Browse Books

“The semantics of grammar” presents a radically semantic approach to syntax and morphology. It offers a methodology which makes it possible to demonstrate on an empirical basis that syntax is neither “autonomous” nor “arbitrary” but that it follows from “semantics”. It is shown that every grammatical construction encodes a certain semantic structure which can be revealed and rigorously stated so that the meanings encoded in grammar can be compared in a precise and illuminating way within one language and across language boundaries. The author develops a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals or near-universals (and ultimately on a system of universal semantic primitives) and shows that the same semantic metalanguage can be used for explicating lexical grammatical and pragmatic aspects of language and thus offers a method for an integrated linguistic description based on semantic foundations. Analyzing data from a number of different languages (including English Russian and Japanese) the author explores the notion of ethnosyntax and via semantics links syntax and morphology with culture. She attemps to demonstrate that the use of a semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals makes it possible to rephrase the Humboldt-Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested and treated as a program for empirical research.

This volume brings together a number of papers by Vivian Salmon previously published in various journals and collections that are unfamiliar and perhaps even inaccessible to historians of the study of language. The central theme of the volume is the study of language in England in the 17th century. Papers in the first section treat aspects of the history of language teaching. The second section consists of three articles on the history of grammatical theory. The papers in the third and final section deal with the search for the ‘universal language’.

This volume brings together 18 original papers dealing with voice-related phenomena.The languages dealt with represent both typological and geographic diversity ranging from accusative-type languages to ergative-type and Philippine-type languages and from Australia to Africa and Siberia. The studies presented here open up many possibilities for theorizing and offer data inviting formal treatments but the most important contribution they make is in terms of the insights they offer for a better understanding of the fundamentals of voice phenomena.

The great diversity of contexts in which the term Postmodernism is currently encountered reflects the remarkable success of a coinage that has been in circulation for only about forty years. It has been used by philosophers sociologists art critics and literary historians to become finally a household word in the language of advertising and politics. Before letting it fade to a derelict cliché an attempt is made in this volume of essays to use its potential as a cultural concept for the analysis and understanding of contemporary literature and thought.

The American courtroom trial is a speech situation. Everything occurs through the spoken word. The 'summation' as speech event embedded within the trial which is the chronological and psychological culmination of it is one of the few opportunities for the lawyer to communicate directly with jurors. But the speech genre summation involves preliminaries as well as the event itself; and it can affect the aftermath of the trial for the decisions of the jurors may be influenced by this discourse.This ethnographic study considers the summation from three perspectives: that of the producer from the point of view of the ethnographer who observed and analyzed sixty-six actual summations and from that of the receivers of the speech event who must act upon it. Information was obtained from post-deliberation questionnaires completed by 223 jurors plus 35 alternate jurors.

Clahsen geht es in seinem neuen Buch um eine prazise empirische Theorie des kindlichen Spracherwerbs. Er argumentiert fur einige zentrale Bestandteile einer solchen Theorie die groîenteils im Kontext linguistischer Theoriebildung stehen. Fur diesen Zweck werden vergleichende Spracherwerbsuntersuchungen durchgefuhrt. Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen ist der Grammatikerwerb des Deutschen unter verschiedenartigen Bedingungen. In Teil I werden die wichtigsten Phasen des normalen Erstspracherwerbs rekonstruiert in Teil II wird dieser mit den Ausfallen beim gestorten Spracherwerb konfrontiert und in einem abschliessenden Exkurs werden die Besonderheiten des naturlichen Zweitspracherwerbs von Erwachsenen dargestellt und dem kindlichen Erstspracherwerb gegenubergestellt.

This study views the pervasive ambiguity of Chretien's romances as a positive quality and focuses on the techniques used in Yvain to encourage reflection. An adversative structure informs this romance setting up a disconcerting rhythm of false belief and reversal which forces the reader/listener (like the hero) to question all that meets the eyes and ears. Grimbert's discussion ranges broadly and authoritatively over subjects from narrative omniscience and reliability ... to character to rhetoric and the duplicity of language”. Norris J. Lacy French Review 63.2 (1989).

Since the pioneering analyses of Renward Brandstetter (1860–1942) a quasi-morphological element called the ‘root’ has been recognized in Austronesian linguistics. This monograph confronts many of the methodological and substantive issues raised but never fully resolved by Brandstetter. In an effort to reassess the value of his work for contemporary linguistics the author examines Brandstetter’s methods and results and applies a modified from of this approach to new material. The study establishes 230 roots based on more than 2560 root tokens in some 117 languages. It is thus intended to serve as a rudimentary root dictionary and a basic handbook on the subject of the root for future scholars of Austronesian.

This is a study of a specific type of everyday conversation whose essential hallmark is its participants' attempt to gain agreement and consent when establishing and maintaining a continuous and coherent flow of talk. Basing his analyses on the Survey'-corpus and resorting to an interpretative reconstructive mode of description Bublitz focusses on two main phenomena: (a) discourse topic and topical actions (like INTRODUCING and CHANGING A TOPIC or DIGRESSING from it) (b) hearer signals and reactive speaker contributions. The interlocutors' topic-centered and topic-organizing behaviour is shown to be predominantly and systematically oriented towards supporting their fellow-speakers to the extent that it seems to be justified to regard large parts of these conversations as having a monological character'.

The papers in this volume tell the story of a profession that is responding in a number of different ways to the advances in computer technology – of professionals who are streamlining their work reducing repetitive tasks eliminating manual operations and in general increasing their productivity while at the same time achieving a more interesting and relaxed environment.

n recent years the post structuralist theories seem to have created a split in theatrological research. But as André Helbo analyses in this book a dialectic theory of the semiotic and the symbolic exchange bring to light a specific paradigm. From his wide experience as a semiotician and a theatrologist the author has developed an analysis for the theory of spectacle. Focusing his study on a critical theory of the performing arts and examining the fundamental controversies he then offers new perspectives and new instruments of analysis: the social aspects readability/visibility coherence the spectacle contract.

The aim of the present work is to study the main distributional and transformational properties of verbs with a non-prepositional sentential complement in the two-argument sentence in Spanish.

In the Imitation and the Image of Man James S. Hans presents his conception of the mimetic. His primary goal to this study is to broaden several kinds of discourse: first to redfine our conception of the literary; second to expand our ideas of the kinds of things that can be treated together; third to enrich our understanding of the possibilities of the form of the essay; and fourth to articulate the need for these changes in terms of a non-linear theory of imitation.

The doctrines of transformational-generative grammar (as promulgated in 1957 with frequent later emendations) have on occasion been criticised sometimes severely. Such criticism have however appeared mostly in article-form and mostly in relatively inaccessible places. Discussions in bookform have been rare. In this book the criticism offered by Professor Hall over more than twenty years have been brought together. They cover the range of linguistic structure (phonology morphosyntax and semantics) general theory and the history of linguistics. In these essays the many short-comings of transformational-generative grammar are revealed by critical examination with inevitably negative conclusions. The two final essays of the book deal with parallel aberrations in current literary theory especially Derridian “radical skepticism concerning language” and “deconstruction” as viewed from a linguistic stand-point.

This monograph is intended as a contribution to the integral description of language and verbal communication. Chapter I and Chapters VII and VIII are concerned with general problems of emotivity and expressivity in language as such and on all linguistic levels. These chapters describe emotivity from a new semiotic perspective and suggest a typology of emotive signs and meanings. Chapter II discusses general methodology of investigating and "measuring" emotive meaning in the area of word-formation (with examples from Russian). Chapters III IV and V treat Russian diminutives fromgeneral-structural lexical-contextual and pragmatic perspectives while Chapter VI presents a comparison of the semantic structures of the various types of emotive noun derivatives which exist in Russian. The book thus begins with a general treatment on emotivity goes on to consider the specific case of emotive noun-formation giving special attention to the Russian diminutives and then returns by way of a comparison of the semantic structures of various types of emotive nouns to more general problems of emotivity in language and to semiotic typology.

In all disciplines there are specifiable basic concepts our universes of discourse which define special areas of inquiry. Semiotics is that ‘science of sciences’ which inquires into all processes of inquiry and which seeks to discover methods of inquiry. Peirce held that semiotics was to be the method of methods. An account of semiotic method should distinguish between the way the term ‘sign’ is used in semiotics and the various ways this term was meant in nearly all the traditional disciplines. In this monograph Roberta Kevelson minutely explores Charles S. Peirce’s method of methods.

With English and Portuguese as parent languages; the significant lexical retention of African languages; and the relative isolation of its speakers Saramaccan has always stood out among Creole languages. Yet despite its obvious interest Saramaccan received little in the way of scholarly study. This groundbraking monograph dispels the mystery surrounding Saramaccan and provides strong evidence for a new approach to Creole origins. The study is carried out within the government-binding framework. The author shows how Saramaccan comes close to demonstrating what constitues the irreducible minimum of building blocks with which a language can be constructed and the types of structure which must develop under such conditions. In this work Frank Byrne combines the outcome of patient and persevering fieldwork with a firm grasp of current theoretical issues and provides us with the insights into the nature of universal grammar of which a Creole like Saramaccan is potentially capable.

In this monograph the nature of processing strategies is explored in some detail with an attempt to cut through the maze of often contradictory and confused proposals concerning the nature and form of various strategies. Once a preliminary conception of the nature of cognitive strategies and a hypothesis of how they interact with linguistic structures has been reached it will be explored how such strategies are employed by examining experiments which address the role played by certain of these strategies in the comprehension and production of sentences. The authors draw a distinction between a strategy on the one hand and a grammatical structure on the other. They argued that in principle strategies ought to be formulated as language-independent cognitively based operations which are involved in cognitive domains other than language but which in language processing interact with language-specific structures to facilitate processing. Moreover strategies are not linguistic rules since unlike rules they permit exceptions and express tendencies rather than firm yes-no choices.

This monograph lays the foundation for a prosodological theory of Tibeto-Burman languages within a comparative and reconstructional framework. It is primarily based on data collections of mostly unknown languages on which the author worked for more than 10 years on several projects. This comparative study of tonology represents a significant contribution not only to the historical-comparative study of Tibeto-Burman but also to the larger field of linguistic theory especially now that the subject increasingly begins to be approached along diachronic lines. With this in mind it is hoped that this work will provoke future research in the field.

Why was Leibniz so deeply interested in signs and language? What role does this interest play in his philosophical system? In the essays here collected Marcello Dascal attempts to tackle these questions from different angles. They bring to light aspects of Leibniz’s work on these and related issues which have been so far neglected. As a rule they take as their starting point Leibniz's early writings (some unpublished some only available in Latin) on characters and cognition on definition on truth on memory on grammar on the specific problems of religious discourse and so on. An effort has been made to relate the views expressed in these writings both to Leibniz’ more mature views and to the conceptions prevailing in his time as well as in preceding and following periods. The common thread running through all the essays is to what extent language and signs in their most varied forms are related to cognitive processes according to Leibniz and his contemporaries.

The basic question of this monograph is: how should we go about judging arguments to be reasonable or unreasonable? Our concern will be with argument in a broad sense with realistic arguments in natural language. The basic object will be to engage in a normative study of determining what factors standards or procedures should be adopted or appealed to in evaluating an argument as “good” “not-so-good” “open to criticism” “fallacious” and so forth. Hence our primary concern will be with the problems of how to criticize an argument and when a criticism is reasonably justified.

The study of Greek and Roman language science has figured prominently in the remarkable renascence of interest in the history of linguistics of the last twenty years. We know more now than we did several decades ago about what the Greeks and Romans were thinking writing and doing in matters grammatical and the scholars who contribute to this volume are among the ones who are responsible for that happy circumstance. The contents of this book bear ample testimony to the enhanced and enlarged understanding and appreciation of ancient grammar that we now enjoy. Each article in this volume has something new to say about the history of linguistics in the classical period and each author insists that we need to return to ancient texts time and time again and that we need to read them even more carefully. The rethinking so conspicuous in much of the recent scholarship in this field is pointing in the direction of a new historiographical model of Greek and Latin linguistic science. The text of this volume has also been published in Historiographia Linguistica XIII:2/3

Collected here are eleven papers devoted to various aspects of the orthography/phonology interface. Topics include spelling-to-sound correspondence for English French and Russian the design of a generative phonology for orthography data-base access the linguistic sign and orthographic and phonological error the analysis of Greenlandic school children’s spelling errors the orthographic representation of phonemic nasalization and its implications for prosodic theory the psycholinguistics of phonological recoding in reading orthography as a variable in psycholinguistic experiments spelling and dialect orthography and the typology of phonological rules and orthography and historical phonology.

Usan is a Papuan language. In this monograph on the grammatical structures of Usan and their function the author shows the unique features of this language: how speakers can exploit certain principles for communicative purposes how the language reflects their physical environment. Uniqueness can only be shown in the context of communality with other languages. This monograph offers numerous occasions to observe similarities and differences between Usan and other language those that can be called Papuan in particular.

Natural Morphology is the term the four authors of this monograph agreed on to cover the leitmotifs of their common and individual approaches in questions of theoretical morphology. The introduction summarizes the basic concepts and strategies of Natural Morphology to be followed by Mayerthaler who deals with universal properties of inflectional morphology and Wurzel with typological ones which depend on language specific properties of inflectional systems and Dressler with universal and typological properties of word formation. The final chapter by Panagl is an indepth study of diachronic evidence for productivity in word formation and for the overlap of word formation with inflectional morphology.

This volume brings together papers originally presented at a seminar series on Speculative Grammar Universal Grammar and Philosophical Analysis held at the University of Bologna in 1984. The seminars aimed at considering various aspects of the interplay between linguistic theories on the one hand and theories of meaning and logic on the other. The point of view was mainly historical but a theoretical approach was also considered relevant. Theories of grammar and related topics were taken as a focal point of interest; their interaction with philosophical reflections on languages was examined in presentations dealing with different authors and periods ranging from the Middle Ages to the present day.

In recent years the language of Shakespearean drama has been described in a number of publications intended mainly for the undergraduate student or general reader but the studies in academic journals to which they refer are not always easily accessible even though they are of great interest to the general reader and essential for the specialist. The purpose of this collection is therefore to bring together some of the most valuable of these studies which in discussing various aspects of the language of the early 17th century as exemplified in Shakespearean drama provide the reader with deeper insights into the meaning of Shakespearean text often by reference to the social literary and linguistic context of the time.

This volume in honour of Michael Halliday begins with a section on the background to the development of MAK’s ideas. The second section groups papers on language development in early childhood which has always been one of Halliday’s main interests. The focus of the third section is on aspects of synchronic and diachronic change in language. Halliday has always emphasised the dynamic interaction between these two perspectives in relation to language use in social contexts. The final section caters to Halliday’s interest in ethnographic anthropological and educational issues and explore language use in a diversity of world contexts.

This is an interesting book that provides a sane analysis of the relation between form and meaning in the fabliaux. It will henceforth be standard reading for those dealing with what nevertheless remains one of the most problematic genres of Old French Literature for the modern scholar.Keith Busby Speculum — A Journal of Medieval Studies Jan. 1990

This volume seeks to expand our understanding of the relation holding between discourse relations cognitive units and linguistic coding. The twenty contributions in this collection explore one or more of the following themes: How point of view or the salience of information in discourse affects the organizational coherence of text and discourse; the concept of cognitive and linguistic event and how events are reflected in text and discourse organization; the nature of linguistic coding of events and other kinds of significant information; and the cognitive bases or cognitive correlates of the linguistic organization of discourse.

This textbook is designed to fill two basic needs. One is for a clear and straightforward presentation of the rudiments of articulatory phonetics which is geared specifically to the requirements of the (future) language teacher and not exclusively to the student of linguistics and in which the basic concepts and terminology are introduced via English as opposed to a variety of languages. An even greater need perhaps and one that has gone unfulfilled for too long is for a simple but reasonably complete overview of the phonetic inventory of North American French.

Die Destruktion der rationalen Psychologie als Doktrin ist dem gängigen Urteil nach das Verdienst von David Humes Essay Of the Immortality of the Soul und Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Hume und Kant stellen aber nur Höhepunkte einer Bewegung dar deren Beginn wesentlich früher anzusetzen ist.

Die Frage nach der Unsterblichkeit der Seele gehörte in Mittelalter und Renaissance zu den meistdiskutierten und meistumkämpften Themen. Die Studie stellt in detaillierten Analysen die damalige Tradition der methodologisch streng philosophischen Kritik an den Unsterblichkeitsbeweisen vor die über Heinrich von Harclay und Wilhelm von Ockham Johannes Buridan und seine Schule (Peter von Ailly Lorenz von Lindores Heinrich Olting von Oyta Marsilius von Inghen Paul von Worczyn Benedikt Hesse von Krakau Biagio Pelacani von Parma) zu Pietro Pomponazzi führt. Dabei wird auch eingegangen auf die Verbindungen Martin Luthers zu dieser Tradition. Die Darstellung des Einflusses dieser Tradition auf die deutsche Aufklärung schließt die Studie ab.

Ein umfangreicher Anhang bietet erstmalig zahlreiche aus den Handschriften erhobene Texte der genannten philosophischen Richtung deren hier präzis nachgewiesenes kritisches Potential für ganze Epochen der Geistesgeschichte konstitutiv gewesen ist.

Interessierte: Historiker der Philosophie des Mittelalters der Renaissance und der Aufklärung.

The Ṛgveda is the oldest of the books that comprise the scriptures of Hinduism. While its age cannot be accurately determined it can be said with reasonable certainty that it must have existed in its present form at least as early as 1000 BC. It consists of 1028 hymns arranged according to the form in which the Ṛgveda has been transmitted in ten divisions called maṇḍalas. This volume consists of a selection of hymns translated into English and annotated as well as short introductions to the Ṛgveda as a whole and the different themes around which the selected hymns are grouped a bibliography and an index.

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

This study sheds light on the problem of communicative inequality neglected both by linguists and communication scholars among speakers of different languages. It provides a four-step Critical Theory analysis of language-based inequality and distortion between speakers of a few dominant languages especially English and speakers of minority languages in the context of international and intercultural communication. Based on a theoretical framework of “Distorted Communication” developed by J. Habermas and C. Müller the analysis focuses on a critical description definition and interpretation of “Distorted Intercultural Communication” and exposes the ideology that legitimates linguistic inequality and distortion in communication.

This volume brings together the papers published in Historiographia Linguistica 9:3 (1982) which was devoted to the history of linguistics in Italy with Marazzini’s paper first published in Historiographia Linguistica 10:1/2 (1983) and an original article by Franco Lo Piparo expressly written for this volume. The present volume provides in addition an index of subjects as well as an index of names which supplies bio-bibliographical references to authors discussed.

This bibliography of semiotic studies covering the years 1975-1985 impressively reveals the world-wide intensification in the field. During this decade national semiotic societies have been founded allover the world; a great number of international national and local semiotic conferences have taken place; the number of periodicals and book series devoted to semiotics has increased as has the number of books and dissertations in the field. This bibliography is the result of a dedicated effort to approach complete coverage.

Designed to help lexicographers compile better dictionaries of English this book provides information about the language that is not available in any other single source. It is the first serious attempt to describe in detail the lexical and grammatical differences between American and British English and offers a trailblazing solution to the vexing problem of how to treat General American and British RP pronunciation in the same dictionary with the help of a Simplified Transcription for which any typewriter keyboard can be adapted and a pioneering description of the principles concerning the treatment of fixed grammatical and lexical collocations in future general-purpose dictionaries of English.

Translation from the original Russian edition. The first Soviet text-book on sociolinguistics the book introduces the reader to some of its basic problems such as language and social structure language as a social factor language and nation language and culture language and the sociology of an individual sociolinguistics and Marxist sociology. It focuses on such theoretical issues as the subject-matter of sociolinguistics the functioning of sociocommunicative systems language policy and social aspects of verbal behavior.

The Jesuit educational system with its successful applications in all parts of the world for several centuries is one of the most durable influential and far-reaching experiments in the history of education. In this monograph Aldo Scaglione explores the complex genesis of the system which it regards essentially as a heritage of Renaissance Humanism; the impact of both Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation on it; and its conflicts with the secular traditions and systems with which it competed through the centuries.

Le présent ouvrage composé de deux volumes réunit la documentation la plus complète et variée qui existe à ce jour dans la matière. Conçu comme un authentique travail collectif il examine les mouvements littéraires d’avant-garde de 1905–1910 à 1975 successivement sous les angles diachronique (histoire et typologie: vol. I) et synchronique (tendances esthétiques genres et procédés relation avec les beaux-arts la science et la technique perspectives sociologiques réception critique: vol. II). Plus de cinquante auteurs originaires d’une zone s'étendant de la Suède et de la Roumanie à l’Argentine et aux États-Unis ont collaboré ici axant leurs enquêtes sur des objectifs analogues confrontant leurs résultats résolvant nombre de problèmes en soulevant d’autres prospectant non seulement tous les pays d’Europe et d’Amérique mais jusqu’à l’Afrique du Nord le Proche-Orient et les Antilles. L’ensemble complexe et fouillé offre néanmoins une image cohérente du sujet non point dogmatique mais nuancée.



Comme l’exigeait la matière l’analyse des textes va de pair avec celle des idées d’intentions et de comportements qui constituent au même titre que poèmes romans ou pièces de théâtre la spécificité des avant-gardes et qui sont parfois devenus monnaie courante aujourd’hui dans les beaux-arts et même dans la vie quotidienne. Complément des volumes publiés par Ulrich Weisstein (Expressionism as an International Literary Phenomenon) et Ana Balakian (The Symbolist Movement in the Literature of European Languages) l’ouvrage retrace l’une des aventures les plus passionnantes du siècle.

The first major comparative study of African writing in western languages European-language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa edited by Albert S. Gérard falls into four wide-ranging sections: an overview of early contacts and colonial developments “Under Western Eyes”; chapters on “Black Consciousness” manifest in the debates over Panafricanism and Negritude; a group of essays on mental decolonization expressed in “Black Power” texts at the time of independence struggles; and finally “Comparative Vistas” sketching directions that future comparative study might explore. An introductory essay stresses the millennia of writing in Africa side by side with a richly eloquent and artistic set of vernacular oral traditions; written and oral traditions have become interwoven in adaptations of imported forms and linguistic innovations that challenge traditional “high” literary norms. Gérard uses the mathematical concept of “fuzzy sets” to explain why the focus on “Black Africa” has led him to set aside for future analysis the literatures produced in North Africa which fall under the influence of Muslim civilization as well as the diasporic literatures of the New World. Over sixty scholars from twenty-two countries contribute specialized studies of creative writing by leading authors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Achebe Mphahlele Ngugi Senghor Soyinka and Tutuola. Critical analyses are organized primarily around regions reflecting different colonial languages imposed through schools and other social institutions. Some authors trace the adaptation of western genres others identify syncretism with folktales or myths. The volumes are attentive to the heterogeneity of national literatures addressed to polyethnic and multilingual populations and they note the instrumental politics of language in newly independent states. A closing chapter “Tasks Ahead” identifies areas for future scholars to explore.

The research reported in this volume attempts to refine our understanding of persuasive messages of television advertising by studying the role of language in persuasion in two ways. First it comprises an attempt to refine our understanding of how language might function in persuasion by examining relevant work from a variety of related disciplines potentially germane either in terms of their theoretical approaches to the process or in terms of the actual linguistic techniques which they have suggested as enhancing the persuasive impact of a message. Second a comparative study was undertaken in order to test the generalizability of the linguistic features found to characterize persuasive language in television advertising.

Most dictionaries have forerunners and all have imitators; an understanding of the historical foundations of dictionary-making is therefore one of the preconditions of further progress in academic lexicography. The papers in this volume which were presented at the 1986 Exeter Seminar survey most of the lexicographical traditions in the world some tracing them right back to their beginnings. The programme was divided into eight sessions with the following concentrations of topics: (1) three classical traditions (2) the early history of European lexicography (3) the beginnings of English lexicography (4) further aspects of English lexicography (5) the background of diverse national developments (6) specific features of national developments (7) pioneers of three genres (8) recent trends in the English dictionary.

This study is an attempt to uncover the structure of three emotion concepts: anger pride and love. The results indicate that the conceptual structure associated with these emotions consists of four parts: (1) a system of metaphors (2) a system of metonymies (3) a system of related concepts and (4) a category of cognitive models with a prototypical model in the center. This goes against an influential view of the structure of concepts in linguistics psychology anthropology according to which the structure of a concept can be represented by a small number of sense components.

The present study uses modern Molière criticism as a way of understanding Mme de Sévigné. In both Molière and Mme de Sévigné there is evidence of esprit or wit that intellectual facility which perceives contrasts. Moliéresque critical theory would call this perception the "Imposteur" technique. As the opening lines of Molière's Lettre sur l'Imposteur propose it is a "discours du ridicule" where ridicule is defined as the incongruous and the unreasonable. This notion depends on an act of intelligent judgement of what actually constitutes the normatively reasonable and consequently it presupposes the same perspective on the part of the reader/spectator. Implicit to both irony and ridicule is the complementarity necessary between the giver and the receiver of the message. The application of moliéresque critical theory to the Correspondance of Mme de Sévigné can contribute to a renewed appreciation of the highly intellectual quality of the comic genius of a "spirituelle marquise" a mother who desperately wanted to entice a distanced daughter to regularity in an epistolary exchange a woman of wit and irony.

This selection of papers is concerned with the history of linguistics in Spain dealing with the evolution of linguistic ideas from the Middle Ages and the European context of the linguistic debates in Spain to the 20th century concluding with Malkiel's appraisal of Ramón Menéndez Pidal (1869–1968). The volume includes papers on Antonio Nebrija and Sanctius probably the best-known grammarians of the Iberian peninsula but – as the other papers suggest – there is much more to be known about the Spanish linguistic traditions.The papers in this volume were previously published in Historiographia Linguistica XI:1/2 (1984).

The volume consists of a substantial introduction providing a geographical and historical outline of the area an account of the origin of the area an account of the origin of present-day southwestern speech varieties and a synopsis of their main features. This is followed by texts of three main types: brief selections from 17^th to 19^th century dialect writers aimed at depicting characteristics of southwestern speech; longer 20^th century texts – verse dialogue in novels; transcripts from tapes from 1950 onwards of speakers of different ages and social backgrounds. A part of each transcript is also provided in phonetic notation.