Books

Applicatives is concerned with the syntax of constructions that contain arguments that transcend the traditional subject-object characterization, and how the syntax of such constructions yields the interpretive effects that previous research has identified. At the empirical level this volume remedies the inadequacies and limitations of previous accounts by proposing a more nuanced view of all the factors that enter into the syntax and semantics of applicatives. At the theoretical level, this book offers empirical arguments for various theoretical options currently entertained in the minimalist program, among which movement into theta-position, multiple agree, anti-locality, and a very derivational view on successive cyclic movement.

This volume offers a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of applied research efforts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This region has not received due attention in the literature and this publication provides a much-needed contribution to the existing body of knowledge. The editor recruited a number of renowned scholars who either work in the MENA countries or have experience doing research in this region to contribute to this project. The selection of chapters ensured representation of applied linguistics efforts in North Africa, the Levant, and the Gulf. The book looks into language research within social and educational MENA contexts. The final part of the book provides a forward-looking perspective about applied linguistics research and practices in the Middle East and North Africa. The book is primarily written for those interested in applied linguistics, particularly researchers, graduate students, and language professionals in the MNEA region.

In recent years, Cognitive Linguistics (CL) has established itself not only as a solid theoretical approach but also as an important source from which different applications to other fields have emerged. In this volume we identify some of the current, most relevant topics in applied CL-oriented studies – analyses of figurative language (both metaphor and metonymy) in use, constructions and typology –, and present high-quality research papers that illustrate best practices in the research foci identified and their application to different fields including intercultural communication, the psychology of emotions, second and first language acquisition, discourse analysis and translation studies. It is also shown how different methodologies –the use of linguistic corpora, psycholinguistic experiments or discourse analytic procedures– can shed some light on the basic premises of CL as well as providing insights into how CL can be applied in real world contexts. Finally, all the studies included in the volume are based on empirical data and there are some analyses of languages other than English (Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Danish, German and Polish), thus overcoming the contentions that CL-theoretically-based research is often based on linguistic intuition and focused only on the English language.

We hope that the present volume will not only contribute to a better understanding of how CL can be applied but that it will also help to encourage, even further, more robust empirical research in this field.

Originally published as a special issue of Review of Cognitive Linguistics 14:1 (2016).

Diana Boxer’s Applying Sociolinguistics: Domains and Face-to-Face Interaction is an up-to-date overview of discourse studies in oral interaction. Its focus is on encounters in the various spheres of life: family, educational, social, religious, and work, with an additional chapter on cross-cultural face-to-face interaction in these domains. Each chapter reviews current research in that specific domain, with particular attention to methodological issues. For example, in-depth explanations are offered to the reader on how the various approaches to studying face-to-face discourse (e.g. ethnographic, conversational analytic, interactional sociolinguistic) lend themselves to answering different research questions. Each chapter also culminates with an original analysis by the author of face-to-face interaction in that particular domain. Topics include: nagging in family interaction; bragging and boasting in workplace interaction; sarcasm in educational interaction; joking and teasing in social interaction; rite-of-passage discourse in religious interaction; and gatekeeping discourse in cross-cultural interaction.

Designed for students of applied linguistics and second language acquisition on research training courses, practising language teachers, and those in training, this combination textbook/workbook is a set or recommended textbook on more than a hundred undergraduate and postgraduate courses worldwide. Now in its second edition, it remains the only book to provide specific advice and support to those wishing to learn a methodical approach to the critical analysis of a research paper. It seeks to answer a current need in the literature for a set of procedures that can be applied to the independent reading of quantitative research. Innovative features of the workbook include awareness-raising reading tasks and guided exercises to help develop and practise the critical skills required to appraise papers independently. Through informed and constructive appraisal of others’ work, readers themselves are shown how to become more research literate, to discover new areas for investigation, and to organise and present their own work more effectively for publication and peer evaluation. This revised second edition sees a closer integration of the text-and workbook and a number of additions to the text itself, as well as further guided and unguided research appraisal exercises.

Volume 1 of Approaches to Bootstrapping focuses on early word learning and syntactic development with special emphasis on the bootstrapping mechanisms by which the child using properties of the speech input enters the native linguistic system. Topics discussed in the area of lexical acquisition are: cues and mechanisms for isolating words in the input; special features of motherese and their role for early word learning; the determination of first word meanings; memory and related processing capacities in early word learning and understanding; and lexical representation and lexical access in early language production.

The papers on syntactic development deal with the acquisition of grammatical prosodic features for learning language specific syntactic regularities.Volume 2 of Approaches to Bootstrapping focuses on the interaction between the development of prosodic and morphosyntactic knowledge as evidenced in the early speech of Dutch, English, German, Portugese, Spanish, Danish, Islandic, and Swedish children shedding new light on the relation between universal and language specific aspects of language acquisition. Another section of this volume deals with new approaches to language acquisition using ERP- techniques. The papers discuss in detail the relation between the development of language skills and changes in neurophysiological aspects of the brain. The potentials of these techniques for the development of new tools for an early diagnosis of children who are at risque for developmental language disorders are also pointed out.

The closing section contains a synopsis of interactionist approaches to language acquisition, a discussion of the genetic and experiential origin of primitive linguistic elements in acquisition, and a discussion of structural and developmental aspects of bird song in comparison to human language.

The two volumes making up Approaches to Bootstrapping present a state-of-the art interdisciplinary and cross-linguistic overview of recent developments in first language acquisition research.

A collection of innovative essays representing the most recent developments in poetry as discourse, the discourse of power, and discourse of psychiatry and psychosis. The essays in this volume deal with questions of interpretation of poetry, psychoanalysis, and political theory. All are presented here as appropriate objects of discourse studies which go beyond conventional analysis.

The study of grammaticalization raises a number of fundamental theoretical issues pertaining to the relation of langue and parole, creativity and automatic coding, synchrony and diachrony, categoriality and continua, typological characteristics and language-specific forms, etc., and therefore challenges some of the basic tenets of twentieth century linguistics.This two-volume work presents a number of diverse theoretical viewpoints on grammaticalization and gives insights into the genesis, development, and organization of grammatical categories in a number of language world-wide, with particular attention to morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic issues.

The papers in Volume I are divided into two sections, the first concerned with general method, and the second with issues of directionality. Those in Volume II are divided into five sections: verbal structure, argument structure, subordination, modality, and multiple paths of grammaticalization.

This volume contains a selection of papers from the 12th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (Leiden, 2015). The contributions cover a wide range of topics and their significance in generative theorizing.

The papers about morphosyntax focus on the formation of comparative clauses, the behavior of particle verbs, scope taking in deverbal nominal constructions, measure constructions, classifier constructions, the mass/count distinction as well as focus and quantifier scope.

The papers about phonology investigate coexisting patterns of variation in vowel harmony, the representational account of vowel harmony and the nature of heteromorphemic vowel sequences.

While the focus of the volume is on Hungarian, comparison is made with several other languages, such as English, German and Portuguese among others.

The broad range of topics discussed in this volume will appeal both to scholars working on Hungarian and to a general audience of generative linguists.

This volume brings together ten papers presented at the 10th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (Lund, 2011). The papers cover a broad field of issues in Hungarian relating to phonetics, phonology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics, such as vowel harmony, particle verb constructions, impersonal use of personal pronouns, the diachronic development of comparative subclauses, pseudoclefts and wh-interrogatives. While the majority of the papers focus on Hungarian, four articles discuss questions relating to other languages. One article compares clausal coordinate ellipsis in Hungarian, Estonian, Dutch and German, another addresses the question how the information structural notions discourse new, Focus and Given relate to each other. Two articles focus on Finnish, discussing DP-extraction and participal constructions, respectively. The broad range of phenomena covered in this volume makes it relevant not just to scholars working on Hungarian, but to a general audience of generative linguists.

This volume brings together ten papers, all presented at the 8th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (New York City, 2007), addressing a wide range of topics in the morphology, phonetics, phonology, pragmatics, semantics, and syntax of Hungarian, with discussion of related facts in other languages as well. The volume includes an analysis of the morphophonology of the infinitival suffix in Optimality Theory, a plea for a phonetically-grounded theory of phonology based on partial neutralization of the v/f contrast, a Government Phonology account of vowel/zero alternations, a discussion of the recursive nature of speech prosody, a context-structure perspective on the pragmatics of polarity particles, a novel outlook on the prosody, semantics, and syntax of negative quantifiers, a structural approach to the difference between factive and non-factive complements and the distribution of the clausal expletive azt, a pioneering study of the licensing and position of overt nominative subjects of infinitival complement clauses, a lexicalist perspective on the distribution of ablative cause-PPs in anti-causative constructions, and an analysis of the complicated morphosyntax of adpositional preverbs and their doubling in terms of partial chain reduction in a phase-based cyclic mapping of syntax to phonology. The volume will be of interest not just to scholars working on Hungarian, but to a general audience of generative linguists.

This volume brings together a collection of chapters focused on the learning, testing, and researching of L2 vocabulary by leading international researchers including Paul Nation, Batia Laufer, Frank Boers, Elke Peters, Ana Pellicer-Sánchez, Anna Siyanova-Chanturia, and Stuart Webb. Questions that are examined include: Is it useful to read a book to learn vocabulary? Which types of input encountered outside of the classroom contribute most to vocabulary knowledge? What are the most useful words to learn to understand the academic spoken language in mathematics, biology, and engineering lectures? Does writing words contribute to vocabulary learning? What should a test measuring the skill of guessing from context consist of? Should loan words be included in vocabulary tests? How should we evaluate vocabulary learning that occurs through watching captioned video? How has eye-tracking been used in vocabulary research? Together, the chapters in this volume highlight innovation in vocabulary studies and many directions for researching, testing, and learning words. Originally published as special issue of ITL – International Journal of Applied Linguistics 169:1 (2018)

This volume is an enhanced version of the English translation from the French original edition 'Principes d'analyse syntaxique' (Québec, 1973). It provides a survey of theoretical approaches to syntax, including traditional grammars, structuralism, functionalism, and formal approaches.

Most of the essays collected in this volume deal with theoretical issues that dominate the international debate on Postmodernism, issues such as the shifting nature of the concept, the problem of periodization and the problem of historicity. Other essays offer readings of Postmodernist texts and relate practical criticism to a theoretical framework. Hans Bertens (Utrecht) sketches the historical development of the concept Postmodernism in American criticism, distinguishing between the various definitions that have been proposed over the last twenty-five years, in an attempt to bring some order to the field and to facilitate future discussion. Brian McHale (Tel Aviv) and Douwe Fokkema (Utrecht) offer models for the description of Postmodernist texts. Richard Todd (Amsterdam) argues convincingly that Postmodernism is much more of a presence in contemporary British fiction than has so far been assumed, and Herta Schmid (Munich) presents a similar argument with respect to Russian avant-garde theater. Elrud Ibsch (Amsterdam) presents a contrastive analysis of Thomas Bernhard and Robert Musil; Ulla Musarra (Nijmegen) writes on Italo Calvino. The relation between Existentialism and Postmodernism is examined by Gerhard Hoffman (Würzburg); Theo D'haen (Utrecht) finds important parallels between Postmodernism in literature and in the visual arts; Matei Calinescu (Bloomington, Ind.) relates literary Postmodernism to a far more general cultural shift, rejecting, however, Foucault's notion of an epistemic break and arguing for both continuity and discontinuity. Finally, Helmut Lethen (Utrecht) and Susan Suleiman (Harvard) sharply question the concept of Postmodernism. Suleiman argues that the supposed Postmodernist reaction against Modernism may well be a critical myth or, if it isn't, a reaction limited to the American literary situation.

The different contributions included in this volume deal with aspects of biographical writing and other similar genres (semblances, portraits, etc.). These articles analyze theoretical and generic questions as well as some of the most relevant examples of the genre – with a focus on those written in Catalan. In addition, some of the articles focus on the relationship between biography and national images (nation-building) from a sociocultural standpoint.

The Research Group on Contemporary Literature from the Universitat d’Alacant has gathered contributions from several specialists in numerous fields and has selected a group of relevant works for analysis. In addition to studies on authors such as André Maurois and Lytton Strachey, contributions deal with figures such as Josep Pla, Domènec Guansé, Josep Maria Espinàs and Agustí Pons. Finally, some contributions pay attention to the biographical genre in the audiovisual arts.

The volume contains contributions in Spanish, English, and Catalan.

This volume brings together seven empirical studies about aptitude-treatment interactions (ATI), i.e., about how (second language) learners with different aptitudes match or don’t match with different educational treatments; and aptitude-testing interactions, i.e., about how learners with different aptitudes perform better or worse depending on the way their knowledge and skills are tested. The authors are all established researchers or rising stars in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), who believe that little can be said about the effectiveness of teaching and testing methods or techniques without taking individual differences into account. Many of the studies corroborate in SLA what has become a central finding in the psychological and educational research about ATI: the more a method puts the burden of information processing on the student, the bigger the role of the corresponding aptitudes. The kinds of findings documented in this volume contribute to a scientific basis for the art of language teaching that will become increasingly useful as emerging technologies make adaptation to individuals and groups more feasible. Originally published as special issue of Journal of Second Language Studies 2:2 (2019).

The Arab-Israeli struggle is not only a struggle over land, but a struggle over language representations. Arab reporters as well as politicians believe that their political discourses about the Middle East conflict are objective, accurate, and credible. Arab News and Conflict critically examines the role of language in the representations of events and ideologies found in news media.

Drawing on socio-political-linguistic approaches combined with real-case studies, the author offers a unique discourse analysis model for analysing politically sensitive language in the media. The focus in this study is on the Arab media discourse in times of conflict with Israel and the US, spanning the years 2001 to 2009. Using rich examples from outspoken Arab media outlets, the study explores ideological and language facts about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This book is compelling reading for students and researchers of media and cultural studies, discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, and translation. It is of equal interest to political analysts, political speakers, journalists, and news editors who need to understand more about the ideological function of the language they use or the political-journalistic-linguistic nexus of power.

The present volume provides an overview of current trends in the study of language contact involving Arabic. By drawing on the social factors that have converged to create different contact situations, it explores both contact-induced change in Arabic and language change through contact with Arabic. The volume brings together leading scholars who address a variety of topics related to contact-induced change, the emergence of contact languages, codeswitching, as well as language ideologies in contact situations. It offers insights from different theoretical approaches in connection with research fields such as descriptive and historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, and language acquisition. It provides the general linguistic public with an updated, cutting edge overview and appreciation of themes and problems in Arabic linguistics and sociolinguists alike.

As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.

The papers in this volume derive from the First International Conference on Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean (Malta, 1985). The field remains divided between the view supporting the existence of a universal belief in an all-pervading and all-embracing Mother Goddess – of which the fertility cult is just one, albeit important, aspect – and the view questioning the very bases of that theory. This conference showed that there seems to be a greater disposition for further dialogue. The fertility content in Near Eastern and Classical religions remains indisputable. The conference proved to be also, not accidentally, of special significance to Maltese archaeology. The volume is divided into four sections: Section I. Prehistory; Section II. Prehistory, Malta; Section III. Phoenician and Near Eastern Religions; Section IV. The Greco-Roman World.

When criticized about the lack of architecture in Anna Karenina, connecting the themes of Levin and Anna Karenina, Tolstoj disagreed: “The arches of the vault are brought together in such a way that it is even impossible to notice where the keystone is.” This book explores the architecture, attempting to trace the pattern of the invisible pillars that support the ‘arches’ on both side of the ‘vault’, leading to the discovery of the ‘keystone’ which Tolstoj tried so hard to keep invisible.

The third volume in the VARGReB series explores different aspects of varying argument realization in Baltic. It presents original studies on differential marking of both core and non-core verbal arguments, on argument structures of nouns and the encoding of nominal arguments, as well as on constructions reflecting the expansion of argument structure through the addition of causative, resultative or applicative predications. The discussion of phenomena of argument realization and marking often touches on fundamental problems of syntax and the syntax-semantics interface, such as the putative locality of case assignment, event-structural factors determining case marking, the inheritance of argument structure across phrase types, or the status of arguments and adjuncts. The contributions to this volume use different approaches and frameworks to analyze a wealth of authentic data from contemporary Latvian and Lithuanian.

Recent developments in the generative tradition have created new interest in matters of argument structure and argument projection, giving prominence to the discussion on the role of lexical entries. Particularly, the more traditional lexicalist view that encodes argument structure information on lexical entries is now challenged by a syntactic view under which all properties of argument structure are taken up by syntactic structure. In the light of these new developments, the contributions in this volume provide detailed empirical investigations of argument structure phenomena in a wide range of languages. The contributions vary in their response to the theoretical questions and address issues that range from the role of specific functional heads and the relation of argument projection with syntactic processes, to the position of argument structure within a broader clausal architecture and the argument structure properties of less studied categories.

The topic of this collection is argument structure. The fourteen chapters in this book are divided into four parts: Semantic and Syntactic Properties of Event Structure; A Cartographic View on Argument Structure; Syntactic Heads Involved in Argument Structure; and Argument Structure in Language Acquisition. Rigorous theoretical analyses are combined with empirical work on specific aspects of argument structure. The book brings together authors working in different linguistic fields (semantics, syntax, and language acquisition), who explore new findings as well as more established data, but then from new theoretical perspectives. The contributions propose cartographic views of argument structure, as opposed to minimalistic proposals of a binary template model for argument structure, in order to optimally account for various syntactic and semantic facts, as well as data derived from wider cross-linguistic perspectives.

The argument structure of verbs, defined as the part of grammar that deals with how participants in verbal events are expressed in clauses, is a classical topic in linguistics that has received considerable attention in the literature. This book investigates argument structure in English from a usage-based perspective, taking the view that the cognitive representation of grammar is shaped by language use, and that crucial aspects of grammatical organization are tied to the frequency with which words and syntactic constructions are used. On the basis of several case studies combining quantitative corpus studies and psycholinguistic experiments, it is shown how a usage-based approach sheds new light on a number of issues in argument realization and offers frequency-based explanations for its organizing principles at three levels of generality: verbs, constructions, and argument structure alternations.

Featuring multidisciplinary and transcultural investigations, this volume showcases state-of-the-art scholarship about the impact of argumentation-based discourses and field-specific argumentation practices in a wide range of communities of practice belonging to the media, social, legal and political spheres. The investigations make use of integrative, wide-ranging theoretical perspectives and empirical research methodologies with a focus on argumentation strategies in real-life environments, both private and public, and in constantly growing virtual environments.

This book brings together linguists, argumentation scholars, philosophers and communication specialists who convincingly show how interpersonal and/or intergroup interactions shape, challenge or change the argumentative practices of users, what argumentation skills and strategies become critical and consequential, how argumentative discourse contexts may stimulate or prevent critical reflection and debate, and what are the wider implications at personal, institutional and societal levels. Reaching beyond the boundaries of linguistics and argumentation sciences, this book should be a valuable resource for researchers as well as practitioners in the fields of pragmatic linguistics, argumentation studies, rhetoric, discourse analysis, political sciences and media studies.