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Formal Studies in Slovenian Syntax : In honor of Janez Orešnik
Dec 2016
Book
Although in the early days of generative linguistics Slovenian was rarely called on in the development of theoretical models the attention it gets has subsequently grown so that by now it has contributed to generative linguistics a fair share of theoretically important data. With 13 chapters that all build on Slovenian data this book sets a new milestone. The topics discussed in the volume range from Slovenian clitics which are called on to shed new light on the intriguing Person-Case Constraint and to provide part of the evidence for a new generalization relating the presence of the definite article and Wackernagel clitics to functional elements such as the future auxiliary and possibility modals the latter of which are discussed also from the perspective of language change. Even within the relatively well-researched topics like wh-movement new findings are presented both in relation to the structure of the left periphery and to the syntax of relative clauses.
Cognitive Individual Differences in Second Language Processing and Acquisition
Dec 2016
Book
Cognitive Individual Differences in Second Language Processing and Acquisition contains 14 chapters that focus on the role of cognitive IDs in L2 learning and processing. The book brings together theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of cognitive IDs as well as empirical studies that investigate the mediating role of cognitive IDs in various linguistic domains. Chapters include contributions from researchers working within second language acquisition (SLA) psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology sharing a common interest in the application of cognitive IDs to their respective areas of study. The interdisciplinary understanding of cognitive IDs presented in this book makes the book of interest to a wide readership of graduate students faculty members and academic researchers in the fields of SLA psycholinguistics cognitive psychology and education.
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 10 : Selected papers from 'Going Romance' 28, Lisbon
Dec 2016
Book
This volume contains a selection of papers of the 28th Going Romance conference which was organized by the Linguistics centers of Universidade de Lisboa and Universidade Nova de Lisboa in December 2014. It assembles the invited contributions by Alain Rouveret Guido Mensching Luigi Rizzi and Roberta D’Alessandro and eleven peer-reviewed papers that were presented at the conference or at the workshops on Constituent Order Variation Crosslinguistic Microvariation in Language Acquisition and Subordination in Old Romance.The volume covers a wide range of topics in syntax and its interfaces and brings to current linguistic theorizing new empirical grounding from Romance languages (including standard diachronic or regional varieties of Asturian Brazilian and European Portuguese Catalan French Galician Italian Romanian Sardinian and Spanish).<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>This will be of interest to scholars in Romance and in general linguistics.
Atypical predicate-argument relations
Dec 2016
Book
This book deals with atypical predicate-argument relations. Although the relations between predicates especially verbal and their arguments have been long studied most studies are concerned with typical telic verbs in the past tense indicative mood active voice with all arguments expressed. Recently linguists have become interested in other types of predicate-argument relations displaying atypical properties be they morphological or syntactic in one language or cross-linguistically. The articles in this book investigate some of these: argument marking with some special groups of verbs arguments not foreseen in the verb valency and contributed by the construction verbs in idiomatic constructions valency-changing operations arguments in thetic sentences or in participle constructions etc. The authors work within different theoretical frameworks and on various languages from more current languages like English Spanish French or German to Hebrew or lamaholot an Austronesian language.
Passive Constructions in Lithuanian : Selected works of Emma Geniušienė
Nov 2016
Book
This unique volume comprises a monograph and a set of articles by renowned typologist Emma Geniušienė which all focus on the topic of morphologically passive constructions in Lithuanian. It is the first translation into English of the author’s original work from the 1970s. It offers a rich treasury of data a detailed structural description of all morphologically passive constructions and an examination of the functions which these constructions have in the discourse. The addition of modern interlinear morpheme-by-morpheme glosses to hundreds of linguistic examples and expert editorial work have turned the hard-to-access material into a timeless resource available for the first time to a broad international readership. The volume will be of value to descriptive linguists typologists morphologists and formal syntacticians as well as to scholars of information structure and functional text analysis. It is an exciting addition to the linguistic literature and a fitting tribute to the author.
Biolinguistic Investigations on the Language Faculty
Nov 2016
Book
The papers assembled in this volume aim to contribute to our understanding of the human capacity for language: the generative procedure that relates sounds and meanings via syntax. Different hypotheses about the properties of this generative procedure are under discussion and their connection with biology is open to important cross-disciplinary work. Advances have been made in human-animal studies to differentiate human language from animal communication. Contributions from neurosciences point to the exclusive properties of the human brain for language. Studies in genetically based language impairments also contribute to the understanding of the properties of the language organ. This volume brings together contributions on theoretical and experimental investigations on the Language Faculty. It will be of interest to scholars and students investigating the properties of the biological basis of language in terms the modeling of the language faculty as well as the properties of language variation language acquisition and language impairments.
Discourse Topics
Nov 2016
Book
Discourse topics are a frequently mentioned but rarely operationalised concept in linguistics. Taking a text linguistic approach and defining discourse topics as clusterings of concepts this book examines and compares methods for investigating topic boundaries topic identification and topic development. The first book to be devoted to topics in extended discourse Discourse Topics examines topics in several genres and generates new insights into the nature of discourse topics that challenge the status quo. It is essential reading for researchers in linguistics discourse analysis natural language processing and psychology whose work concerns topics.
The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood
Nov 2016
Book
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.
Designing Speech for a Recipient : The roles of partner modeling, alignment and feedback in so-called 'simplified registers'
Nov 2016
Book
This study asks how speakers adjust their speech to their addressees focusing on the potential roles of cognitive representations such as partner models automatic processes such as interactive alignment and social processes such as interactional negotiation. The nature of addressee orientation is investigated on three candidates for so-called ‘simplified registers’: speech to children (also called motherese or baby talk) speech to foreigners (also called foreigner talk) and speech to robots. The volume integrates research from various disciplines such as psychology sociolinguistics psycholinguistics and conversation analysis and offers both overviews of child-directed foreigner-directed and robot-directed speech and in-depth analyses of the processes involved in adjusting to a communication partner.
Insubordination
Nov 2016
Book
The phenomenon of insubordination can be defined diachronically as the recruitment of main clause structures from subordinate structures or synchronically as the independent use of constructions exhibiting characteristics of subordinate clauses. Long marginalised as uncomfortable exceptions insubordinated clause phenomena turn out to be surprisingly widespread and provide a vital empirical testing ground for various central theoretical issues in current linguistics – the interplay of langue and parole the emergence of structure the question of where productive syntactic rules give way to constructions the role of prosody in language change and the question of how far grammars are produced by isolated speakers as opposed to being collaboratively constructed in dialogue. This volume – the first book-length treatment on the topic – assembles studies of languages on all continents by scholars who bring a range of approaches to bear on the topic from historical linguistics to corpus studies to typology to conversational analysis.
À la recherche de la prédication : Autour des syntagmes prépositionnels
Nov 2016
Book
Une thématique commune le statut prédicatif de certains syntagmes prépositionnels dans différentes langues fédère les dix études rassemblées dans le présent recueil qui tire son originalité du sujet lui-même. À ce jour en effet rares sont les études qui ont abordé la nature prédicative du syntagme prépositionnel. C’est d’autant plus inédit que ces syntagmes sont courants dans des structures comme les phrases à copule. Pour y parvenir des chercheurs provenant d’horizons théoriques aussi variés que la grammaire de construction le lexique-grammaire la grammaire générative la psychomécanique et la linguistique appliquée examinent les aspects théoriques de ces syntagmes sollicitent de vastes corpus ou encore confrontent le français et une autre langue (anglais grec moderne grec ancien russe). De quoi intéresser non seulement la communauté des chercheurs travaillant en linguistique descriptive mais aussi dans d’autres domaines qu’il s’agisse de linguistique informatique de linguistique contrastive ou de typologie des langues.
Inquiries in Hispanic Linguistics : From theory to empirical evidence
Nov 2016
Book
Inquires in Hispanic Linguistics: From Theory to Empirical Evidence showcases eighteen chapters from formal and empirical approaches related to Spanish syntax and semantics phonetics and phonology and language contact and variation. Drawing on data from a number of monolingual and contact Spanish varieties this volume represents the most current themes and methods in the field of Hispanic linguistics. The book brings together both established and emerging scholars and readers will appreciate the variety of theoretical approaches ranging from generative to variationist perspectives. The book is geared towards researchers and students in Spanish and Romance linguistics. Given its scope and quality this volume is also well-suited for graduate courses in Spanish morphosyntax phonetics sociolinguistics and language contact and change.
The Idiom Principle and L1 Influence : A contrastive learner-corpus study of delexical verb + noun collocations
Oct 2016
Book
This book examines delexical verb + noun collocations such as make a decision give rise to and take care of in Swedish and Chinese learner English. Using a methodological framework that combines learner corpus research with a contrastive perspective the study is one of the very few in the field to incorporate corpora of the learner’s L1 to investigate the effects of L1 influence. The book provides a highly detailed and multi-faceted analysis of delexical verb + noun collocations in terms of frequency of occurrence lexical preferences and morphosyntactic patterns. Quantitative and qualitative results on overuse underuse and errors are presented with linguistically and pedagogically relevant interpretations that include cultural and discourse aspects. More importantly the book throws light on how L2 learners may alternate between the open-choice principle and the idiom principle as well as the extent and nature of L1 influence on their collocational use.
Relevance Theory : Recent developments, current challenges and future directions
Oct 2016
Book
How hearers arrive at intended meaning which elements encode processing instructions in certain languages how procedural meaning and prosody interact how diverse types of utterances are interpreted how epistemic vigilance mechanisms work which linguistic elements assist those mechanisms how a critical attitude to information and informers develops when a second language is learnt or why some perlocutionary effects originate are some of the varied issues that have intrigued pragmatists and relevance theorists in particular and continue to fuel research. In this collection readers will discover new proposals based on the cognitive framework put forward by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson three decades ago. Their gripping insightful and stimulating discussions combined in some cases with meticulous and in-depth analyses show the directions relevance theory has recently followed. Moreover this collection also unveils fruitful and promising interactions with areas like morphology prosody language typology interlanguage pragmatics machine translation or rhetoric and argumentation and avenues for future research.
New Approaches to English Linguistics : Building bridges
Oct 2016
Book
This book aims at providing a cross-section of current developments in English linguistics by tracing recent approaches to corpus linguistics and statistical methodology by introducing new inter- and multidisciplinary refinements to empirical methodology and by documenting the on-going emphasis shift within the discipline of English linguistics from the study of dominant language varieties to that of post-colonial minority non-standardised learner and L2 varieties. Among the key focus areas that define research in the field of English linguistics today this selection concentrates on four: corpus linguistics English as a global language cognitive linguistics and second language acquisition. Most of the articles in this volume concentrate on at least two of these areas and at the same time bring in their own suggestions towards building bridges within and across sub-disciples of linguistics and beyond.
Switch Reference 2.0
Oct 2016
Book
Switch reference is a grammatical process that marks a referential relationship between arguments of two (or more) verbs. Typically it has been characterized as an inflection pattern on the verb itself encoding identity or non-identity between subject arguments separately from traditional person or number marking. In the 50 years since William Jacobsen’s coinage of the term switch reference has evolved from an exotic phenomenon found in a handful of lesser-known languages to a widespread feature found in geographically and linguistically unconnected parts of the world. The growing body of information on the topic raises new theoretical and empirical questions about the development functions and nature of switch reference as well as the internal variation between different switch-reference systems. The contributions to this volume discuss these and other questions for a wide variety of languages from all over the world and endevaour to demonstrate the full functional and morphosyntactic range of the phenomenon.
Outside the Clause : Form and function of extra-clausal constituents
Oct 2016
Book
This volume brings together a number of articles on the form and function of extra-clausal constituents a group of linguistic elements which have puzzled linguists by defying analysis in terms of ordinary sentence grammar. Given their high frequency and communicative importance these elements can however no longer be dismissed as a marginal linguistic phenomenon. In recent years this awareness has resulted not only in more systematic treatments of extra-clausal constituents but has also highlighted the need to account for them in grammatical theory. Based on (mainly English) corpus data the volume investigates the discourse-pragmatic semantic syntactic and phonological features of a range of extra-clausal constituents including discourse markers free adjuncts left dislocands insubordinate clauses and various kinds of adverbials. The individual chapters adopt a number of different perspectives investigating the diachronic development of extra-clausal constituents their multi-functionality and their use in bilingual settings also addressing the question of how they can be incorporated into existing models of grammar.
Cross-linguistic Transfer in Reading in Multilingual Contexts
Oct 2016
Book
This book represents concurrent attempts of multiple researchers to address the issue of cross-linguistic transfer in literacy. It includes broad spectrum of languages and reflects a new generation of conceptualizations of cross-linguistic transfer offering a different level of complexity by studying children who are trilingual and even learning a fourth language.
The collection of papers in this volume tried to capture the dynamic developmental changes in cross-linguistic transfer that include such factors as age of acquisition typological proximity of L1 and L2 (and L3 L4) intensity of exposure to language and reading in ambient and newly acquired language(s) quality of input and home literacy. More stringent methodological considerations allowed to isolate specific constructs that suggest either primary levels of children’s metalinguistic abilities (phonological awareness that can be applied cross-linguistically) or a more language-specific constructs (morphological awareness) that relies on various factors including typological proximity language proficiency and task demands.
Originally published in Written Language & Literacy Vol. 17:1 2014.
The collection of papers in this volume tried to capture the dynamic developmental changes in cross-linguistic transfer that include such factors as age of acquisition typological proximity of L1 and L2 (and L3 L4) intensity of exposure to language and reading in ambient and newly acquired language(s) quality of input and home literacy. More stringent methodological considerations allowed to isolate specific constructs that suggest either primary levels of children’s metalinguistic abilities (phonological awareness that can be applied cross-linguistically) or a more language-specific constructs (morphological awareness) that relies on various factors including typological proximity language proficiency and task demands.
Originally published in Written Language & Literacy Vol. 17:1 2014.
Intonation Units Revisited : Cesuras in talk-in-interaction
Sept 2016
Book
Intonation units have been notoriously difficult to identify in natural talk. Problems include fuzzy boundaries lack of exhaustivity and the potential circularity involved when studying their interface with other language-organizational dimensions. This volume advocates a way to resolve such problems: the ‘cesura’ approach. Cesuras or breaks in the flow of talk are created by discontinuities in the prosodic-phonetic parameters of speech that cluster to various extents at certain points in time. Using conversation-analytic and interactional-linguistic methodology the volume identifies the parameters creating cesuras in talk-in-interaction and proposes ways to notate them depending on the researcher’s goal. It also offers a way to study the role of cesuras at the prosody-syntax interface non-circularly which leads to new insights concerning language variation and change. The volume will thus be of major import to anyone working with natural spoken language its chunks its various dimensions and its variation and change.
Interrogative Strategies : An areal typology of the languages of China
Sept 2016
Book
This book deals with how to ask questions in the languages of China. The syntactic morphological and lexical forms for distinguishing interrogatives take centre stage; intonation is also dealt with but more peripherally than question particles disjunctive and negative constructions and word order. 140 languages spoken in China are covered coming from four major families: Sino-Tibetan Altaic Austronesian and Austro-Asiatic accompanied by a few mixed languages. The approach is areal-typological i.e. these focal languages are compared to the languages of the world as represented in typological samples and within China areal patterns of the structural variables are examined.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The book will be an indispensable reference for future work on interrogatives in a typological context and for areal studies of the language situation in China and more generally East Asia.<br/> <br/>
Microparameters in the Grammar of Basque
Sept 2016
Book
This book is an endeavor to present and analyze some standard topics in the grammar of Basque from a micro-comparative perspective. From case and agreement to word order and the left periphery and including an incursion into determiners the book combines fine-grained theoretical analyses with empirically detailed descriptions. Working from a micro-parametric perspective the contributions to the volume address in depth some of the exuberant variation attested in the different dialects and subdialects of Basque. At the same time although the contributions focus mainly on Basque data cross-linguistic evidence is also presented and discussed. After all the goal pursued in this book is to attempt to explain variation in Basque as a particular instantiation of variation in human language at large. The volume presents and analyzes a wide range of empirical phenomena many typologically marked among European languages and will therefore be a welcome resource to linguists looking for detailed description and/or theoretical discussion.
Corpus-based Approaches to Construction Grammar
Sept 2016
Book
This volume brings together empirical Construction Grammar studies to (i) promote cross-fertilization between researchers interested in constructional approaches on various languages and (ii) further the growing trend towards empirically rigorous research that takes seriously a commitment not only to usage-based theories but also to usage-based methodologies. Accordingly the chapters in this volume comprise a range of studies not based on synchronic contemporary English but include Dutch old English Italian and Spanish. This volume also features studies from a wider range of statistical sophistication: some chapters use more traditional frequency- and attestation-based approaches some chapters use inferential statistical techniques to explore lexically specific preferences and patterns in constructional slots and some chapters use multifactorial hypothesis-testing techniques or multivariate exploratory tools to discover patterns in corpus data that a mere eye-balling or simple statistical tools would not uncover.
Semantic Structure in English
Sept 2016
Book
Syntax puts our meaning (“semantics”) into sentences and phonology puts the sentences into the sounds that we hear and there must surely be a structure in the meaning that is expressed in the syntax and phonology. Some writers use the phrase “semantic structure” but are referring to conceptual structure; since we can express our conceptual thought in many different linguistic ways we cannot equate conceptual and semantic structures.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The research reported in this book shows semantic structure to be in part hierarchic fitting the syntax in which it is expressed and partly a network fitting the nature of the mind from which it springs. It is complex enough to provide for the emotive and imaginative dimensions of language and for shifts of standard meanings in context and the “rules” that control them. <br/>Showing the full structure of English semantics requires attention to many currently topical issues and since the underlying theory is fresh there are fresh implications for them. The most important of those issues is information structure which is given full treatment showing its overall structure and its relation to semantics and the whole grammar of English.
Studies in Lexicogrammar : Theory and applications
Aug 2016
Book
The leitmotif but not exclusive theme of the present volume is Ronald Langacker’s (1987) thesis that “lexicon morphology and syntax form a continuum of symbolic units serving to structure conceptual content for expressive purposes”. The concept of the lexicogrammar continuum contrasts especially with mainstream generative grammar but also although less radically with other cognitive linguistic paradigms such as Construction Grammar. The contributors to this volume explore the lexicogrammar continuum and other issues of the architecture of language mostly from a cognitive linguistic perspective. A wide range of theoretical and methodological themes is covered such as the integration of discourse and interactional phenomena into Cognitive Grammar the status of introspective data figurative language and thought (i.e. metaphor and metonymy) morphosyntactic constructions and phonological structure. Besides English (including Old English) languages analyzed in some detail include Polish Czech Dutch Estonian Georgian German Danish and Portuguese.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate students in cognitive linguistics especially Cognitive Grammar Construction Grammar metaphor and metonymy and corpus linguistics.<br/>
Finiteness Matters : On finiteness-related phenomena in natural languages
Aug 2016
Book
"Although standardly recognized by linguists of many diverse theoretical persuasions finiteness continues to figure among [...] the most poorly understood concepts of linguistic theory”. This was eloquently stated by Ledgeway (2000 2007) and remains true even today. The present volume thus aims to shed some much needed light on this area of linguistic theorizing with eleven chapters approaching finiteness phenomena from the fields of syntax semantics language acquisition and Creole studies and providing data from a range of different languages. Traditionally approaches to finiteness within the Principles and Parameters framework have seen as their main aim to understand the relation between the morphological exponents of finiteness and the syntactic operations seemingly depending on these exponents. The papers in this volume mostly take their point of departure from this more traditional view on finiteness before elaborating on modifying and diverging from this tradition in novel and interesting ways.
Acquisition and Development of Hebrew : From infancy to adolescence
Aug 2016
Book
The volume addresses developing knowledge and use of Hebrew from the dual perspective of typologically specific factors and of shared cross-linguistic trends aimed at providing an overview of acquisition in a single language from infancy to adolescence while also shedding light on key issues in the field as a whole. Essentially non-partisan in approach the collection includes distinct approaches to language and language acquisition (formal-universalist pragmatic-usage based cognitive-constructivist) and deals with a range of topics not often addressed within a single volume (phonological perception and production inflectional and derivational morphology simple-clause structure and complex syntax early and later literacy writing systems) with data deriving from varied research methodologies (interactive conversations and extended discourse adult input and child output longitudinal and cross-sectional corpora structured elicitations). Each chapter provides background information on Hebrew-specific facets of the topic of concern but typically avoids ethno-centricity by relating to more general issues in the domain. The book should thus prove interesting and instructive for linguists psychologists and educators and for members of the child language research community both within and beyond the confines of Hebrew-language expertise.
Cognitive Control and Consequences of Multilingualism
Aug 2016
Book
The human mind is a marvelous device that effectively regulates mental activities and facilitates amendable cognitive behaviour across several domains such as attention memory and language processing. For multilinguals the mind also represents and manages more than one language system—a mental exercise which may lead to cognitive benefits. Through an in-depth exploration of these issues Cognitive Control and Consequences of Multilingualism presents original studies and new perspectives which are cutting-edge and feature traditional and innovative methodologies such as ERPs fMRIs eye-tracking picture- and numeral naming the Simon flanker and oculomotor Stroop tasks among others. The studies in this book investigate prominent themes in multilingual language control for both comprehension and production and probe the notion of a cognitive advantage that may be a result of multilingualism. The growing number of researchers practitioners and students alike will find this volume to be an instrumental source of readings that illuminates how one mind accommodates and controls multiple languages and the consequences it has on human cognition in general.
A Cognitive Grammar of Japanese Clause Structure
Jul 2016
Book
This volume represents the first comprehensive work on Japanese clause structure conducted within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. The author proposes schematic conceptual structures for the major constructions in the language and defines Japanese case marking and grammatical relations in purely conceptual terms. The work thus makes a convincing case for the conceptual basis of grammar thereby constituting a strong argument against the autonomy of syntax hypothesis of Generative Grammar. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The volume should be of interest to any researcher wishing to know how Cognitive Grammar whose primary focus has been on the non-syntactic aspects of language can explain the clausal structure of a given language in a detailed comprehensive yet unifying manner. In addition to its theoretical findings the volume contains a number of revealing analyses and interpretations of Japanese data which should be of great interest to all Japanese linguists irrespective of their theoretical persuasions.<br/>
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXVII : Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Bloomington, Indiana, 2013
Jul 2016
Book
The study of Arabic dialects has been an important and rich area of research over the past thirty-five years or so with significant implications for modern linguistic analysis. The current volume builds on this tradition with ten scholarly contributions that provide novel data and analyses in multiple areas of Arabic linguistics: Syntax and its interfaces; regional and sociolinguistic variation; and first language acquisition. The linguistic facts in the volume are drawn from the various Arabic dialects spoken in North Africa Egypt the Arabian Peninsula the Levant and Standard Arabic and the analyses proposed reflect current approaches in linguistic theory. The volume therefore should be of interest to formal linguists sociolinguists historical linguists dialectologists as well as researchers on first language acquisition. It is our hope that the papers in this volume will spur more interest in and research on further aspects of Arabic linguistics.
Inner-sentential Propositional Proforms : Syntactic properties and interpretative effects
Jul 2016
Book
This book deals with sentential proforms and their relationship to their associated clauses. Sentential proforms are highly interesting from the point of view of grammatical theory since their occurrence is determined not only by syntax but also by prosody and semantics. The present volume contributes to a better understanding of the interfaces between these different levels. By providing syntactic prosodic semantic psycholinguistic and corpus-based support this book underpins the claim that there exist different sentential proform types in German and Dutch that these proform types correlate with different verb classes and that their associated related clauses are located in different syntactic positions. The present volume also looks at a Hungarian sentential proform construction which is similar to the German(ic) structure but at the same time is different in its licensing conditions.
Developing, Modelling and Assessing Second Languages
Jun 2016
Book
This edited volume brings together the work of a number of researchers working in the framework of Processability Theory (PT) a psycholinguistic theory of second language acquisition (SLA) (Pienemann 1998; 2005). The aim of the volume is two-fold: It engages with current issues in both theory development and theory application and focuses on theoretical developments within the framework of PT as well as issues related to second language teaching and assessment. In coordinating approaches to addressing both theoretical and applied aspects of SLA this volume aims at bridging the gap between theory and practice. It also reflects the richness of debate within the field of PT-based research. The volume is intended for postgraduate students SLA researchers as well as language teachers.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>As of January 2019 this e-book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
Concise Lexicon for Sign Linguistics
Jun 2016
Book
This extensive well-researched and clearly formatted lexicon of a wide variety of linguistic terms is a long overdue. It is an extremely welcome addition to the bookshelves of sign language teachers interpreters linguists learners and other sign language users and of course of the Deaf themselves.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Unique to this lexicon is not only the inclusion of many terms that are used especially for sign languages but also the fact that for the terms there are not only examples from spoken languages but there are also glossed and translated examples from several different sign languages.<br/>There are many interesting features to this lexicon. There is an immediate temptation to find examples of terms in the sign language one is studying as well as determining how many of the most used concepts would be signed in the local language. As there are to date still almost no reference grammars of sign languages the definitions of many of these concepts would be extremely helpful for those linguists planning to make a reference grammar of their sign language.
The Linguistics of Sign Languages : An introduction
Jun 2016
Book
How different are sign languages across the world? Are individual signs and signed sentences constructed in the same way across these languages? What are the rules for having a conversation in a sign language? How do children and adults learn a sign language? How are sign languages processed in the brain? These questions and many more are addressed in this introductory book on sign linguistics using examples from more than thirty different sign languages. Comparisons are also made with spoken languages. This book can be used as a self-study book or as a text book for students of sign linguistics. Each chapter concludes with a summary some test-yourself questions and assignments as well as a list of recommended texts for further reading. The book is accompanied by a website containing assignments video clips and links to web resources.
Conceptualizations of Time
Jun 2016
Book
As time cannot be observed directly it must be analyzed in terms of mental categories which manifest themselves on various linguistic levels. In this interdisciplinary volume novel approaches to time are proposed that consider temporality without time on the one hand and the coding of time in language including sign language and gestures on the other. The contributions of the volume demonstrate that time is conceptualized not only in terms of space but in terms of other domains of human experience as well. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Renowned specialists in the study of time the authors of this volume investigate this fascinating topic from a variety of perspectives – philosophical linguistic anthropological (neuro)psychological and computational – demonstrating a familiarity with both classical and recent approaches to the study of time and including up-to-date corpus-based methods of study.<br/>The volume will be of interest to philosophers linguists (including specialists in cognitive linguistics corpus linguistics and computational linguistics) anthropologists (neuro)psychologists translators language teachers and graduate students.<br/>
Finiteness and Nominalization
Jun 2016
Book
This volume addresses the relation between finiteness and nominalization which is far more complex than the simple opposition finite-nonfinite. The contributions analyze finiteness cross-linguistically from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives focusing on a number of topics that has not been thoroughly explored in the literature. First the correlation between finiteness and nominalization is also affected by a third factor information structure. Second there is a correlation between the continuum of finiteness and the scale from main/independent clauses to dependent clauses. Given that of nominalized constructions occur not only in dependent clauses but also in independent clauses it is possible to grade according to degree of nominalization which can then be related to the scale of finiteness. Finally each of these scales can also be seen as a product the diachronic process of re-finitization and of finitization.
Indo-Aryan Ergativity in Typological and Diachronic Perspective
Jun 2016
Book
This volume presents a state-of-the-art survey of synchronic and diachronic dimensions of Ergativity in the Indo-Aryan language family. It contains an introduction drawing on the most important recent typological and theoretical contributions to this field plus seven papers about the origin development and distribution of ergative alignment in ancient and modern Indo-Aryan languages written by well-established expert authors. The articles provide detailed explorations of language-specific synchronic systems or patterns of change and large-scale studies of the distribution of ergative morphosyntax across the Indo-Aryan languages. The papers have a typological-functional approach and are based on thorough fieldwork experience and/or philological investigation. As the Indo-Aryan language family has played a paramount role in recent theories of Ergativity and of alignment typology and change this volume is highly relevant to experts working on these languages and to scholars interested in grammatical relations and it will figure in all future debates in these fields
Exploring the Turkish Linguistic Landscape : Essays in honor of Eser Erguvanlı-Taylan
Jun 2016
Book
Exploring the Turkish Linguistic Landscape provides in-depth analyses of different aspects of Turkish in the domains of phonology morphology and syntax discourse and language acquisition relevant to recent theoretical discussions. While some of the papers in the volume offer new analyses to known linguistic puzzles others raise new questions which have not been addressed in the literature before. This collection of original articles written by colleagues and students of Prof. Eser Erguvanlı-Taylan honoring her contribution to the field of linguistics features articles on vowel reduction consonant clusters negation conditionals voice morphology evidentiality acquisition of irregular morphology complementation and subordination in varieties of Turkish. It will be of interest to a wide audience ranging from theoreticians to typologists and is expected to generate further research on Turkish as well as to contribute to the cross-linguistic literature on the issues addressed in the volume.
Morphological Metatheory
Jun 2016
Book
The field of morphology is particularly heterogeneous. Investigators differ on key points at every level of theory. These divisions are not minor issues about technical implementation but rather are foundational issues that mold the underlying anatomy of any theory. The field has developed very rapidly both theoretically and methodologically giving rise to many competing theories and varied hypotheses. Many drastically different and often contradictory models and foundational hypotheses have been proposed. Theories diverge with respect to everything from foundational architectural assumptions to the specific combinatorial mechanisms used to derive complex words. Today these distinct models of word-formation largely exist in parallel mostly without proponents confronting or discussing these differences in any major forum. After forty years of fast-paced growth in the field morphologists are in need of a moment to take a breath and survey the drastically different points of view within the field. This volume provides such a moment.
Advances in Research on Semantic Roles
Jun 2016
Book
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).
Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 38:3 (2014).
Sequential Voicing in Japanese : Papers from the NINJAL Rendaku Project
Jun 2016
Book
The papers in this tightly focused collection all report recent research on aspects of rendaku (‘sequential voicing’) the well-known morphophonemic phenomenon in Japanese that affects initial consonants of non-initial elements in complex words (mostly compounds). The papers include broad surveys of theoretical analyses and of psycholinguistic studies meticulous assessments (some relying on a new database) of many of the factors that putatively inhibit or promote rendaku an investigation of how learners of Japanese as foreign language deal with rendaku in-depth examinations of rendaku in a divergent dialect of Japanese and in a Ryukyuan language and a cross-linguistic exploration of rendaku-like compound markers in unrelated languages. Since rendaku is ubiquitous but recalcitrantly irregular it provides a challenge for any general theory of morphophonology. This collection should serve both to restrain oversimplified accounts of rendaku and to inspire to further research.
World Englishes : New theoretical and methodological considerations
May 2016
Book
This book provides a collection of articles that reflect the current state of affairs in the blossoming field of World Englishes by bringing together several innovative synchronic and diachronic approaches. It contributes to the ongoing theoretical discussion concerning the criteria that make a low-frequency item represent an incipient change and examines the suitability of the sociolinguistics of globalisation theory for the study of non-traditional avenues for the spread of vernacular varieties of English (recent migrations the entertainment industry the web). It explores crucial aspects of language change and dialect evolution through the study of grammatical phenomena and the particular linguistic and socio-historical factors conditioning them. Together with theoretical questions the volume shows a concern for methodological issues such as sociolinguistic interviews map-task experiments metalinguistic comments acceptability judgments and corpus-based methods. This volume represents the latest trends in the field and will undoubtedly set the agenda for the years ahead.
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Embodiment in Latin Semantics
May 2016
Book
<i>Embodiment in Latin Semantics</i> introduces theories of embodied meaning developed in the cognitive sciences to the study of Latin semantics. Bringing together contributions from an international group of scholars the volume demonstrates the pervasive role that embodied cognitive structures and processes play in conventional Latin expression across levels of lexical syntactic and textual meaning construction. It shows not only the extent to which universal aspects of human embodiment are reflected in Latin’s semantics but also the ways in which Latin speakers capitalize on embodied understanding to express imaginative and culture-specific forms of meaning. In this way the volume makes good on the potential of the embodiment hypothesis to enrich our understanding of meaning making in the Latin language from the level of word sense to that of literary thematics. It should interest anyone concerned with how people including in historical societies create meaning through language.
Spanish Language and Sociolinguistic Analysis
May 2016
Book
This book explores the current state of Spanish sociolinguistics and its contribution to theories of language variation and change from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. It offers original analyses on a variety of topics across a wide spectrum of linguistic subfields from different formal experimental and corpus-based standpoints. The volume is organized around six thematic sections: (i) Cutting-edge Methodologies in Sociolinguistics; (ii) Bilingualism; (iii) Language Acquisition; (iv) Phonological Variation; (v) Morpho-Syntactic Variation; and (vi) Lexical Variation. As a whole this collection reflects an array of approaches and analyses that show how in its variation across speakers speech communities linguistic contexts communicative situations dialects and time the Spanish language provides an immense wealth of data to challenge accepted linguistic views and shape new theoretical proposals in the field of language variation and change. Spanish Language and Sociolinguistic Analysis represents a significant contribution to the growing field of Spanish sociolinguistics.
Focus-related Operations at the Right Edge in Spanish : Subjects and Ellipsis
May 2016
Book
Syntactic movement is a pervasive phenomenon in natural language and as such has played a key role in syntactic theorizing. Nonetheless an understanding of the mechanism that allows a constituent to appear to the right of its base-generated position has remained elusive. This groundbreaking research monograph aims to address this gap in our knowledge by expanding the inventory of languages and data sets traditionally considered in the literature. Specifically Ortega-Santos analyzes the interplay between focus word order and ellipsis in Spanish. A major finding that emerges from the analysis is that the tension between linearization requirements and rightward movement is diminished by ellipsis. Current debates on the syntax of the VOS order and preverbal subjects in Null-Subject Languages also figure prominently in the discussion as novel empirical evidence for the existence of null expletives is provided: a non-trivial issue for our understanding of the Extended Projection Principle and subjecthood across languages.
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXVIII : Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Gainesville, Florida, 2014
May 2016
Book
This volume makes important contributions to the growing body of descriptive and theoretical studies in Arabic linguistics. It focuses on the rich linguistic work being done on Arabic dialects. The papers on individual dialects draw attention to the micro-variation that exists emphasize that they do not comprise a uniform group and reveal the implications of dialectal variation for linguistic theory. The chapters are distributed over three parts: phonetics and phonology syntax and sociolinguistics. They address first and second language acquisition historical linguistics phonetics aspects of negation light verb constructions raising verbs and sociolinguistic variation. The book is indispensable reading for those working in dialect description the analysis of Arabic and the Semitic languages and linguistic theory more generally.
Quantifying Expressions in the History of German : Syntactic reanalysis and morphological change
May 2016
Book
This study describes the 1200-year history of German quantifying expressions like <i>nîoman anderro</i> > <i>niemand anderer</i> ‘nobody else’ analyzing the morpho-syntactic developments within the generative framework. The quantifiers examined arose from various lexical sources/categories (nouns adjectives and pronouns) but all changed to adjectival quantifiers. These changes are interpreted as a novel type of upward reanalysis from head to specifier which we associate with degrammaticalization driven by analogy. As for the quantified phrases most appeared in the genitive in Old High German indicating a bi-nominal structure. During the Early New High German period most quantified nouns and adjectives changed to agreement with the quantifier. By Modern German only quantified DPs and pronouns remain in the genitive. These changes involve downward reanalysis of the quantified elements being integrated into the matrix nominal depending on the structural size of the quantified phrase. Overall we conclude that diachronically quantifying expressions may have different syntactic analyses.
Language Contact and Change in the Americas : Studies in honor of Marianne Mithun
Apr 2016
Book
This unique collection of articles in honor of Marianne Mithun represents the very latest in research on language contact and language change in the Indigenous languages of the Americas. The book aims to provide new theoretical and empirical insights into how and why languages change especially with regard to contact phenomena in languages of North America Meso-America and South America. The individual chapters cover a broad range of topics including sound change morphosyntactic change lexical semantics grammaticalization language endangerment and discourse-pragmatic change. With chapters from distinguished scholars and talented newcomers alike this book will be welcomed by anyone with an interest in internally- and externally-motivated language change.
Textplicating Iconophones : Articulatory iconic action in Ulysses
Apr 2016
Book
This volume applies a sign-oriented approach to the description of articulatory and acoustic iconic phenomena in James Joyce’s <i>Ulysses</i>. In its hypothesis the greater the role of sensory experience in the message of a text the more likely it is to employ linguistic representation in articulated sounds iconically to affect sensory experience. <i>Ulysses</i> is presented as a work of art whose emphasis on sensual impression and sensory experience is reflected in the composition and distribution of its phonemes. <br />Four English phonemes are examined each in several contexts in <i>Ulysses</i>. A systematic association of resemblance is found between the manner and effort involved in the articulation of each phoneme relative to other phonemes and sounds and the manner in which semantic content is arranged in the scenes and themes of the book. The different emphases of semantic arrangement associated with each of the examined phonemes are maintained across diverse themes varied scopes of reference and opposed manners of contextualization. The phonological unit is therefore perceived to carry a semantic impact to complement its differentiating role in linguistic signification. It also offers an innovative approach to <i>Ulysses</i> and exposes new semantic nuances in its narration and characterization techniques.
Nasals and Nasalization in Spanish and Portuguese : Perception, phonetics and phonology
Apr 2016
Book
Nasality whether part of a consonant or vowel has certain phonetic and phonological characteristics that lead to outcomes seen time and again in languages with and without common ancestries. Spanish and Portuguese constitute a particularly fruitful language pairing for studying phonological aspects of synchronic and diachronic variation given their intimate relationship as well as the array of dialectal variation in each. This research monograph offers a comprehensive exploration of nasals and nasalization in Spanish and Portuguese with a special focus on the role of perception in order to provide insight into how perception informs models of phonetics phonology and language change. Of interest to researchers and advanced students alike this volume integrates phonetic and phonological models of speech perception and production and discusses these with regards to original empirical research on the perception of nasal place features and vowel nasalization by listeners of Peninsular Spanish Cuban Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
Ute Dictionary
Mar 2016
Book
This third volume of our Ute language collection contains the Ute dictionary. It opens with several introductory chapters that link the dictionary to our <i>Ute Reference Grammar</i> (2011) and explain the structure and use of the dictionary. The bulk of the information on the meaning and usage of Ute words is then given in the Ute-English part. The English-Ute part next serves primarily as a search-and-reference tool. A short section on traditional semantic-cultural fields follows. Ute is a Northern Uto-Aztecan language of the Numic sub-family. Together with its northern dialects (Southern Paiute Uintah White River) it should be considered a single language Núuchi ("of the people") or Núu-'apaghapi ("the people's speech"). While our work was done primarily in the southern dialects (Southern Ute Ute Mountain Uncompaghre) we have included as many words as could be safely extracted from Powel's and Smith's work on the northern dialects as well as some from Sapir's work (1931) on Northern Ute adjusting them to Southern-dialect pronunciation. This brings the work as close as one could hope at this time to a comprehensive all-Ute dictionary a task that yet remains to be done. We have tried to emphasize in the Ute-English entries the historical and derivational connectivity of Ute vocabulary and its gradual growth and expansion. This is also underscored in the introductory chapter on word derivation. While this work remains incomplete we hope it can be some day expanded into an all-inclusive Ute dictionary and will help the people – Núuchiu – preserve their language and culture.
Mixing Metaphor
Mar 2016
Book
Mixing metaphors in speech writing and even gesture is traditionally viewed as a sign of inconsistency in thought and language. Despite the prominence of mixed metaphors there have been surprisingly few attempts to comprehensively explain why people mix their metaphors so frequently and in the particular ways they do. This volume brings together a distinguished group of linguists psychologists and computer scientists who tackle the issue of how and why mixed metaphors arise and what communicative purposes they may serve. These scholars almost unanimously argue that mixing metaphors is a natural consequence of common metaphorical thought processes highlighting important complexities of the metaphorical mind. <i>Mixing Metaphor</i> for the first time offers new critical empirical and theoretical insights on a topic that has long been ignored within interdisciplinary metaphor studies.
Cognition, Language and Aging
Mar 2016
Book
Age-related changes in cognitive and language functions have been extensively researched over the past half-century. The older adult represents a unique population for studying cognition and language because of the many challenges that are presented with investigating this population including individual differences in education life experiences health issues social identity as well as gender. The purpose of this book is to provide an advanced text that considers these unique challenges and assembles in one source current information regarding (a) language in the aging population and (b) current theories accounting for age-related changes in language function. A thoughtful and comprehensive review of current research spanning different disciplines that study aging will achieve this purpose. Such disciplines include linguistics psychology sociolinguistics neurosciences cognitive sciences and communication sciences.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>As of January 2019 this e-book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
Aspectuality and Temporality : Descriptive and theoretical issues
Mar 2016
Book
This volume brings together a collection of articles exploring tense and aspect phenomena in a variety of non-related languages: Indo-European (Albanian Bulgarian Armenian English Norwegian Hindi) Hamito-Semitic (Berber Zenaga Berber Arabic varieties Neo-Aramaic) African (Wolof Langi) Asian (Badaga Korean Mongolian languages – Khalkha Buriat Kalmuck – Thaï Tibetic languages) Amerindian (Yucatec Maya Sikuani) Greenlandic (Eskimo) and Oceanian (Nêlêmwa). Each article is grounded in solid empirical knowledge. It offers an in-depth study of aspectual and temporal devices as manifested in many diverse and complex ways from a cross-linguistic perspective and seeks to contribute to our understanding of the domain under consideration and more broadly to linguistic typology and theoretical linguistics especially the enunciative approach. The book gives readers access to a collection of data and is of particular interest to scholars working on aspectuality and temporality on pragmatics on areal linguistics and on typology.
Visually Situated Language Comprehension
Mar 2016
Book
<i>Visually Situated Language Comprehension</i> has been compiled as a state-of the-art introduction to real-time language processing in visually-situated contexts. It covers the history of this emergent field explains key methodological developments and discusses the insights these methods have enabled into how language processing interacts with our knowledge and perception of the immediate environment. Scientists interested in how language users integrate what they know with their perception of objects and events will find the book a rewarding read. The book further covers lexical sentence and discourse level processes as well as active visual context effects in both non-interactive and interactive tasks and thus present a well-balanced view of the field. It is aimed at experienced researchers and students alike in the hopes of attracting new talent to the field. Thanks to its in-depth methodological introduction and broad coverage it constitutes an excellent course book.
Linguistic Rhythm and Literacy
Mar 2016
Book
The intersection of sound processing speech production and literacy is a promising and growing area of study. This volume showcases recent empirical research exploring the association between linguistic rhythm and reading. Linguistic rhythm does not easily assume a single definition which is part of the motivation for this volume and subsumes constructs including suprasegmental phonology prosody intonation and stress. The twelve papers collected here are the product of a gathering of like-minded researchers from the disciplines of linguistics psycholinguistics developmental psychology cognitive neuroscience and education. The resulting chapters cover topics including the following: developmental interactions between linguistic rhythm and reading and spelling relationships between rhythm and dyslexia and cross-linguistic variation in the relationship between lexical stress and orthography. This book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in the fields of linguistics human communication developmental psychology cognitive psychology and literacy.
Constructions across Grammars
Mar 2016
Book
Up to now most research in Construction Grammar has focused on single languages most notably English. This volume aims to broaden the scope of Construction Grammar towards issues in bi- and multilingualism second language learning and generalizations across different languages and language varieties. The contributions in this volume show that speakers entertain generalizations across their repertoire of languages which holds important implications for a multilingual Construction Grammar. <br />Originally published in <i>Constructions and Frames</i> 6:2 (2014).
Intonational Grammar in Ibero-Romance : Approaches across linguistic subfields
Mar 2016
Book
<i>Intonational Grammar in Ibero-Romance: Approaches across linguistic subfields</i> is a volume of empirical research papers incorporating recent theoretical methodological and interdisciplinary advances in the field of intonation as they relate to the Ibero-Romance languages. The volume brings together leading experts in Catalan Portuguese and Spanish as well as in the intonation of Spanish in contact situations. The common thread is that each paper examines a specific topic related to the intonation of at least one Ibero-Romance language framing the analysis in an experimental setting. The novel findings of each chapter hinge on critical connections that are made between the study of intonation and its related fields of linguistic inquiry including syntax pragmatics sociophonetics language acquisition and special populations. In this sense the volume expands the traditional scope of Ibero-Romance intonation including in it work on signed languages (LSC) individuals with autism spectrum disorder and individuals with Williams Syndrome. This volume establishes the precedent for researchers and advanced students who wish to explore the complexities of Ibero-Romance intonation. It also serves as a showcase of the most up-to-date methodologies in intonational research.
Cyclical Change Continued
Mar 2016
Book
This book presents new data and additional questions regarding the linguistic cycle. The topics discussed are the pronoun negative negative existential analytic-synthetic distributive determiner degree and future/modal cycles. The papers raise questions about the length of time that cycles take the interactions between different cycles the typical stages and their stability and the areal factors influencing cycles. The languages and language families that are considered in depth are Central Pomo Cherokee Chinese English French Gbe German Hmong-Mien Maipurean Mayan Mohawk Mon-Khmer Niger-Congo Nupod Quechuan Sino-Tibetan Tai-Kadai Tuscarora Ute and Yoruboid. One paper covers several of the world’s language families. Cyclical change connects linguists working in various frameworks because it is exciting to find a reason behind this fascinating phenomenon.
Pejoration
Mar 2016
Book
Though “pejoration” is an important notion for linguistic analysis and theory there is still a lack of theoretical understanding and sound descriptive analysis. In this timely collection the phenomenon of pejoration is studied from a number of angles. It contains studies from phonology morphology syntax semantics and pragmatics and deals with diverse languages and their variants. The collection will appeal to all those linguists with a genuine interest in locating pejoration at the grammar-pragmatics interface.
The Role of Functions in Syntax : A unified approach to language theory, description, and typology
Mar 2016
Book
The main aim of this book is to address a fundamental question in linguistics namely why languages are similar and why they are different. The study proposes that languages are fundamentally similar when they encode the same meanings in their grammatical systems and that languages are different when they encode different meanings. Even if languages encode the same meaning they may differ with respect to the formal means used to code those meanings. This approach allows for a typology based on functional domains subdomains and functions coded in individual languages. The outcome of the study is a unified approach to language theory linguistic typology and descriptive linguistics. The argumentation for the hypotheses and the proposed approach is supported by analyses of data from more than a dozen languages including English Polish French Wandala Mina Hdi and several other Chadic languages. The study is accessible to a wide variety of linguists.
Exaptation and Language Change
Feb 2016
Book
This volume is the first collection of papers that is exclusively dedicated to the concept of exaptation a notion from evolutionary biology that was famously introduced into linguistics by Roger Lass in 1990. The past quarter-century has seen a heated debate on the properties of linguistic exaptation its demarcation from other processes of linguistic change and indeed the question of whether it is a useful concept in historical linguistics at all. The contributions in the present volume reflect these diverging points of view. Along with a comprehensive introduction covering the history of the notion of exaptation from its conception in the field of biology to its adoption in linguistics the book offers extensive discussion of the concept from various theoretical perspectives detailed case studies as well as critical reviews of some stock examples. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of evolutionary linguistics historical linguistics and the history of linguistics.
Romance Linguistics 2013 : Selected papers from the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), New York, 17-19 April, 2013
Feb 2016
Book
This volume contains a selection of peer-reviewed articles first presented at the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) held in New York in 2013. The articles deal with various synchronic and diachronic aspects of Romance languages and dialects world-wide. They will be of interest to scholars in Romance and in general linguistics.
Third Person References : Forms and functions in two spoken genres of Spanish
Feb 2016
Book
This volume a case study on the grammar of third person references in two genres of spoken Ecuadorian Spanish examines from a discourse-analytic perspective how genre affects linguistic patterns and how researchers can look for and interpret genre effects. This marks a timely contribution to corpus linguistics as many linguists are choosing to work with empirical data. Corpus based approaches have many advantages and are useful in the comparison of different languages as well as varieties of the same language but what is often overlooked in such comparisons is the genre of language under examination. As this case study shows genre is an important factor in interpreting patterns and distributions of forms.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The book also contributes toward theories of anaphora referentiality and Preferred Argument Structure. It is relevant for scholars who work with referentiality genre differences third person references and interactional linguistics as well as those interested in Spanish morphosyntax.
Emotive Interjections in British English : A corpus-based study on variation in acquisition, function and usage
Jan 2016
Book
Emotive Interjections in British English: A corpus-based study on variation in acquisition function and usage constitutes the first in-depth corpus-based study on the use of emotive interjections in Present Day British English. In a novel approach it systematically distinguishes between child and adult speakers providing new insights into how they use Ow! Ouch! Ugh! Yuck! Whoops! Whoopsadaisy! and Wow! in everyday spoken language. It studies in detail their acquisition by children and pinpoints changes and developments in their use throughout early childhood. The study highlights particularities displayed by child and adult speakers in general and identifies crucial differences regarding how adults use emotive interjections depending on whether they are interacting with children or other adults. This book thus offers an exhaustive overview on the functions of emotive interjections based on thorough empirical research and will appeal to linguists concerned with pragmatics child language acquisition the expression of emotion and interjections.
Argument Realization in Baltic
Jan 2016
Book
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.
Researching Northern English
Dec 2015
Book
Northern English has become the focus of intensive research in the past decade or so following on a series of dedicated conferences. The present book brings together leading-edge contributions on various aspects of language use variation and change in the North of England. The volume covers the history of English in this area as well as providing incisive studies of both the varieties of English spoken in cities and in larger parts of the area. In addition the collection contains a number of interface studies e.g. concerned with the borders of the North of England both to Scotland and the South of England or dealing with second-language varieties of Northern English or with additional issues such as enregisterment. All these contributions help to draw a comprehensive picture of this key area of the English-speaking world and point the way forward for future research.
Valence Changes in Zapotec : Synchrony, diachrony, typology
Dec 2015
Book
Zapotec languages present a wide range of lexical morphological phonological and syntactic means of indicating valence changes. Despite their significant theoretical interest detailed descriptions of valence-changing phenomena in Zapotec are rare comparative studies are practically non-existent and Zapotec contributions to the general typology of valence-changing phenomena still remain largely untapped. The present volume addresses this imbalance by being the first to explore Zapotec valence-changing constructions in depth and to highlight their broad comparative typological and theoretical significance. This book contains both write-ups of contributions to the Special Session on Valence-Changing Devices in Zapotecan (annual meeting of SSILA 2012) and specially commissioned chapters. It will be of interest to Zapotecanists Otomangueanists Mesoamericanists typologists morphologists syntacticians semanticians and general linguists with an interest in valence-changing phenomena and may also be used as supplementary reading in field methods and typology courses.
Emotion in Language : Theory – research – application
Dec 2015
Book
The miracle of children's language development and the joy of expressive language on the one hand and the vulnerability of language and the sorrow and grief caused by its distortion or even loss in people with aphasia or dementia on the other hand show us the inseparability of emotion and language in its extremes.
Although the ‘emotional turn’ promised a paradigmatic shift from a rationalistic towards an emotion-integrating conceptualization of language hardly any interdisciplinary research has focused on the interplay between emotion and language. The present book covers the wide range of work on Emotion in Language with contributions from numerous disciplines in the three areas of Theory Research and Application. With contributions both from well-known pioneers in the area of this topic as well as from young scientists the book offers a broad range of perspectives from linguistics and language development to neurology psychology and developmental neuropsychology and to the fields of philosophy and phenomenology.
Although the ‘emotional turn’ promised a paradigmatic shift from a rationalistic towards an emotion-integrating conceptualization of language hardly any interdisciplinary research has focused on the interplay between emotion and language. The present book covers the wide range of work on Emotion in Language with contributions from numerous disciplines in the three areas of Theory Research and Application. With contributions both from well-known pioneers in the area of this topic as well as from young scientists the book offers a broad range of perspectives from linguistics and language development to neurology psychology and developmental neuropsychology and to the fields of philosophy and phenomenology.
Discourse-oriented Syntax
Dec 2015
Book
Until recently little attention has been paid within syntax to components of discourse meaning that go beyond information structure and fall into the domain of non-at-issue meaning operating at the level of illocutionary force. To approach this domain many of the contributions of this volume deal with the syntax of discourse particles. However the issue of how to account for discourse particles within a more explicit map of the illocutionary domain is a good starting point for considering further phenomena related to the syntax of speech acts. By focusing on speech-act related particles and/or meaning domains this volume makes a new contribution to the field as existing collections either do not offer a comparatively narrow focus on particles or are not limited to syntax-oriented approaches. The primary audience of this volume are researchers and graduate students interested in state-of-the-art approaches to the syntax-discourse interface within the cartographic approach to syntax.
Time and Emergence in Grammar : Dislocation, topicalization and hanging topic in French talk-in-interaction
Dec 2015
Book
This monograph examines how language contributes to the social coordination of actions in talk-in-interaction. Focusing on a set of frequently used constructions in French (left-dislocation right-dislocation topicalization and hanging topic) the study provides an empirically rich contribution to the understanding of grammar as thoroughly temporal emergent and contingent upon its use in social interaction. Based on data from a range of everyday interactions the authors investigate speakers’ use of these constructions as resources for organizing social interaction showing how speakers continuously adapt revise and extend grammatical trajectories in real time in response to local contingencies. The book is designed to be both informative for the specialized scholar and accessible to the graduate student familiar with conversation analysis and/or interactional linguistics.
Metaphor in Specialist Discourse
Dec 2015
Book
Metaphor in Specialist Discourse presents multiple perspectives on metaphor use in specialist and popularized discourse contexts. Using genre and register as starting parameters for deeper exploration and pushing the boundaries further to open up new areas and possibilities ten independent articles investigate metaphor use across a range of specialist domains of discourse such as biology research articles psychological counseling soccer commentaries workfloor communication and penal policy documents. Framed by two theoretical chapters the book is a contribution to the study of metaphor use in distinct discourse settings that will be of value to linguists and metaphor scholars of different persuasions graduate students of linguistics and related disciplines and practitioners of specialized areas with an interest in (verbal or gestural) language use in their areas of expertise. It shows that aspects of discourse variation are the beginning of not an afterthought to accurate empirical metaphor studies.
Theoretical and Methodological Developments in Processability Theory
Dec 2015
Book
This edited volume is devoted to expanding the theoretical basis of Processability Theory a theory of second language development that combines insights in the way speakers generate language and store their language knowledge to predict describe and explain developmental sequences (Pienemann 1998 2005). The aim of the book is to provide a forum for new perspectives focusing on three intersections: (1) the interface between morpho-syntax and discourse/pragmatics/semantics (2) constraints on processing and receptive processing and (3) developments in instructed second language learning. Each part also includes a response paper in which the new perspectives in terms of the theoretical challenges and/or the empirical results of the preceding chapters are discussed. This collection of articles and response papers will be very relevant to students and researchers interested in theoretical aspects of second language acquisition and more specifically Processability Theory and clearly indicates that the field is lively and open.
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2013 : Selected papers from 'Going Romance' Amsterdam 2013
Dec 2015
Book
The Going Romance conferences are a major European annual discussion forum for theoretically relevant research on Romance languages. This volume assembles a selection of the papers that were presented at the 27th edition of Going Romance which was organized by the University of Amsterdam in November 2013. The papers present the theoretical analysis of subjects that cover three main themes of interest within current Romance linguistics: word order the verb and the DP. The range of languages discussed is broad and includes not only standard continental but also non-continental Romance languages and not only standard languages but also dialectal variation. Furthermore Romance is analyzed not only from a synchronic perspective (including acquisition) but also from a diachronic point of view.
Beyond Aspect : The expression of discourse functions in African languages
Dec 2015
Book
Certain grammatical elements help hearers know how propositions are conceptually related: Does a given proposition advance the foregrounded event line or not? Initiate versus continue an event chain? Indicate that one proposition belongs to a different "mental space" from the previous one? Provide background information? Studies in this volume show that African languages sometimes support but often refute the idea that perfective aspect or past tense marks the narrative event line. Rather languages may employ clause level constructions conjunctions or connectives tonal melodies on verbs or subjects specialized auxiliaries special verb forms and even dependent clause and imperfective aspect forms. Often correlation of such grammatical elements with the event line is a subcase of a more general function. Analyses in this volume contribute to developing a typology of the expression of discourse functions a field of research which has so far been minimally addressed from a typological perspective.
How to do Linguistics with R : Data exploration and statistical analysis
Nov 2015
Book
This book provides a linguist with a statistical toolkit for exploration and analysis of linguistic data. It employs R a free software environment for statistical computing which is increasingly popular among linguists. How to do Linguistics with R: Data exploration and statistical analysis is unique in its scope as it covers a wide range of classical and cutting-edge statistical methods including different flavours of regression analysis and ANOVA random forests and conditional inference trees as well as specific linguistic approaches among which are Behavioural Profiles Vector Space Models and various measures of association between words and constructions. The statistical topics are presented comprehensively but without too much technical detail and illustrated with linguistic case studies that answer non-trivial research questions. The book also demonstrates how to visualize linguistic data with the help of attractive informative graphs including the popular ggplot2 system and Google visualization tools.
This book has a companion website: http://doi.org/10.1075/z.195.website
This book has a companion website: http://doi.org/10.1075/z.195.website
On Multiple Source Constructions in Language Change
Nov 2015
Book
In much writing on language change there is a tacit assumption that change operates on a single source construction to produce an innovative target construction. This volume challenges this assumption by showing that many changes involve interactions between multiple source constructions. In fact the involvement of multiple source constructions is unexceptional. The phenomenon is observed in phonology morphology syntax and semantics. It is seen in language-internal change as well as in contact-induced change. Interactions may obtain between independent but historically related constructions as well as between historically unrelated constructions. The contributions to this volume on the one hand present specific case studies on changes involving multiple source constructions in various domains of grammar and in a variety of languages. On the other hand they discuss how such changes can be accommodated in current theoretical models of language.
Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 37:3 (2013).
Originally published in Studies in Language Vol. 37:3 (2013).
The Acquisition of Reference
Nov 2015
Book
Referring to entities is one of the key functions of language; learning to understand and use the relevant referential expressions is one of children’s major linguistic achievements. The 13 chapters of this volume bring together a wealth of information on the acquisition of referential processes in infants pre-schoolers and school-age children drawing on data from more than 25 languages ranging from Italian to Inuktitut and from Norwegian to Turkish. This book presents the state-of-the-art of corpus and experimental research on the acquisition of reference. The breadth of aspects of referential acquisition will make the volume appealing to a wide audience of researchers including linguists and psycholinguists working on phonological morpho-syntactic and discourse-pragmatic aspects of language development. The cross-linguistic perspective adopted by several of the contributors will be of particular interest to researchers investigating the relevance of typological differences. The state-of-the-art approach makes the research accessible to specialist and non-specialist researchers alike and will provide an invaluable resource for graduate-level courses.
Verb Classes and Aspect
Nov 2015
Book
This volume offers a variety of perspectives on two of the main topics situated at the crossroads between lexical semantics and syntax namely: (a) aspect and its correspondence with syntactic structure; and (b) the delimitation of syntactic structures from verb classes. Almost from Aristotle’s Metaphysics it has been assumed that verbs invoke a mental image about the way in which eventualities are distributed over time. When it comes to determining time schemata the lexical class to which the verb belongs represents a first step. Speaking about verb classes does not exclusively mean a semantic similarity; rather verb classes exhibit a bundle of common features and thus show a set of recursive behavior patterns. Beyond the meaning of the verb both semantic and syntactic factors together with pragmatic ones play a decisive role when establishing the aspectual classification of an eventuality. The contributions collected in this book approach the aforementioned lines either analyzing the relationships between aspect and syntactic structure or traversing the path from a verb class to its syntactic manifestation. Some of them stress diachronic filiations while others include processes of word formation in the debate; some of them focus on certain classes such as movement verbs or psychological verbs while others examine specific constructions. A number of chapters also discuss relevant theoretical issues concerning the analysis of aspect. In sum the kaleidoscopic view provided by this book allows the reader to delve deeper into one of the most controversial – as well as exciting – topics within current linguistics.
The Phonetics–Phonology Interface : Representations and methodologies
Nov 2015
Book
This volume is a collection of advanced laboratory phonology research papers concerned with the interaction between the physical and the mental aspects of speech and language. The traditional linguistic theoretic distinction between phonetics and phonology is put to the test here in a series of articles that deal with some of the fundamental issues in the field from first and second language acquisition to segmental and supra-segmental phenomena in a range of different languages. Unique features of this volume are the development of innovative experimental methodologies advanced techniques of data analysis latest-generation equipment for the observation of speech and their combined critical application to the study of the phonetics-phonology interface. The volume is therefore not only of great interest but of outstanding value and importance to anyone who wishes to be completely apprised of the latest advances in this crucial area of phonological research.
The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns
Nov 2015
Book
This volume presents new research on the pragmatics of personal pronouns. Whereas personal pronouns used to have a reputation of poor substitutes for full NP’s recent research shows that personal pronouns are a fundamental if not universal category whose pragmatics is central to their understanding. For instance personal pronouns may indicate attentional continuity or social deixis and take on genre-specific pragmatic effects. The authors of the present collection investigate such effects and analyse competing forms in context (e.g. she / her in subject position) as well as their pragmatic functions in an extensive range of genres such as advertising TV series charity appeals mother/child interaction or computer-mediated communication. Moreover one section is devoted to the pragmatics of antecedentless pronouns and so-called ‘impersonal’ personal forms. The volume will be of interest to both scholars and students interested in the pragmatics of functional words.
New Perspectives on the Study of Ser and Estar
Oct 2015
Book
This is the first book entirely and exclusively devoted to the grammar of the two copular verbs ser and estar certainly one of the most intriguing features of Spanish grammar. Although the topic has long attracted the interest of scholars it had never given rise to a collection of papers that covers both theoretical issues in syntax and semantics and topics in the acquisition domain. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the central research questions concerning the ser / estar alternation: the syntactic or semantic nature of the distinction its link with aspect and with the Individual-Level / Stage-Level distinction and its connection with interface phenomena. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Hispanic linguistics but can be equally attractive for researchers working on Romance linguistics theoretical linguistics (syntax semantics pragmatics) acquisition theory and historical linguistics.
Afro-Peruvian Spanish : Spanish slavery and the legacy of Spanish Creoles
Oct 2015
Book
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.
Multimodality and Cognitive Linguistics
Oct 2015
Book
The aim of this volume is to advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of the relationship between Multimodality and Cognitive Linguistics. The innovative nature of the volume in relation to those existing in the field lies in the fact that it brings together contributions from three of the main approaches dealing with Multimodality – Cognitive Linguistics and multimodal metaphors (Forceville & Urios Aparisi 2009) social semiotics and systemic functional grammar and multimodal interactional analysis (Jewitt 2009) –highlighting the importance of multimodal resources and showing the close relationship between this field of study and Cognitive Linguistics applied to a variety of genres –ranging from comics films cartoons picturebooks or visuals in tapestry to name a few. Originally published in Review of Cognitive Linguistics Vol. 11:2 (2013).
The Acquisition of the Present
Oct 2015
Book
This is the first edited volume that tackles the acquisition of the present (tense aspect temporality) an under-researched area particularly compared to the acquisition of past temporality. The first two chapters focus on the L1 acquisition of English from the perspective of the Aspect hypothesis and the Verb-Island hypothesis Wang & Shirai) and the L1 acquisition of French from the perspective of the zero-tense hypothesis (Demirdache & Lungu). The remaining chapters tackle the L2 acquisition of English (Liszka Al-Thubaiti Vraciu) French (Ayoun Saillard) Spanish (Gabriele et al.) Russian (Martelle) and Japanese (Shirai & Li) by learners of different L1s (French English Arabic Chinese and Korean) testing various semantic and syntactic hypotheses. The last chapter presents a summary of the findings and offers a few conclusions as well as broad directions for future research.
Head Movement in Syntax
Oct 2015
Book
Head Movement in Syntax argues that verb movement is a narrow syntactic phenomenon that can affect locality constraints. The altered locality domains are detectable from the way certain phrasal elements such as a phrase containing a Wh are forced to undergo movement. The basic idea explored in the book dates back to Chomsky (1986) where the movement of a verb is proposed to be able to affect and alter a barrier. This idea is translated into contemporary minimalist apparatus to capture locality conditions with Wh movement in Malayalam a Dravidian language spoken in Southern India providing the necessary data. The book also points out that analysing Wh movement in Malayalam as a sub-case of Focus movement is untenable and offers a fresh perspective on Wh-in-situ versus Wh-movement. In addition the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the pronominal system in Malayalam a language that violates the canonical binding conditions.
A Grammar of Mandarin
Oct 2015
Book
A fascinating description of a global language A Grammar of Mandarin combines broad perspectives with illuminating depth. Crammed with examples from everyday conversations it aims to let the language speak for itself. The book opens with an overview of the language situation and a thorough account of Mandarin speech sounds. Nine core chapters explore syntactic morphological and lexical dimensions. A final chapter traces the Chinese character script from oracle-bone inscriptions to today’s digital pens.
This work will cater to language learners and linguistic specialists alike. Easy reference is provided by more than eighty tables figures appendices and a glossary. The main text is enriched by sections in finer print offering further analysis and reflection. Example sentences are fully glossed translated and explained from diverse angles with a keen eye for recent linguistic change. This grammar in short reveals a Mandarin language in full swing.
This work will cater to language learners and linguistic specialists alike. Easy reference is provided by more than eighty tables figures appendices and a glossary. The main text is enriched by sections in finer print offering further analysis and reflection. Example sentences are fully glossed translated and explained from diverse angles with a keen eye for recent linguistic change. This grammar in short reveals a Mandarin language in full swing.
Rethinking Syntactocentrism : Architectural issues and case studies at the syntax-pragmatics interface
Oct 2015
Book
The term ‘syntactocentrism’ has been used to criticize the claim that syntax as regarded in generative linguistics plays the central role in modeling the mental architecture of the human language faculty. This research monograph explores the conjecture that many of the objections to the generative perspective as they are formulated in alternative frameworks such as construction grammar disappear once the consequences of recent minimalist theory are taken seriously. To show this the book applies recent concepts of minimalist grammar to phenomena like the syntactic flexibility of idioms the pragmatics of left-periphery-movement or opacity effects involved in subextraction patterns. The book makes a new contribution to the field as existing monographs on architectural matters in minimalism neither discuss alternative frameworks at length nor place a premium on pragmatic explanations for syntactic facts. The primary audience of this book are researchers and graduate students interested in a state-of-the-art discussion of grammatical architecture.
Historical Linguistics 2013 : Selected papers from the 21st International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oslo, 5-9 August 2013
Oct 2015
Book
The International Conference on Historical Linguistics is the main conference for specialists in language change and the 2013 conference in Oslo drew more than 300 participants with 182 papers presented in the general session. The 16 papers selected for inclusion in this volume from the general session of ICHL 2013 not only provide a clear picture of the state of the art in various subfields of historical linguistics but also present recent insights in diachronic phonology typology morphology and morphosyntax. The languages and families covered include English German Scandinavian French Occitan Portuguese Sardinian Spanish Ancient Greek Old Japanese and Austronesian. The volume will be useful to any linguist with an interest in diachronic matters as well as general linguistic theory.
Adverbs : Functional and diachronic aspects
Sept 2015
Book
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.
Implicit and Explicit Learning of Languages
Sept 2015
Book
Implicit learning is a fundamental feature of human cognition. Many essential skills including language comprehension and production intuitive decision making and social interaction are largely dependent on implicit (unconscious) knowledge. Given its relevance it is not surprising that the study of implicit learning plays a central role in the cognitive sciences. The present volume brings together eminent researchers from a variety of fields (e.g. cognitive psychology linguistics education cognitive neuroscience developmental psychology) in order to assess the progress made in the study of implicit and explicit learning to critically evaluate key concepts and methodologies and to determine future directions to take in this interdisciplinary enterprise. The eighteen chapters in this volume are written in an accessible and engaging fashion; together they provide the reader with a comprehensive snapshot of the exciting current work on the implicit and explicit learning of languages.
The Lexis and Lexicogrammar of Sri Lankan English
Sept 2015
Book
This book offers the first in-depth corpus-based description of written Sri Lankan English. In comparison to British and Indian English lexical and lexicogrammatical features of Sri Lankan English are analysed in a complex corpus environment comprising data from the respective components of the International Corpus of English newspapers and online sources to explore the status of Sri Lankan English as a variety in its own right. The evolution of Sri Lankan English is depicted against the background of historical as well as sociolinguistic considerations and allows deriving a fine-grained model of the emergence of distinctive structural profiles of postcolonial Englishes developing in a multitude of norm orientations. This book is highly relevant to readers interested in Sri Lankan English and South Asian Englishes. It also offers more general sociolinguistic perspectives on the dynamics of postcolonial Englishes world-wide and on the inextricable link between language and identity.
Case in Russian : A sign-oriented approach
Sept 2015
Book
This volume presents an analysis of Russian case from a sign-oriented perspective. The study was inspired by William Diver’s analysis of Latin case and follows the spirit of the Columbia School of linguistics. The fundamental premise that underlies this volume is that language is a communicative tool shaped by human behavior.In this study case is viewed as a semantic entity. Each case is assigned an invariant meaning within a larger semantic system which is validated through numerous examples from spoken language and literary texts to illustrate that the distribution of cases is semantically motivated and defined by communicative principles that can be associated with human behavior.
Signs and Structures : Formal Approaches to Sign Language Syntax
Sept 2015
Book
As sign language linguistics has become an important and prodigious field of research in the last few decades it comes as no surprise that the repertoire of methodological approaches to the study of the communication of the Deaf has also expanded considerably. While earlier work on sign languages was often focused on providing arguments for them being full-fledged linguistic systems current debates do no longer center on whether visual-spatial grammars are worth being researched but on how this type of research should be conducted. This book contains a selection of papers that could be thought of as a good representative sample of current trends in formal approaches to the study of sign language syntax. It illustrates how generative research on the communication of the Deaf may contribute to our understanding of the syntax of natural languages in general and indicates to what extent it is possible to integrate advances in the analysis of visual-spatial grammar with current spoken language research.
Originally published in Sign Language & Linguistics 16:2 (2013).
Originally published in Sign Language & Linguistics 16:2 (2013).
Romance Linguistics 2012 : Selected papers from the 42nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Cedar City, Utah, 20-22 April 2012
Aug 2015
Book
This volume contains a selection of nineteen peer-reviewed papers from the 42nd annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) held at Southern Utah University in Cedar City Utah in 2012. The contributions cover a wide range of current topics in the areas of phonetics phonology syntax interfaces and diachronic Romance linguistics with an emphasis on experimental approaches in connection to L1 and L2 acquisition code-switching and psycholinguistics. Among the languages and varieties of Romance analyzed are French (Old Modern and Norman) Portuguese (Brazilian and Classical) and Spanish (Modern and Judeo-Spanish) but also Italo-Romance Latin and Romanian. In a comparative tradition the discussions extend to languages outside Romance such as dialects of Arabic Germanic and Palenquero creole. This collection of papers at the forefront of research contributes to our understanding of Romance languages and to the influence of Romance linguistics and will be of interest to scholars in Romance and general linguistics.
Structures, Strategies and Beyond : Studies in honour of Adriana Belletti
Aug 2015
Book
The volume contains 18 contributions from senior and junior scholars covering core issues within the theoretical investigation of the architecture and the mechanisms of the faculty of language with particular emphasis on the computational component. They all pursue a comparative approach investigating and comparing different languages and dialects or comparing different modes of acquisition as in Adriana Belletti’s work to whom the volume is dedicated. The papers in the first part (by Chomsky Rizzi Bianchi & Chesi Cinque Costa Calabrese) deal with theoretical issues such as labeling the cartography of structures and the locality of derivations in a broad sense. The papers in the second part (by Haegeman & Lohndal Delfitto & Fiorin Cruschina Lahousse Di Domenico and Contemori Dal Pozzo & Matteini) concentrate on the realization of structure relative to discourse particularly on topic and focus positions in the vP periphery and on referential dependencies. The third part collects papers (by Cardinaletti & Volpato Friedmann Yachini & Szterman Snyder & Hyams Hamann & Tuller Cecchetto & Donati Grewendorf & Poletto) that specifically target intervention effects in relative clauses as apparent in different structures different languages and different populations.
The Acquisition of Inflection in Q’anjob’al Maya
Aug 2015
Book
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.
Germanic Heritage Languages in North America : Acquisition, attrition and change
Aug 2015
Book
This book presents new empirical findings about Germanic heritage varieties spoken in North America: Dutch German Pennsylvania Dutch Icelandic Norwegian Swedish West Frisian and Yiddish and varieties of English spoken both by heritage speakers and in communities after language shift. The volume focuses on three critical issues underlying the notion of ‘heritage language’: acquisition attrition and change. The book offers theoretically-informed discussions of heritage language processes across phonetics and phonology morphology syntax and semantics and the lexicon in addition to work on sociolinguistics historical linguistics and contact settings. With this the volume also includes a variety of frameworks and approaches synchronic and diachronic. Most European Germanic languages share some central linguistic features such as V2 gender and agreement in the nominal system and verb inflection. As minority languages faced with a majority language like English similarities and differences emerge in patterns of variation and change in these heritage languages. These empirical findings shed new light on mechanisms and processes.
Traveling Conceptualizations : A cognitive and anthropological linguistic study of Jamaican
Aug 2015
Book
Traveling Conceptualizations is a monograph which is concerned with African cultural conceptualizations in Jamaican. It contributes to the study of Transatlantic relations between Africa and Jamaica and in particular to the understanding of African influences in Jamaican linguistic practices. The book constitutes a first study of these phenomena from a cognitive-linguistic perspective and investigates traveling conceptualizations at the intersection of language culture and cognition. The author explores Jamaican linguistic practices in different domains namely conceptualizations involving parts of the (human) body conceptualizations of events roles and relations underlying serial verb constructions and conceptualizations of kinship and names. The study can be regarded as an innovative contribution as it looks not only at linguistic expressions on the surface but discusses the underlying cultural and cognitive basis of semantic structures. The study thus aims at making African-Jamaican connections on the conceptual level visible and also discusses notions of consciousness agency and emblematicity.
Specific Language Impairment : Current trends in research
Aug 2015
Book
This volume is dedicated to the field of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) addressing important research questions including: the interrelation of genetic and cognitive profiles of individuals with SLI; the comorbidity issue and clinical boundaries between SLI and other developmental disorders; cross-linguistic manifestations of SLI; and theory-motivated therapy approaches to individuals with SLI. This volume brings together researchers with different scientific backgrounds and research disciplines challenging current points of view and offering new perspectives on issues of SLI and developmental disorders.
Voice and Argument Structure in Baltic
Aug 2015
Book
The second volume in the VARGReB series deals with voice in the wider sense encompassing both alternations that preserve semantic valency with passives as the most typical instance and valency-changing devices such as the causative. Regarding the former special attention is given to event-structural conditions on passivization non-canonical passives and the relation between passives and (active) impersonals. Papers dealing with causatives focus on valency patterns and argument marking in canonical as well as extended uses of causative morphology. Other articles consider converse constructions and the argument structure of middles which seem to hold a position between voice in the narrow sense and valency-changing operations. An introductory article provides background information on the repertoire of voice alternations in Baltic from a cross-linguistic perspective. Representing different approaches and methods the contributions to this volume offer fine-grained analyses of data from contemporary Latvian and Lithuanian.