Books

The question of what constitutes effective health communication has been addressed mainly by scholars working in American and European cultural contexts. Many people who could benefit most from effective health communication, however, come from different cultures. A prime example is the threat posed by HIV/AIDS to the people of South Africa. Although it is generally acknowledged that health communication needs to be tailored to the target audience’s characteristics with cultural background being one of the most salient ones, little research has been done on how to achieve this. In this book, we bring together leading scholars in the field of health communication as well as communication scholars from South Africa. As such, it can serve as an example of the promises and the limitations of general health communication theories to local praxis as well as provide guidelines for the development of better health communication in South Africa.

This monograph sets out (i) to establish criteria for differentiating adjectives from other word-classes for languages in which they form a distinct category, and (ii) to establish criteria for determining their (non-)identity with words from other categories for languages in which they do not. As languages show various gradations in the extent to which adjectives can be distinguished from other word-classes, the author discusses idealized language types, thereby providing a model for the analysis of natural languages. The book argues that adjectives do not uniformly show all differentiating characteristics and that these characteristics are semantically relevant and functionally motivated: for instance, when word-classes are used in functions not their own, they manifest characteristics of the categories to which the relevant functions belong. The second part of the book discusses three distinct idealized languages types without a distinct adjectival category in which “property words” remain undifferentiated from (i) nouns, (ii) verbs, and (iii) nouns as well as verbs. These three types are shwon to represent gradations of distinctions between word-classes as they occur in natural languages and to manifest various degrees of the corresponding functional neutralizations. In the final chapter the wider theoretical implications of this work for the study of categories are discussed.

This is the first empirical study to focus on adjectives complemented by that-clauses. The in-depth analysis of more than 50,000 cases taken from the British National Corpus gives comprehensive insights into hitherto neglected relations of lexis and grammar. The result of this corpus-driven study is a novel classification of adjectives based on co-occurrence patterns and corroborated with the help of statistical means. The inductive analysis of corpus data offers new perspectives on and innovative descriptions of well-known phenomena of English grammar, such as extraposition or the resultative construction so…that. It is based on a new methodological approach, which looks at mutual relations of both lexis and grammar in unprecedented ways.

Although the Germanic and Romance languages are two branches of the same language family and although both have developed the adjective as a separate syntactic and morphological category, the syntax, morphology, and interpretation of adjectives is by no means the same in these two language groups, and there is even variation within each of the language groups. One of the main aims of this volume is to map the differences and similarities in syntactic behavior, morphology, and meaning of the Germanic and Romance adjective and to find an answer to the following question: Are the (dis)similarities the result of autonomous developments in each of the two branches of the Indo-European language family, or are they caused by language contact?

Adolf Glassbrenner (1810–1876) was a German humorist and satirist. The aim of this study is to show that Glassbrenner’s writings were rooted within the abstract idealism of the Young Germans. Special focus lies on the period between 1840 and 1849, Glassbrenner’s most active writing period, and representing most closely the elements of Humor and Tendenz. This study is of interest to everyone who wants to know more about the ideas behind the writings of Adolf Glassbrenner, but also to those who want to make a first acquaintance with this famous German writer.

This book analyzes the construct of advanced proficiency in second language learning by bringing together empirical research from numerous linguistic domains and methodological traditions. Focusing on the dynamic nature of language use, the volume explores diverse manifestations of high-level second language Spanish, including performance on standardized proficiency assessments, acquisition of late-acquired linguistic structures, sophisticated language use in context, and individual differences. Chapters relate empirical findings to current definitions of advancedness, challenging scholars and practitioners to re-consider existing conceptualizations, and propose possible directions for future research and teaching with second language speakers of Spanish. By addressing larger issues in the field of second language learning, the volume is a valuable reference for language teachers, scholars, professionals and students with an interest in second language acquisition generally, and second language Spanish, more specifically.

The present volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 21st and 22nd Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop held at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Stuttgart. The contributions provide insightful discussions of several topics of current interest for syntactic theory on the basis of comparative data from a wide range of contemporary and historical Germanic languages. The theoretical issues explored include: the left periphery, with a number of contributions touching on the pros and contras of cartographic accounts; different aspects of word order and how it arises from movement and clause structure; the interplay of thematic relations and case theory with the realization of DPs; and the treatment of finiteness and modal structures. This book is of interest to syntacticians working in a comparative perspective and to advanced undergraduates.

Contrastive studies have experienced a dramatic revival in the last decades. By combining the methodological advantages of computer corpus linguistics and the possibility of contrasting texts in two or more languages, the structure and use of languages can be explored with greater accuracy, detail and empirical strength than before. The approach has also proved to have fruitful practical applications in a number of areas such as language teaching, lexicography, translation studies and computer-aided translation. This volume contains twelve studies comparing linguistic phenomena in English and seven other languages. The topics range from comparisons of specific lexical categories and word combinations to syntactic constructions and discourse phenomena such as cohesion and thematic structure. The studies highlight similarities and differences in the use, semantics and functions of the compared items, as well as the emergence of new meanings and language change. The emphasis varies from purely linguistic studies to those focusing on practical applications.

This volume presents some of the latest research in Frame Semantics, including work in computational lexicography as developed within the FrameNet project. Using varied material from English, Italian, and Japanese, the contributions collectively expand the theoretical, conceptual, and computational apparatus of Frame semantics, by studying a range of issues concerning not only lexical structure, associated with cognitive frames, but also the less studied interactional frames and their relationship to grammatical organization. While addressing a number of linguistic phenomena, such as verbs of visual perception, metaphoric language, subordinating connectives, paraphrasing, honorifics, certain pragmatic particles, basic speech acts, and the semantic structuring of legal texts, the analyses also highlight the broader question of integrating frames within rich lexical and grammatical descriptions, whether in the context of lexicon-building resources, models for knowledge representation, experimental modeling of language acquisition and processing, conceptual metaphor theory, paraphrase research, or the communicative grounding of linguistic structure.

Originally published in Constructions and Frames Vol. 3:1 (2011) and Vol. 2:2 (2010).

This collection of original research focuses on various lesser studied aspects of Greek syntax. The articles combine a sound empirical coverage within current developments of generative theory and cover a wide spectrum of areas. The syntax of sentential structure is dealt with by two articles, one is an extensive analysis of the distribution of goal and beneficiary dative DPs in Greek (and cross-linguistically) and the other addresses the relation agree in small clauses (and between adjectives and nouns). Two articles study the acquisition of the left periphery and of eventivity and one focuses on the historical evolution of participles in Greek, out of which gerunds emerged. The syntax and semantics of wh-clauses in DP positions and of the non-volitional verb θelo are the focus of two articles situated in the syntax–semantics interface. The DP domain is approached by two theoretical articles, one on a Greek possessive adjective and another on determiner heads. The final contribution studies the acquisition of the Greek definite article.

With the growing emphasis on scholarship in interpreting, this collection tackles issues critical to the inquiry process — from theoretical orientations in Interpreting Studies to practical considerations for conducting a research study. As a landmark volume, it charts new territory by addressing a range of topics germane to spoken and signed language interpreting research. Both provocative and pragmatic, this volume captures the thinking of an international slate of interpreting scholars including Daniel Gile, Franz Pöchhacker, Debra Russell, Barbara Moser-Mercer, Melanie Metzger, Cynthia Roy, Minhua Liu, Jemina Napier, Lorraine Leeson, Jens Hessmann, Graham Turner, Eeva Salmi, Svenja Wurm, Rico Peterson, Robert Adam, Christopher Stone, Laurie Swabey and Brenda Nicodemus. Experienced academics will find ideas to stimulate their passion and commitment for research, while students will gain valuable insights within its pages. This new volume is essential reading for anyone involved in interpreting research.

This volume offers insight into different aspects of an interesting but fairly understudied language family, opens a path to new inquiries, and provides valuable contribution to linguistics, in general, and to Iranian linguistics, in particular. The articles in this volume offer novel analyses of significant properties of some of the Iranian languages, and contribute to various linguistic subareas such as experimental and historical linguistics as well as the morphology, syntax and semantics of several members of this language family. Specifically, this volume features a few articles on the Ezafe construction which shed new light on this interesting phenomenon of Western Iranian languages from historical, comparative and syntactic points of view. Moreover, a few articles address the syntax and formal semantics of properties of Persian, offering new insight into particular constructions in this language which are also fruitful for the general theory of linguistics. Crucially, all authors raise important questions, opening up the path for further investigations.

Especially in functional-typological linguistics, semantic roles have been studied thoroughly, because they constitute a good starting point for any study on argument marking due to their semantically defined nature. However, the very concept of semantic roles is far from being without problems, and there is still no consensus on how the roles are best defined. In this volume, the notion will be discussed from novel perspectives with the aim of providing new insights into our understanding of semantic roles. Two of the papers deal with semantic role clusters, one with semantic roles in verbless constructions, one with diachrony of semantic roles and two with individual semantic roles that have not been studied in too much detail in previous studies. The book may not offer answers to all questions the readers may have, but at least it raises interesting further questions relevant to arriving at a better understanding of semantic roles.

Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 38:3 (2014).

The aim of the book is to collect and make available to the public recent studies on Roumanian in the framework of Generative Grammar. All the studies can be considered as highly advanced from both the empirical and the theoretical point of view. In fact, they deal with many of the phenomena that differentiate this language from other well-studied ones, adopting and further improving recent developments in linguistic theory. In this respect the book contributes both to Roumanian studies and to theoretical linguistics. These studies cover major areas of general syntactic investigation: the syntax of nominal expressions (Giusti on determiners, Grosu on free relative clauses), clausal structure (Motapanyane), clitic placement (Dobrovie-Sorin), and morpho-semantics (Farkaş and Zec). In so doing, they address the problems of the definition and refinement of the theory of functional projections, contributing new ideas and evidence for their formulation.

Sociophonetics is a privileged domain for the investigation of language variation and change. By combining theoretical reflections and sophisticated techniques of analysis – both phonetic and statistical – it is possible to extrapolate the role of individual factors (socio-cultural, physiological, communicative-interactional, etc.) in the multidimensional space of speech variation.

This book investigates the fundamental relationship between speech variation and the social background of speakers from articulatory, acoustic, dialectological, and conversational perspectives, thus breaking new ground with respect to classical variationist and dialectological studies. Specialists from a broad range of disciplines – including phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive linguistics – will find innovative suggestions for multiple approaches to language variation. Although presuming some basic knowledge of experimental phonetics and sociolinguistics, the book is addressed to all readers with an interest in speech and language variation mechanisms in social interaction.

Any behavior that arouses, as swearing does, controversy, disagreement, disdain, shock, and indignation as often as it imbues passion, sincerity, intimacy, solidarity, and jocularity should be an obvious target of in-depth scholarship. Rigorous, scholarly investigation of the practice of swearing acknowledges its social and cultural significance, and allows us to discover and better understand the historical, psychological, sociological, and linguistic aspects (among others) of swearwords and swearword usage. The present volume brings together a range of themes and issues central to the existing knowledge of swearing and considers these in two key ‘new’ arenas, that is, in languages other than English, and/or in contexts and media other than spoken interaction. Many of the chapters analysed are based on large and robust collections of data, such as corpora or questionnaire responses, which allow for patterns of swearing to emerge. In other chapters, personally observed instances of swearing comprise the focus, allowing for a close analysis of the relationship between sociolinguistic context and pragmatic function. In each chapter, the cultural aspects of swearing are considered, ultimately affirming the importance of the study of swearing, and further establishing the legitimacy of swearing as a target of research.

This monograph provides an in-depth investigation of the structural integration and the licensing of adverbs in relation to clause structure, with special emphasis on the structural implementation of the relation between the position and interpretation of adverbs. The book substantiates the hypothesis that the licensing of adverbs within and across the three layers of the clause is contingent on specifier-head agreement and that variation in the linear order of adverbs and other elements of the clause follows from the interplay of a small number of factors. The central claims made are: functional projections hosting adverbs are not confined to the inflectional and complementizer layer of the clause, but also play a central role in the shaping of the lexical layer; postverbal adverbs are realized within a semantically empty verbal projection and licensed under specifier head agreement by proxy; and adverbs that occur within the complementizer layer of the clause do so by either move or merge.

Adverbials have become an important testing ground for research on the interfaces between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The articles selected for this volume present recent research on this topic. Among the issues addressed are the occurrence of adverbials in various domains of the sentence Mittelfeld, left and right periphery, adverbials in front of gaps, and the influence of the discourse context on the interpretation and position of adverbials. Particular classes of adverbials that are discussed include domain, locative, temporal, manner, transparent, and degree adverbials. Beyond the exploration of these topics, the volume reflects the current debate between proponents of semantic-driven approaches to the positioning of adverbials which assume adverbials to be adjuncts and approaches that claim a primacy of syntax in conceiving of adverbials as specifiers in a universally valid hierarchy of functional projections.

Adverbs as a word class are notoriously difficult to define. The volume deals with the delimitation of this category, its internal structure, the morphological make-up of adverbs and their positions in syntactic structures. A closer look at diachronic developments sheds light on the characteristics of adverbial word-formation. Taking into account adverbs in German, English, Dutch, French and Italian, the contributions to this volume provide new insights into the characteristics of this heterogeneous and multi-faceted category and will be of interest to linguists working in the fields of morphology, syntax and language change.

Adverbs of degree form an intriguing part of the lexicon: numerous, multiform and everchanging. They also show a great variety in distribution. In this study, the characteristics of adverbs of degree are investigated from a semantic point of view. The main focus is on Dutch, but previous studies about English and German adverbs of degree are used to compare with and to build on.

The book starts with an introduction on grading and gradability, and a classification of the adverbs according to the degree they express. Next, the different lexical sources from which the adverbs emerge and the process of grammaticalization are discussed. The main part of the book is devoted to semantic restrictions on the use of adverbs of degree, on the one hand restrictions concerning the modified elements, on the other hand those concerning the environment. Topics include absoluteness versus gradability, positive versus negative evaluation, the strengthening of negation, polarity sensitivity, the logical properties of the adverbs themselves, and restrictions to reduplication and stacking.

Besides the main text, three case studies are presented in which the pecularities of some of the adverbs are investigated in depth, to show more in detail to complexities of their distribution. The appendix gives an overview of Dutch adverbs of degree.

Advice Online presents a comprehensive study of advice-giving in one particular American Internet advice column, referred to as ‘Lucy Answers’. The discursive practice investigated is part of a professional and educational health program managed by an American university. The study provides insights into the linguistic realization of both asking for and giving advice in a written form and thus adds to the literature on advice columns as a specific text genre, on advice in health care contexts, and on Internet communication. The book offers a comprehensive literature review of advice in health encounters and other contexts, and uses this knowledge as a basis for comparison. Advice Online demonstrates how qualitative and quantitative research methods can be successfully combined to arrive at a comprehensive analysis of a discursive practice. It provides essential information on advice-giving for researchers, academics and students in the fields of (Internet) communication, media studies, pragmatics, social psychology and counseling. Health educators who work for advice columns or use similar forms of communication will also benefit from the insights gained in this study.

How do participants display affectivity in social interaction? Based on recordings of authentic everyday conversations and radio phone-ins, this study offers a fine-grained analysis of how recipients of affect-laden informings deploy sound objects, i.e. interjections (oh, ooh and ah) and paralinguistic signals (whistle and clicks), for responsive displays of affectivity. Examining the use of such sound objects across a number of interactional activities including news telling, troubles talk, complaining, assessments and repair, the study provides evidence that the sound pattern and sequential placement of sound objects systematically contribute to their specific meaning-making in interaction, i.e. the management of sequence organisation and interactional relevancies (e.g. affiliation). Presenting an in-depth analysis of a little researched area of language use from an interactional linguistic perspective, the book will be of theoretical and methodological interest to an audience with a background in linguistics, sociology and conversational studies.

The present work not only contributes to shedding light on the linguistic and socio-historical origins of Afro-Peruvian Spanish, it also helps clarify the controversial puzzle concerning the genesis of Spanish creoles in the Americas in a broader sense. In order to provide a more concrete answer to the questions raised by McWhorter’s book on The Missing Spanish Creoles, the current study has focused on an aspect of the European colonial enterprise in the Americas that has never been closely analyzed in relation to the evolution of Afro-European contact varieties, the legal regulations of black slavery. This book proposes the 'Legal Hypothesis of Creole Genesis', which ascribes a prime importance in the development of Afro-European languages in the Americas to the historical evolution of slavery, from the legal rules contained in the Roman Corpus Juris Civilis to the codes and regulations implemented in the different European colonies overseas. This research was carried out with the belief that creole studies will benefit greatly from a more interdisciplinary approach, capable of combining linguistic, socio-historical, legal, and anthropological insights. This study is meant to represent an eclectic step in such a direction.

This selection of the verse of Valencian poet Vicent Andres Estelles (1924-1993) is accompanied by a translation into English from the original Catalan. The format of an innovative dialogue with classical authors — a cornerstone of Estellesian expression — constitutes an ingenious invocation and parodic commentary on the output and ethos of the Latin poets Horace, Ovid, Virgil and Catullus, the medieval patriarch of Valencian letters Ausiàs March and the Renaissance Castilian poet, Garcilaso de la Vega. For Estellés, Octavian Rome provides a parallel to the Franco dictatorship and the historical framework surrounding these writers affords the neophyte an opportunity for ideological denunciation, creative wit and lyrical grace as well as righteous anger at the oppressive pettiness of life under autocracy. The translators have attempted to bring to an Anglophone readership the wealth of achievement of this writer who, despite the severity of fascist repression, sang and celebrated the experience of his own community through its own oppressed language.