress from the total absence to the presence of a case system. This development is characterized by an evolvement from marking the argument’s position to marking the argument’s actual function. Theoretically couched within Processability Theory, the book deals with the feature unification and the mapping processes involved in case marking, and critically examines previous findings on German case acquisition. Empirically, the book consists of longitudinal data of 11 foreign language learners of German, which was collected over a period of 2 years. This book will be useful to anyone interested in the acquisition of German and in the acquisition of case systems in general.

The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood presents recent research on the nature of language acquisition by typically and atypically developing monolingual and bilingual Turkish-speaking children. The book summarises the most recent research findings on the acquisition of Turkish in childhood, with a focus on (i) the acquisition of phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, (ii) the acquisition of discourse skills, (iii) literacy development and (iv) atypical vs. typical development. The book also provides the reader with a unique perspective on cross-learner comparative research on the acquisition of Turkish, demonstrating how similar issues can be investigated in a range of various acquisition contexts. By grouping together the recent research on the acquisition of Turkish within a single volume, this book provides a unique opportunity for readers to review the general developmental tendencies and the most prominent hypotheses put forward by scholars.

This volume explores a relational pattern that occurs during one type of speech event — classroom “participant examples.” A participant example describes, as an example of something, an event that includes at least one person also participating in the conversation. Participants with a role in the example have two relevant identities — as a student or teacher in the classroom, and as a character in whatever event is described as the example. This study reports that in some cases speakers not only discuss, but also act out the roles assigned to them in participant examples. That is, speakers do, with each other, what they are talking about as the content of the example. Participants act as if events described as the example provide a script for their interaction. Drawing on linguistic pragmatics and interactional sociolinguistics, the author describes the linguistic mechanisms that speakers use to act out participant examples. He focuses on the role of deictics, and personal pronouns in particular, in establishing and organizing relationships. The volume also presents a new methodological technique — “deictic mapping” — that can be used to uncover interactional organization in all sorts of speech events. Drawing on the philosophy and sociology of education, the volume discusses the social and educational implications of enacted participant examples. Educational theorists generally find participant examples to be cognitively useful, as devices to help students understand pedagogical content. But enacted participant examples have systematic relational consequences as well. The volume presents and discusses enacted participant examples that have clear, and sometimes undesirable, social consequences. It also discusses how we might adjust educational theory and practice, given the relational implications of classroom participant examples.

Supported bilaterally by Sweden and Norway, the Scandinavian Action Research Development Program (ACRES — Action Research in Scandinavia) emphasized conceptualizing research questions and self-conscious writing processes for experienced action researchers. Participants came from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States.

A learning experiment in the tradition of Scandinavian industrial democracy, ACRES had both intellectual and organizational tensions common to action research projects. This book includes theoretical and historical overviews of action research, reflections on the writing process, narratives about the design and difficult internal processes of ACRES, and a selection of the participants’ writings. A particularly unique feature of the book is the discussion of the problematic relationship between action research and conventional modes of research writing and an analysis of the complex social processes collaboratively managed projects create, in combination with a set of participant cases.