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Imperative-Based Dialogic Constructions and Discourse Units
Apr 2025
Book
This book weaves together constructions imperatives dialogicity and discourse units. How can that be? This is precisely the question it sets out to answer by working at the crossroads of Construction Grammar (CxG) Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Interactional Linguistics (IL). Profiting from this cross-fertilising synergy the book singles out BELIEVE (YOU) ME BELIEVE IT OR NOT THINK AGAIN and MIND YOU as its objects of study offers an empirical analysis of their properties and situates them within an entrenched and far-reaching yet conveniently ‘camouflaged’ network of dialogic perspectivisation. In so doing the book provides novel insights into the mental state verbal fillers of the constructions alongside their imperative-induced non-compositionality and dialogicity which motivate their function as discourse unit framing agents and per extension discourse operators. The book thus makes a case for CxG’s ability to go beyond its word- or phrase-based ‘comfort zone’ and address phenomena at a micro- meso- and macro-discourse level with across-the-board benefits.
New Perspectives on Mauritian Creole and Reunion Creole : Standardization, grammar and language use
Apr 2025
Book
In the South-West Indian Ocean Mauritius and Reunion are part of a group of islands where French-based Creoles are spoken. In spite of their geographical proximity Mauritian Creole and Reunion Creole are strikingly different in their morphosyntax. The first part of this volume describes some structural properties of their grammars. Both languages also differ in the degree to which they are standardized and used in education and in public spaces. One of the goals of this volume is to examine their social status and their use in writing especially after the introduction of Mauritian Creole as a subject in schools as one of the ancestral languages. French and Bhojpuri are also part of the multilingual Mauritian context. One chapter in this volume analyses the role of Bhojpuri in the formation of Mauritian Creole while another studies the pronunciation of Mauritian French.
Historical Linguistics 2022 : Selected papers from the 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oxford, 1–5 August 2022
Mar 2025
Book
This book offers a peer-reviewed selection of the best and most original contributions to the twenty-fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics. They faithfully reflect the spirit of the Conference in that they all display a shared passion for the diachronic study of language but also an exciting diversity of research questions theoretical approaches linguistic phenomena and languages explored. Data are drawn from Algonquian Arandic Bantu Cushitic Edoid Indo-European Manchu Tangkic Tungusic and Uralic—among other languages and language-families. In addition to addressing always with new insights more traditional concerns of historical linguistics such as reconstruction classification the effects of contact and borrowing the determinants of morphological syntactic phonological and semantic change this book presents studies on less conventional topics for example the diachrony of ideophones.
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXV : Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Washington, D.C., 2022
Mar 2025
Book
This volume contains nine chapters that cover a wide range of topics in Arabic linguistic research. The papers are organized into four parts; these are phonetics and phonology morphology syntax and semantics and decolonizing linguistics. Drawing on a wide range of Arabic varieties articles in this volume bring cross-dialectal data that shed light on critical issues in linguistic theory. This volume also includes a non-traditional paper that critiques the methodology and practices of Arabic linguistic research. Scholars and graduate students of Arabic and general linguistics will benefit from the cutting-edge research in this volume.
The Development of Speaker-Oriented Adverbs in English : Reanalysis, ellipsis, lexicalization or analogy?
Feb 2025
Book
The book investigates the development of ‘speaker-oriented adverbs’ (SOAs) such as frankly surprisingly and apparently in standard written English. SOAs take propositional scope i.e. they modify clauses or sentences. It is generally assumed that they have developed from historically prior narrow-scope adverbs e.g. adverbs modifying VPs. There is however disagreement about the mechanisms that brought the change about. Based on quantitative data the book tests various hypotheses involving reanalysis of potentially ambiguous narrow-scope adverbs (often referred to as grammaticalization) ellipsis lexicalization and analogy. The data provide no clear evidence in favour of any of the hypotheses tested but suggest that different mechanisms may have been at work for different lexemes and subsets of SOAs. The book should appeal to researchers interested in the development and licensing of SOAs but also to those with an interest in diachronic and syntactic change in general or in grammaticalization reanalysis or subjectification in particular.
The Boundary between Grammar and Lexicon : Evidence from Japanese verb morphology
Feb 2025
Book
All linguists recognize that competence in a natural language involves knowledge of a lexicon or dictionary; most assume that it also involves knowledge of a grammatical system. Just where the boundary between the lexicon and the grammar lies however is a question on which there is little consensus. This problem arises in particular with regard to the field of morphology with many morphologists taking all morpheme combinations to result from the operation of the syntactic computational system and many others assuming that morphological units like stems and words are either lexically listed or created by nonsyntactic means. The present study using Japanese and Ryukyuan verbal morphology as its primary database argues that evidence from the syntactic branch of the grammar and evidence from the phonological branch of the grammar converge on the conclusion that while inflectional morphology is fully syntactic derivational morphology has properties that militate against a syntactic treatment. The boundary between grammar and lexicon then falls at the boundary between inflection and derivation rendering morphology “split” between syntactic and nonsyntactic subparts. The book should be of interest not only to morphologists but to all concerned with the distinction between grammatical and lexical competence.
Pluricentricity and Pluriareality : Dialects, Variation, and Standards
Jan 2025
Book
This edited collection engages with the contentious debate surrounding standard varieties and their distribution. For the past three decades these arguments have coalesced around two camps: pluricentricity (the idea that standard varieties are intimately associated with nation states with more powerful national standard varieties affecting the less powerful) and pluriareality (the idea that standard varieties are not limited by national borders and instead overlap significantly across dialect boundaries). With chapters focused on English German and Dutch this book offers fresh perspectives on these theoretical constructs drawing on data from a variety of standards and a range of methodological approaches to their analysis. Researchers at all levels interested in standard language variation will find these discussions valuable especially due to the volume’s integrative approach to pluricentricity and pluriareality which seeks to demonstrate that these models heavily overlap rather than being in strict opposition.
Multimodal Communication from a Construction Grammar Perspective
Jan 2025
Book
The volume is of direct interest to scholars from senior academics to PhD students interested in linguistically relevant phonetic and gestural information and in the relationship between multimodal communication and grammar. It contains important work in a relatively new dynamic and exploratory field that is receiving a lot of attention namely the relation of multimodal communication with grammatical frameworks notably Construction Grammar. Drawing on case studies in different languages (English Modern Greek Czech Hebrew Italian) the chapters provide both the necessary theoretical discussion and solid empirical evidence (corpus-based or experimental) for integrating multimodal interactional features with grammatical description and analysis. This timely collection of studies highlights the recent marriage of cognitive/constructional and interactional approaches and addresses head-on questions and challenges like: which multimodal features are systematic and conventional enough to be integrated into grammar and what are appropriate ways of achieving the integration.
Investigating Language Isolates : Typological and diachronic perspectives
Jan 2025
Book
Language isolates provide unique insights into human history and linguistic diversity. Nevertheless isolates have been studied less exhaustively than non-isolates. The eleven papers gathered in this volume provide new methodological tools in order to better understand isolates including a detailed in-depth up-to-date discussion of what it means to be a language isolate and the criteria by which languages should be classified as isolate. The book also provides a series of techniques some refined on the basis of former literature and others new in order to recover the histories of language isolates. In addition the papers in this volume advance our knowledge about each of the individual languages studied here which are for the most part endangered and under-documented. This book will appeal to a broad audience spanning typologists historical linguists descriptive linguists and teachers of linguistics.
Our People’s Language : Variation and change in the Lánnang-uè of the Manila Lannangs
Jan 2025
Book
This book pioneers the study of Lánnang-uè deeply embedded in Manila’s Lannang community’s culture. It approaches Lánnang-uè not just as a language but as a vibrant social practice highlighting its variability and complex social meanings (e.g. identity-marking). Over six years and with more than 150 participants the monograph integrates contemporary community-focused and critical sociolinguistic frameworks to explore and document linguistic variation as well as change signaling attrition challenging reductive academic views. Employing diverse methodologies—surveys elicitation interviews computational modeling and ethnography— the work offers a nuanced depiction of Lánnang-uè’s diversity. A decolonial stance is advocated emphasizing the complex practices that define the language and its speakers’ identity. It critiques the idea of a uniform linguistic standard presenting Lánnang-uè as shaped by local diverse and inclusive practices urging a reevaluation of language ownership and authenticity. This monograph is crucial for scholars in sociolinguistics language variation and contact linguistics informing language revitalization efforts and enriching global discussions on linguistic diversity and discrimination.
Metaphor, Metonymy and Lexicogenesis
Dec 2024
Book
This book investigates the interaction between new English lexis and metaphor/metonymy – figures meticulously defined and contrasted in terms of similarity/contiguity. It advances three main hypotheses: (i) derived lexis is more likely to be figurative in meaning and usage than the bases from which it is derived; (ii) derivation obscures the figurative origins of this lexis to varying degrees depending on differing processing strategies; (iii) lexicalisation is determined by Relevance (in Sperber and Wilson’s sense) to the needs of a culture or its powerful interest groups where culture following Norman Fairclough is characterised as an ensemble of recognised action/discourse genres. This volume is distinctive in exploring the relations between grammar and metonymy and providing numerous examples of metaphorical and metonymic lexis as it reflects society's changing needs and (contested) ideologies.
Current Perspectives on Generative SLA - Processing, Influence, and Interfaces : Selected proceedings of the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference
Dec 2024
Book
This volume comprises studies and keynote addresses presented at the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference hosted by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU in Trondheim in 2022. The selection of cutting-edge studies presented covers a wide array of topics within generative linguistics including the acquisition of grammatical features challenges of functional morphology the impact of the native language on subsequently acquired languages and interfaces between linguistic domains. Other chapters address how non-native language processing differs from native processing while the volume also highlights internal and external factors affecting bi- and multilingual development and points to important avenues for further generative research on second language acquisition.
Lectures on Language Theory 1942–1943
Dec 2024
Book
The present book is the English translation of Louis Hjelmslev’s lectures on glossematics the theory of language developed in the forties by him and Hans Jørgen Uldall and taught at the University of Copenhagen in 1942-43 thoroughly taken down in shorthand by his student Harry Wett Frederiksen. The document unpublished so far is one-of-a-kind in its pedagogical dimension as it aims to introduce students and now readers to the glossematician’s workshop informally discussing its theoretical framework the operations employed in description and the reasons why such operations were devised via a concrete analysis of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy-tale “The Sweethearts”. Overall the document offers a unique glimpse into the machinery of one of the most epistemologically aware and rigorous theories of language developed in the 20th century.
Historical Linguistics 2019 : Selected papers from the 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Canberra, 1–5 July 2019
Nov 2024
Book
This volume comprises a selection of papers that were presented at the 24th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL24) which took place at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra from 1-5 July 2019. The volume’s aim is to reflect the breadth of research presented at the conference with each chapter representative of a workshop or themed session. A striking aspect of ICHL24 was the three-day workshop on computational and quantitative approaches to historical linguistics and two of the chapters represent different aspects of this workshop. A number of chapters present research that explores mechanisms and processes of change within specific domains of language while others explore interactions of change across linguistic domains. Two chapters represent a common theme at the conference and consider the role of historical linguistics in explaining non-linguistic histories of language diversification.
Intonation in Language Contact : The case of Spanish in Catalonia
Nov 2024
Book
The intense language contact between Spanish and Catalan in Catalonia has led to cross-linguistic influence at all linguistic levels but its effect on the prosody of these languages has received little attention to date. Based on semi-spontaneous and read speech data from 31 Catalan–Spanish bilinguals this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the intonation of Spanish and Catalan as spoken in Girona with a focus on the speakers’ bilingualism. These contact varieties share numerous intonational properties with differences mainly in the frequency of specific tunes in certain contexts. However they also exhibit significant variation often linked to extralinguistic factors such as the bilinguals’ language dominance. Overall the intonation of these contact varieties results from substratum transfer and wholesale convergence between the prosodic systems of Spanish and Catalan.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The book is particularly relevant to scholars researching prosody language contact variation and multilingualism.<br/>
A Construction Grammar of the English Language : CASA – a constructionist approach to syntactic analysis
Nov 2024
Book
The present book provides an introduction to the linguistic model of Construction Grammar offering a full analysis of the grammar of the English language. It covers all levels of morpho-syntactic form-meaning units: including sentence types tense and aspect argument structure phrases idioms word and morphological constructions. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>In line with its usage-based approach all constructions are discussed using authentic corpus examples. In order to illustrate how constructions can be learnt the book draws on authentic data from child language. Furthermore corpus analysis is used to show which lexical items typically occur in the slots of constructions and make up their ‘collo-profile’.<br/>A key feature of the book is that it develops a systematic method for showing how constructions combine to form actual utterances. For this purpose so-called ‘construction grids’ are developed which contain all the constructions that make up even the most complex sentences and show points of overlap between them. <br/>
English Prosody in First and Second Language Speakers : A contrastive interlanguage analysis across intonational dimensions
Nov 2024
Book
Discover the intricate dynamics of L2 prosody with this pioneering study which examines how advanced learners from Czech German and Spanish backgrounds engage with British and American English intonation. By employing a multidimensional approach - spanning phonetic phonological discourse-pragmatic and sociolinguistic perspectives - this book provides a comprehensive overview of L2 prosodic features highlighting patterns of intonational phrasing f0 range and the use of tones and uptalk. Building on foundational works by Pierrehumbert Mennen and Gut this work bridges significant gaps in the field by comparing different L1 and L2 varieties integrating diverse linguistic variables and proposing a multifactorial model of L2 prosody. Relevant for linguists language educators and researchers in SLA the findings offer valuable insights for reducing foreign accents and enhancing intelligibility making it an essential resource for improving language teaching methodologies and learner outcomes. Dive into this essential guide and elevate your understanding of L2 prosody and its impact on effective communication.
Recent Advances in Multiword Units in Machine Translation and Translation Technology
Nov 2024
Book
The investigation of phraseology through corpus-based and computational approaches holds significant relevance for various professionals including translators interpreters terminologists lexicographers language instructors and learners. Computational Phraseology and in particular the computational analysis of multiword expressions (also known as multiword units) has gained prominence in recent years and is essential for a number of Natural Language Processing and Translation Technology applications. The failure to detect these units automatically could result in incorrect and problematic automatic translations and could hinder the performance of applications such as text summarisation and web search. Against this background the volume offers 13 articles carefully selected and organised into two parts: ‘Computational treatment of multiword units’ and ‘Corpus-based and linguistic studies in phraseology‘. The contributions not only highlight the latest advancements in computational and corpus-based phraseology but also reiterate its vital role in all areas of language technologies including basic and applied research.
Crossing Boundaries through Corpora : Innovative corpus approaches within and beyond linguistics
Oct 2024
Book
This volume illustrates new trends in corpus linguistics and shows how corpus approaches can be used to investigate new datasets and emerging areas in linguistics and related fields. It addresses innovative research questions for example how prosodic analyses can increase the accuracy of syntactic segmentation how tolerant English language teachers are about language variation or how natural language can be translated into corpus query language. The thematic scope encompasses four types of ‘boundary crossings’. These include the incorporation of innovative scientific methods specifically new statistical techniques acoustic analysis and stylistic investigations. Additionally temporal boundaries are crossed through the use of new methods and corpora to study diachronic data. New methodologies are also explored through the analysis of prosody variety-specific approaches and teacher attitudes. Finally corpus users can cross boundaries by employing a more user-friendly corpus query language.
Vagueness, Ambiguity, and All the Rest : Linguistic and pragmatic approaches
Oct 2024
Book
This book aims to address a gap in the existing literature on the relationship between vagueness and ambiguity as well as on their differences and similarities both in synchrony and diachrony and taking into consideration their relation to language use. The book is divided into two parts which address specific and broader research questions from different perspectives. The former part examines the differences between ambiguity and vagueness from a bird-eye perspective with a particular focus on their respective functions and roles in language change. It also presents innovative linguistic resources and tools for the study of these phenomena. The second part contains case studies on vagueness and ambiguity in language change and use. It considers different strategies and languages including English French German Italian Medieval Latin and Old Italian. The readership for this volume is broad encompassing scholars in a range of disciplines including pragmatics spoken discourse conversation analysis discourse genres (political commercial notarial discourse) corpus studies language change pragmaticalization and language typology.
Recent Developments in Hispanic Linguistics : Studies in structure, variation, and bilingualism
Oct 2024
Book
This book brings together eleven peer-reviewed chapters of cutting-edge research produced by both established and rising scholars in the field. Given that this volume is inspired by papers from the 25th iteration of the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium the editors track the development of the field in the last quarter century and have organized the volume into three sections (linguistic structure and variation US Spanish and heritage speakers applied linguistics) reflecting current research trends. This edited volume will be a welcome resource for advanced undergraduate students incoming and advanced graduate students and researchers in the field as well as Spanish language educators at all levels.
A Corpus Stylistics Approach to Contemporary Present-tense Narrative
Sept 2024
Book
Focusing on the growing trend of employing the present tense in storytelling this book explores present-tense narrative in contemporary fiction. Using a corpus approach speech writing and thought presentation in 21st-century present-tense narrative is compared with 20th-century past-tense narrative. An in-depth comparative analysis reveals previously undiscovered innovative features specific to how character discourse is presented in modern narratives. Notably narrative tenses have an impact on thought presentation; in present-tense narrative Free Direct Thought (FDT) emerges as frequently as Free Indirect Thought (FIT) a departure from the dominance of FIT in modern past-tense narrative. This book will be of interest to stylisticians narratologists corpus linguists and those who have found themselves absorbed in a 21st-century work of present-tense fiction.
Perspectives on Input, Evidence, and Exposure in Language Acquisition : Studies in honour of Susanne E. Carroll
Sept 2024
Book
Emphasizing the necessity for theory-driven language acquisition research the studies in this collection aim to formalize the kinds of information available to first and second language learners as well as to shed light on how that information is used to solve a variety of learning problems. The volume pays homage to the scholarly contributions of Susanne E. Carroll delving into the impact she has had on the field of language acquisition. The central themes of input evidence and exposure – found throughout Carroll’s work – are explored in this volume. The contributions cover a range of topics such as the emergence of linguistic theorizing in language acquisition research the acquisition of grammatical gender classroom language learning learning on first exposure asymmetries between developmental trajectories in first and second language acquisition and the effects of grammatical complexity on language development.
The Frequency–Grammar Interface : Rules and regularities in first and second languages
Sept 2024
Book
Speakers and learners based on memory and experience implicitly know that certain language elements naturally pair together. However they also understand through abstract and frequency-independent categories why some combinations are possible and others are not. The frequency-grammar interface (FGI) bridges these two types of information in human cognition. Due to this interface the sediment of statistical calculations over the order distribution and associations of items (the regularities) and the computation over the abstract principles that allow these items to join together (the rules) are brought together in a speaker’s competence feeding into one another and eventually becoming superposed. In this volume it is argued that a specific subset of both first and second language grammar (termed ‘combinatorial grammar’) is both innate and learned. While not derived from language usage combinatorial grammar is continuously recalibrated by usage throughout a speaker’s life. In the domain of combinatorial grammar both generative and usage-based theories are correct each shedding light on just one component of the two that are necessary for any language to function: rules and regularities.
Challenges in Corpus Linguistics : Rethinking corpus compilation and analysis
Sept 2024
Book
This book contributes to the discussion of challenges faced in different areas of corpus linguistics namely the compilation annotation and analysis of linguistic corpora. In a field of growing corpus sizes and expanding possibilities of gathering data some old issues persist while at the same time new problems have emerged. As the compilation and study of language corpora gets increasingly sophisticated and complex continuous attention on ways of dealing with the data in question and challenges in text selection and interpretation is needed. The contributions to this volume address problems relating to a variety of areas in corpus linguistic study including corpus annotation data variability learner language social media texts and database utilization. The authors provide critical overviews and research-based analyses discuss the nature of some of the common pitfalls and offer solutions to existing problems.
Structures in Discourse : Interaction, adaptability, and pragmatic functions
Aug 2024
Book
This volume aims to stretch the boundaries of text and discourse linguistics exploring organization and structuring in discourse across a variety of communication forms from written to spoken to visual in old and new media. It presents a collection of case studies ranging in focus from the micro-level discourse functions of pronouns and emojis to the macro-level structure of online interaction all from their different perspectives drawing inspiration from the notion of text as structure and process. In a world of proliferating media and discourse types the papers collected here reflect the latest scholarship in text and discourse studies highlighting the value of combining multiple approaches and suggesting future directions and possibilities for research.
Structures in Discourse will be of interest to students and researchers in pragmatics discourse analysis media studies and digitally mediated communication.
Structures in Discourse will be of interest to students and researchers in pragmatics discourse analysis media studies and digitally mediated communication.
Language Acquisition in Romance Languages
Aug 2024
Book
The research presented in this volume covers first language acquisition second language acquisition language heritage and language impairment. Papers in this collection use a variety of experimental methods such as eye-tracking elicitation tasks production tasks administered off-line and untimed transcriptions of spontaneous speech production elicitation Truth Value Judgement tasks standardized tests and multiple choice tasks. The studies included in this book try to cover most of the methods used in first and second language acquisition in typical and atypical populations. This book will be useful for linguists speech therapists and psycholinguists working on first second and impaired language acquisition.
Using Tonal Data to Recover Japanese Language History
Aug 2024
Book
This book challenges several assumptions commonly encountered in Japanese dialectology: that the pitch-accent analysis of modern Tōkyō Japanese is an appropriate basis for describing the suprasegmental phonology of other dialects and earlier stages of Japanese; that the Kyōto-type dialects have been more conservative than dialects to their east and west; that the first split in proto-Japanese was the separation of proto-Ryūkyūan; and so on. De Boer brings together evidence from recent fieldwork premodern texts and other sources to establish a theory of dialect divergence that avoids the problems these assumptions entail. Building on De Boer 2010 this book brings the author’s theory up to date with research published in the interim explains why Japanese is best understood as a restricted tone language and why mergers in the large tone classes of nouns and verbs are especially reliable markers of dialect divergence.
This e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Variation in University Student Writing : A communicative text type approach
Aug 2024
Book
This book provides a comprehensive description of the situational and linguistic characteristics of undergraduate student writing considering both assignment type and discipline. Drawing on a corpus of more than 900 undergraduate student assignments from four disciplinary groups (Arts and Humanities Social Sciences Physical Sciences and Life Sciences) the book combines corpus-based analyses of linguistic features with analyses of communicative purposes and text characteristics. Variation in University Writing takes a new approach to register variation by grouping assignments by their communicative purpose (to argue to explain to compare to describe to narrate a personal event to give a procedural recount to give personal advice and to propose) rather than register categories. A multidimensional analysis provides a detailed description of the linguistic patterns of undergraduate writing. The findings presented in this book will be of interest to teachers of writing instructors of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and researchers of university writing.
New Perspectives in Interactional Linguistic Research
Aug 2024
Book
This collection of original papers illustrates recent trends and new perspectives for future research in Interactional Linguistics (IL). Since the research program was started around the turn of the century it has prospered internationally. Recently however new developments have opened up new perspectives for interactional linguistic research.
IL continues to study the details of talk in social interaction with a focus on linguistic resources and structures of verbal and vocal interaction in bodily-visible interactional settings. Increasingly though it embraces methods supported by new technology and broadens its data and research questions to applications in teaching therapy etc.
The volume comprises three parts with 14 contributions: (1) Studying linguistic resources in social interaction; (2) Studying linguistic resources in embodied social interaction; and (3) Studying social interaction in institutional contexts and involving speakers with specific proficiencies.
This e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
Frequency, Dispersion, Association, and Keyness : Revising and tupleizing corpus-linguistic measures
Jul 2024
Book
This book is an attempt to revisit the main specifically corpus-linguistic statistics/measures the field has been relying on for decades: frequency dispersion association and keyness. The book first discusses the purpose of these measures and how they have been measured. Then the book makes three main proposals: First that many measures of dispersion association and keyness are too confounded with frequency and how to 'take frequency out of them' to obtain conceptually cleaner and more interpretable measures. Second that many existing measures can be replaced by the simple information-theoretic measure of the Kullback-Leibler divergence and that it too can have frequency 'removed' from it. Third that corpus linguistics should abandon the tradition of trying to describe its findings with a single number and adopt a tupleization approach instead where we use several separate dimensions of information for description and interpretation. The book is written in an informal hands-on style and comes with its own R package featuring functions example data and several thousand lines of code exemplifying all applications.
Elementary Predicates and Related Categories
Jul 2024
Book
This book offers a fresh perspective on how natural languages encode grammatical relations by delving into the interplay between oblique cases adpositions serial verbs and applicatives. This book reveals through a series of case studies the pervasive role of the 'inclusion' relator across diverse linguistic contexts. Departing from traditional views that obliques lack interpretive content this work presents a unified conceptual framework of relations in grammar. Drawing on minimalist principles the book posits a preeminence of the lexicon in syntactic projection shedding light on the underlying ontology of language. By exploring cross-categorial variation and syncretism it outlines an inventory of primitives shaping morpho-syntactic derivations.
Textbook English : A multi-dimensional approach
Jul 2024
Book
This book provides a systematic empirical account of the language typically presented in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks based on a large corpus of EFL textbooks used in secondary schools. A modified version of the Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) framework serves to examine linguistic variation both within textbooks and compared to corpora representing ‘real-life’ English as used outside the EFL classroom. The results highlight the characteristics of Textbook English that define it as a distinct variety of English. In light of the study's pedagogical implications this book proposes a range of corpus-based approaches to improve the naturalness of textbook texts. It also contributes to advancing quantitative corpus linguistics methodology: its detailed online supplements aim for methodological transparency and reproducibility in line with the principles of Open Science. This book will be of interest to linguistics and language education students and researchers as well as EFL teachers textbook authors and editors and those involved in curriculum development and teacher training.
Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings
Jul 2024
Book
Constraints on Language Variation and Change in Complex Multilingual Contact Settings explores an innovative proposal: that linguistic similarities identified in different forms of contact-influenced varieties of language use (including translation native and non-native varieties of English and language use of bilinguals more generally) can be accounted for in a coherent framework grounded in the notion of ‘constrained communication’. These varieties have hitherto been studied in independent scholarly traditions especially translation studies and world Englishes leaving the potential underlying unity underexplored both conceptually and empirically.
The chapters collected in this volume aim to develop such a unified perspective by drawing on corpus data across a range of languages and language varieties with a focus on written language a neglected data source in research on multilingual contact settings. The findings point to shared general characteristics across individual contact settings which result from (probabilistically conditioned) manifestations of the same deeper regularities – constraints – present in diverse language-contact settings.
The chapters collected in this volume aim to develop such a unified perspective by drawing on corpus data across a range of languages and language varieties with a focus on written language a neglected data source in research on multilingual contact settings. The findings point to shared general characteristics across individual contact settings which result from (probabilistically conditioned) manifestations of the same deeper regularities – constraints – present in diverse language-contact settings.
Predication in African Languages
Jul 2024
Book
This book discusses patterns of predication and their grammatical and semantic implications in a variety of African languages. It covers several prominent topics about predication in the languages including locative predication expressions of tense aspect and mood in relation to verbal complexes and verb serialisation verb semantics and nominalization of predicates. The chapters take inspiration from Felix Ameka’s approach to the study of language according to which the main task of a linguist is to collaborate with language users to understand communicative practices in different contexts and to uncover how these practices impact grammatical and semantic aspects of the language. Accordingly the descriptions and analyses in this book serve to understand language variation in different ecologies rather than to impose pre-established descriptive frames on less described languages. Together the chapters in the book represent a bird’s eye view of predication strategies in various African languages and can therefore serve as readings for both introductory and advanced level courses on predication from a typological or comparative perspective.
Multilingual Acquisition and Learning : An ecosystemic view to diversity
Jun 2024
Book
The volume espouses an ecosystemic standpoint on multilingual acquisition and learning viewing language development and use as both ontogenesis and phylogenesis. Multilingualism is inclusively used to refer to sociolinguistic diversity and pluralism. Whether speech writing gesture or body movement language is a conduit that carries meaning within a complex fluid and context-dependent framework that engages different aspects of the individual the communicative interaction communicative acts and social parameters. Continually modified over the years to better represent its multidisciplinary scope the sociobiological notion of language has found steady and productive ground within major theoretical frameworks which individually or holistically contribute to a rounded understanding of language acquisition learning and use by exploring both system-internal and system-external factors and their interaction. Summoning the work of leading academics the volume outlines the changing dynamics of multilingualism in children and adults internationally with the latest advances and under-represented coverage that highlight the ecosystemic nature of multilingual acquisition learning and use.
Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Language Learning : The need for attention
Jun 2024
Book
It is intriguing and challenging to learn a language by diving into the worlds of Virtual Reality (3-D environments avatars games) and Artificial Intelligence (chatbots agents). What are the issues and benefits of these technological innovations? Taking readers on a journey through the brain this book explains how VR and AI may foster and sustain connectivity between language faculties the senses/emotions working and long-term memory and attention. With the speed of technological innovation increasing cognitive demand as well as aspects of intrinsic motivation are analyzed charted and discussed as these may become essential for future development of language learning experiences. This volume should be of interest to instructors researchers and students of languages and linguistics cognitive psychology and computer science.
The Development of Aspirated Fricatives in Gothic : A contact-linguistic perspective
Jun 2024
Book
This book presents three major hypotheses concerning the development of fricatives in Gothic. First Gothic introduced aspiration or a phonological feature [spread glottis] to the fricative system. Second this acquisition of aspirated fricatives should be explained as a contact-induced change. Specifically a Gothic/Greek bilingual community may be held responsible for initiating and diffusing the contact change. Third I claim that this contact-driven featural enrichment prompted an array of radical restructurings of fricatives in their phonological and morphological organizations in Gothic notably the occurrence of Final Devoicing in contrast to the nonoccurrence of medial voicing the elimination of Verner’s Law effects in strong verbs the operation of Thurneysen’s Law and the apparently irregular split of PGmc. */fl-/ to Go. /fl-/ and /þl-/. Thus privileged by a Lower Danube community largely composed of Greek/Gothic bilinguals this cluster of mid-fourth-century innovations came to define the phonological and morphological identities of Biblical Gothic.
Proverbs within Cognitive Linguistics : State of the art
Jun 2024
Book
The volume presents an innovative set of researches featuring theoretical and practical discussions of the proverb in cognition and culture. To date there seems to be a need for state-of-the-art research into this subject matter. This volume aims at responding to this need. The chapters contribute from a Cognitive Linguistics interdisciplinary perspective to the existing body of literature on the proverb. The book begins with a first part containing three chapters concerned with theoretical discussions of proverbs in cognition and culture. The three chapters in the second part ponder proverbs within a cognitive-cross-cultural perspective. The third part of the volume includes three chapters that deal with the proverbs of individual languages and cultures. The three chapters in the fourth part study proverbs and/or related phenomena from a cognitive and cultural perspective: snowclones idioms and proverbial phrases. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>This book will be of interest to academics interested in proverbs within a cognitive linguistic framework and to scholars in the areas of language studies applied linguistics language teaching and learning and Cognitive Linguistics in general and to those researchers who wish to refine their knowledge about the cognitive activities featuring proverb use and their interaction with sociocultural contextual variables.<br/>
Competition in Word-Formation
May 2024
Book
This volume focuses on a number of interrelated issues in the theorizing and interpretation of morphological rivalry including the differences between a semasiological and an onomasiological approach to competition phenomena in word-formation the scope of such phenomena (micro-level rivalry between individual affixes as well as macro-level competition between different processes) the different sources of competition and the possible resolutions of competitive situations. An overview of existing research in the field is provided as well as new cutting-edge findings and proposals for analytical innovation. Linguistic data are drawn from European and Asian languages and morphologists semanticists and anyone interested in the dynamics of language will be stimulated by the analytical models and explanations offered in the 11 chapters.
Investigating West Germanic Languages : Studies in honor of Robert B. Howell
May 2024
Book
This volume celebrates Robert B. Howell's wide-ranging contribution as a scholar mentor collaborator and colleague in the field of Germanic linguistics. In addition to investigating present-day or past varieties of Afrikaans Dutch English Flemish German and Pennsylvania Dutch each of the thirteen contributions in this volume explores one or more of the topics found in Howell’s work: (1) Linguistic structure and change (Page Sundquist Fagan De Vaan); (2) Migration contact and change (Fertig Louden Roberge); (3) Vernacular sources and change (Auer & Gordon Hendriks Van der Wal); (4) Historical sociolinguistics: past present and future (Van Bree Crombez Vandenbussche & Vosters Lauersdorf & Salmons).
Lifespan Acquisition and Language Change : Historical sociolinguistic perspectives
Apr 2024
Book
This volume connects the latest research on language acquisition across the lifespan with the explanation of language change in specific sociohistorical settings. This conversation benefits from recent advances in two areas: on the one hand the study of how learners of various ages and in various sociolinguistic contexts acquire language variation; on the other historical sociolinguistics as the field that focuses on the study of historical patterns of language variation and change. The overarching rationale for this interdisciplinary dialogue is that all forms of language change start and spread as the result of individual acts of acquisition throughout the speakers’ lives. The thirteen chapters in this book are authored by an international group of both established and emerging scholars. They encompass theoretical overviews of specific research areas within the broader realm of the acquisition of language variation as well as case studies applying these theoretical advances to the exploration of language change in a wide range of sociohistorical contexts in the Americas Oceania and Asia. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers in the area of language acquisition language variation and language change especially those working on interdisciplinary and crosslinguistic connections among these areas.
The Unity of Movement : Evidence from verb movement in Cantonese
Apr 2024
Book
Displacement (of linguistic expressions) is a ubiquitous phenomenon in natural language. In the generative tradition displacement is modelled in terms of transformation or more precisely movement which establishes dependencies among syntactic constituents in a phrase structure. This book probes the question regarding to what extent movement theories can be unified. Specifically I address issues surrounding the debate of the distinction between head movement and phrasal movement over the past few decades. The distinction presupposes that structural complexity of the moving element is correlated with its movement properties. The goal of this book is to show that this is an unwarranted assumption. Based on a number of case studies on verb displacement phenomena in Cantonese I attempt a unified theory of movement by abandoning the head/phrase distinction in movement theories. These case studies converge on the conclusion that the phrase structure status of syntactic constituents bears a minimal role in theorizing displacement phenomena in natural language. This volume represents a minimalist pursuit of a unified theory of movement.
Revisiting Modality : A corpus-based study of epistemic adverbs in Galician
Apr 2024
Book
This book presents the first in-depth investigation of modality in Galician linguistics offering a theoretical discussion of modal categories and a fine-grained description of epistemic adverbs. The first half of the monograph deconstructs the most relevant approaches to modal categories and shows how the traditional concept of modality is a problematic notion how it relates to other concepts such as evidentiality and mitigation and how it ought to be conceived of in order to become a more useful instrument for linguistic analysis. A new way of understanding modality is explored and illustrated through Galician examples. The second half of the book zooms in on six epistemic adverbs which are exhaustively studied from both a formal and a functional perspective. Combining a quantitative and a qualitative perspective the book shows that adverbs make up a rich semantic scale and establishes several factors that condition their occurrence in discourse challenging previous conceptions of this grammatical domain.
Multifaceted Multilingualism
Apr 2024
Book
This volume collects research on language cognition and communication in multilingualism. Apart from theoretical concerns including grammatical description language-specific analyses and modeling of multilingualism different fields of study and research interests center around three core themes: The Early Years (aspects of language acquisition and development including vernaculars or minority languages reading writing and cognition and multilingual extensions) Issues in Everyday Life (the role of multilingualism in and for speech–language–communication difficulties including diagnosis provisions of services and later language breakdown) and From the Past to the Future (aspects of multilingualism beyond acquisition education or pathology with a focus on heritage languages and translanguaging). Specialists from each of these areas introduce state-of-the-art research novel experimental studies and/or quantitative as well as qualitative data bearing on ‘multifaceted multilingualism’. There is a broad spectrum for take-home messages ranging from new theoretical analyses or approaches to assess multilingual speakers all the way to recommendations for policy-makers.
Unlocking the History of English : Pragmatics, prescriptivism and text types. Selected papers from the 21st ICEHL
Apr 2024
Book
This volume brings together contributions selected from papers delivered at the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL Leiden 2021). The chapters deal with aspects of language use throughout the history of English including efforts to prescribe and regulate language in texts that share specific forms functions and audiences. They feature both quantitative and qualitative analyses of changing language use often in relation to trends of language advice in such metalinguistic works as grammars spelling books and usage guides. The authors showcase work on pragmatics and prescriptivism (understatement between Middle and Late Modern English capitalization of common nouns from Early to Late Modern English and the use of stigmatized grammatical variants in eighteenth-century plays) specific text types (case studies of political legal and medical English) and the language of late modern letters (diachronic stylistic changes letter-copying practices the role of letter-writing manuals and changing spelling practices). This volume will be of interest to those working on pragmatics prescriptivism and sociolinguistics of English historical linguistics language change computational historical linguistics and related sub-disciplines.
Keys to the History of English : Diachronic linguistic change, morpho-syntax and lexicography. Selected papers from the 21st ICEHL
Apr 2024
Book
This volume brings together contributions selected from papers delivered at the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL Leiden 2021). The contributions deal with various aspects of English language across time and geographical space shedding light on both long-term developments and singular documents of particular linguistic interest. A wide range of methodologies are represented including corpus linguistics acoustic phonetics and philology. Chapters showcase work on syntax and word order (parataxis and hypotaxis from Old to Late Modern English; left-dislocation in Old English; do-support in Scots) diachronic linguistic change (phonological developments of lateral /l/ in English; modality in noun clauses from Old to Early Modern English; editorial practices of Middle English punctuation across time) and lexicography and lexis (Old English glosses of the Durham Ritual; Old English lexicographers from 17th-century Germany; lexical differences between Old and Middle English; Yiddish loanwords in English). This volume will be of interest to those working on morphology syntax and lexicography of English historical linguistics language change history of linguistics computational historical linguistics and related sub-disciplines.
The Present Perfect and the Preterite in Late Modern and Contemporary English : A corpus-based study of grammatical change
Mar 2024
Book
This book examines developments in the use of the present perfect and the preterite in Late Modern and contemporary English with a focus on American and British English. Drawing on neo-Gricean pragmatics it proposes a novel and principled analysis of the verb forms’ context-independent meanings and context-dependent inferences. State-of-the-art corpus linguistic methods are used to track their functional changes over two and a half centuries. The book presents new evidence of grammatical change and offers a compelling contact-based account of regional variation. It brings together the insights of various fields including formal semantics historical linguistics linguistic typology and variationist sociolinguistics.
The Fine-grained Structure of the Lexical Area : Gender, appreciatives and nominal suffixes in Spanish
Mar 2024
Book
This is the first book that presents a complete description and analysis of the Spanish suffixes that alter the grammatical behaviour of nouns and adjectives without changing their grammatical category supporting a fine-grained decomposition of the syntactic area where these word classes are defined. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>In this monograph the reader will find a detailed empirical description of suffixes for gender mereological properties of nouns scalar properties of adjectives and a variety of nominal suffixes expressing actions measures or locations as well as an integral Neo-Constructionist analysis of the syntactic structure of the resulting formations. Framed within a Nanosyntactic-oriented framework this book sheds light on the nature of lexical categories and the components of the low syntactic structure of nouns and adjectives. The book will be useful both to researchers in Spanish linguistics or theoretical morphology and to advanced students of Spanish interested in learning more about the expressive devices that nouns and adjectives allow.<br/>
The Continuity of Linguistic Change : Selected papers in honour of Juan Andrés Villena-Ponsoda
Feb 2024
Book
The Continuity of Linguistic Change presents a collection of selected papers in honour of Professor Juan Andrés Villena-Ponsoda. The essays revolve around the study of linguistic variation and the mechanisms and processes associated with linguistic change a field to which Villena-Ponsoda has dedicated so many years of research. The authors are researchers of renowned international prestige who have made significant contributions in this field. The chapters cover a range of related topics and provide modern theoretical and methodological perspectives addressing the structural cognitive historical and social factors that underlie and promote linguistic change in varieties of Dutch German Greek Italian Spanish and Swedish. The reader will find contributions that explore topics such as phonology acoustic phonetics and processes deriving from the contact between languages or linguistic varieties specifically levelling koineisation standardisation and the emergence of ethnolects.