Browse Books

Somewhere and somehow in the 5 to 7 million years since the last common ancestors of humans and the great apes our ancestors “got” language. The authors of this volume all agree that there was no single mutation or cultural innovation that took our ancestors directly from a limited system of a few vocalizations (primarily innate) and gestures (some learned) to language. They further agree to use the term “protolanguage” for the beginnings of an open system of symbolic communication that provided the bridge to the use of fully expressive languages rich in both lexicon and grammar. But here consensus ends and the theories presented here range from the compositional view that protolanguage was based primarily on words akin to the nouns and verbs etc. we know today with only syntax lacking to the holophrastic view that protolanguage used protowords which had no meaningful subunits which might nonetheless refer to complex but significantly recurrent events.

The present volume does not decide the matter but it does advance our understanding. The lack of any direct archaeological record of protolanguage might seem to raise insuperable difficulties. However this volume exhibits the diversity of methodologies that can be brought to bear in developing datasets that can be used to advance the debate.

These articles were originally published as Interaction Studies 9:1 (2008).

In this volume Germen de Haan gives a multi-faceted view of the syntax sociolinguistics and phonology of West-Frisian. The author discusses distinct aspects of the syntax of verbs in Frisian: finiteness and Verb Second embedded root phenomena the verbal complex verbal complementation and complementizer agreement. Because Frisian has minority language status and is of interest to sociolinguists the author reviews the linguistic changes in Frisian under the influence of the dominant Dutch language and more generally reflects on how to deal with contact-induced change in grammar. Finally in three phonological articles the author discusses nasalization in Frisian the putatively symmetrical vowel inventory of Frisian and the variation between schwa + sonorant consonants and syllabic sonorant consonants.

In this book sixteen international scholars of language and social interaction describe their distinct frameworks of analysis. Taking conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics as their points of departure and investigating ordinary conversation as well as institutions such as health care therapy and city council meetings they often incorporate gesture prosody and the listener's behavior in the analysis of talk. While some approaches are grounded in a critique of the major schools of interaction analysis others integrate the interactionist perspective with ideas from fields such as systemic-functional linguistics distributed cognition and the sociology of knowledge. Each chapter combines a statement of the terms and methods of analysis with an exemplary analysis of a moment of interaction. New Adventures in Language and Interaction gives an excellent overview of the novelty and diversity of interaction-focused perspectives on language and of the heterogeneity of approaches that have evolved from the pioneering work of Sacks and Schegloff Gumperz and their co-workers.

This book provides a thoroughly worked out and systematic presentation of an interpretivist position in the philosophy of mind of the view that having mental properties is a matter of interpretation. Bruno Mölder elaborates and defends a particular version of interpretivism the ascription theory which explicates the possession of mental states with contents in terms of their canonical ascribability and shows how it can withstand various philosophical challenges. Apart from a defence of the ascription theory from the objections commonly directed against interpretivism the book provides a critical analysis of major alternative accounts of mental state possession as well as the interpretivist ideas originating from Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett. The viability of the approach is demonstrated by showing how one can treat mental causation as well as the faculties closely connected with consciousness – perception and the awareness of one’s own mental states – in the interpretivist framework. (Series A)

Semantic relations are at the core of any representational system and are keys to enable the next generation of information processing systems with semantic and reasoning capabilities. Acquisition description and formalization of semantic relations are fundamentals in computer-based systems where natural language processing is required. Probing Semantic Relations provides a state of the art of current research trends in the area of knowledge extraction from text using linguistic patterns. First published as a Special Issue of Terminology 14:1 (2008) the current book emphasizes how definitional knowledge is conveyed by conceptual and semantic relations such as synonymy causality hypernymy (generic–specific) and meronymy (part–whole). Showing the difficulties and successes of pattern-based approaches the book illustrates current and future challenges in knowledge acquisition from text. This book provides new perspectives to researchers and practitioners in terminology knowledge engineering natural language processing and semantics.

This text is for advanced undergraduate and graduate students interested in contemporary English especially those whose primary area of interest is English as a second language primary or secondary-school education English stylistics theoretical and applied linguistics or speech pathology. The emphasis is on empirical facts of English rather than any particular theory of linguistics; the text does not assume any background in language or linguistics. In this newly revised edition numerous example sentences are taken from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. A full glossary of key terms an additional chapter on pedagogy and new sections on cognitive semantics and politeness have been added. Other changes include: completely updated print references; web links to sites of special interest and relevance; and a revised reader-friendly layout. A companion website that includes a complete workbook with self-testing exercises and a comprehensive list of web links accompanies the book. The website can be found at the following address: https://doi.org/10.1075/z.156.workbook.





Students completing the text and workbook will acquire: a knowledge of the sound system of contemporary English; an understanding of the formation of English words; a comprehension of the structure of both simple and complex sentence in English; a recognition of complexities in the expression of meaning; an understanding of the context and function of use upon the structure of the language; and an appreciation of the importance of linguistic knowledge to the teaching of English to first and second-language learners.

Laurel J. Brinton is Professor of English Language at the University of British Columbia.

Donna M. Brinton is Senior Lecturer in TESOL at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education.

The Linguistic Structure of Modern English is a revised edition of The Structure of Modern English by Laurel J. Brinton (2000).

This monograph addresses divergent views in the linguistic literature on whether German displays the that-trace effect and other subject/object asymmetries commonly found for long extractions in English and other languages. Using newly developed rating methodologies the author exposes consistent and robust subject/object asymmetries in German – a surprisingly unequivocal result given that the existence of these effects is controversial. This finding raises important questions: how can one account for the discrepancy between the clear experimental evidence on the one hand and the lack of consensus in the linguistic literature on the other? And secondly it raises again the old question of why subject extractions are dispreferred. This work also provides intriguing new insights into the long-standing question on how to analyse German constructions such as Wer glaubst du hat recht? – the ‘parenthesis versus extraction debate'. In this work decisive evidence points in favour of the parenthetical analysis.

In the European tradition parliaments are central political institutions that play a crucial role in the development of democratic societies. No other institution regularly offers a public arena for open deliberation and dissent for discussing opposite points of view and for reaching compromise solutions between political adversaries. However in spite of the growing visibility of modern parliaments the study of parliamentary language use interaction practices and discourse strategies has long been under-researched. Based on extensive parliamentary data this book integrates a rich variety of innovative analytical approaches that explore the far-reaching impacts of parliamentary practices and linguistic strategies on current political action and interaction. Individual chapters problematise and re-evaluate the discourse-shaped identities and roles of Members of Parliament the structure and functions of parliamentary discourse genres interpersonal behaviour and intertextual meaning co-construction in post-Communist parliaments. They offer broad cross-cultural perspectives on parliamentary discursive psychology and argumentation. The book provides essential reading for scholars and students of language and linguistics rhetoric political and social sciences as well as for anyone interested in language and politics.

Since ancient times metaphysical theories have been shaped by the dialectical relations between metaphysical positions. The present book offers a new account of the role of controversies in the evolution of ideas in current metaphysics of mind. Part One develops a pragmatic theory of metaphysical controversies that combines Kantian themes and themes from current argumentation theory. The theory developed in this book underscores the role of a unique type of dialectical arguments which establish metaphysical positions as controversial relevant alternatives in the evolution of chains of debates in metaphysics. In Part Two and Part Three this theory is applied to chains of debates in present day metaphysics of mind which address the problems of consciousness and personal identity. One of the contentions defended in this book is that the intellectual history of metaphysics is not a process in which positions are replaced by opposite positions but rather a history of their status as relevant alternatives. The book analyzes in detail and demonstrates how progress in contemporary metaphysics of mind consists in a dialectical process through which challenges to extant positions lead to innovative alternatives that are intrinsically relevant to advancing the understanding of the issues under discussion.

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

This collection of papers explores some facets in the areas of Corpus Linguistics and Phraseology which have gone unnoticed so far. With the aid of a range of different corpora and new-generation software tools the authors tackle specialized domains and discourse in specialized settings utilizing some innovative approaches to the study of recurrent features and patterns in the languages of economics history linguistics politics and other fields. The papers critically examine contemporary discourses in which experts and laypersons are equally involved showing that the spoken and written texts selected from various specialized corpora can be seen as collective memory banks. The series of reflections and specialized meanings uncovered in these texts are closely tied to particular sequences of patterned chunks in language and offer exciting insights into the inseparability of lexis and grammar.

The contributions to this volume were previously published in International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13:3 (2008).

This collection of articles sketches the complexity of the subject of lexical-semantic relations and addresses semantic lexicographic and computational issues on an array of meaning relations in different languages. It brings together a variety of linguistic studies on the contextualised construction of synonymy and antonymy in discourse. It shows that research on language and cognition calls for empirical evidence from different sources. This volume demonstrates how the internet corpus data as well as psycholinguistic methods contribute profitably to gain insights into the nature of the paradigmatics in actual language use. Furthermore the volume is concerned with practical and application-oriented research on lexical databases and it includes explorations of sense-related items in dictionaries from both a text-technological and lexicographic perspective.

This collection deals with central issues in the syntax of clauses and their interfaces with the conceptual-intentional system. The book targets the syntactic properties that have an impact on the interpretation of discourse and temporal dependencies functional fields including CP pragmatic markers at the syntax-pragmatic interface and on the possible parameterization of these properties. The papers in this volume bring to the fore the role of the edges (specifier and adjuncts) heads and projections in the grammar and at the interfaces. They address the question to what extent the relevant configurations at the level of edges head and projections determine the syntax/semantic semantic/pragmatic connections. The contributions clarify the notion of edge and bring evidence that this notion is core to the analysis of various phenomena at the left periphery of clauses and phrases. This volume also discusses functional heads and their projections particularly insofar as the properties of these heads determine the composition of the CP field and cases where a CP may or may not be projected.

This monograph explores the interface between syntax and its related components through in-depth investigation of a sizable portion of the grammar of Indonesian and Javanese. It can be read on two levels. Theoretically it proposes the minimalist interface thesis that syntax-external linguistic interfaces are endowed with domain-specific operations (insertion deletion and type shifting) to legitimize an otherwise non-convergent result of the syntactic derivation for phonological and semantic interpretation. Empirically the monograph substantiates this thesis from detailed analyses of four phenomena (reduplication active voice morphology P-stranding under sluicing and nominal denotation). The study not only contains a wealth of new insights into comparative syntax from the perspective of Indonesian and Javanese but also necessitates serious reconsideration of the common view of the interfaces as merely ornamental components of natural language grammar. The monograph should appeal to syntacticians linguists interested in linguistic interfaces and the organization of grammar and researchers on Austronesian languages.

The volume explores the vast and heterogeneous territory of Political Linguistics structuring and developing its concepts themes and methodologies into combined and coherent Analysis of Political Discourse (APD). Dealing with an extensive and representative variety of topics and domains – political rhetoric mediatized communication ideology politics of language choice etc. – it offers uniquely systematic theoretically grounded insights in how language is used to perform power-enforcing/imbuing practices in social interaction and how it is deployed for communicating decisions concerning language itself. The twenty chapters in the volume written by specialists in political linguistics (critical) discourse analysis pragmatics sociolinguistics and social psychology address the diversity of political discourse to propose novel perspectives from which common analytic procedures can be drawn and followed. The volume is thus an essential resource for anyone looking for a coherent research agenda in explorations of political discourse as a point of reference for their own academic activities both scholarly and didactic.

Translation and Cognition assesses the state of the art in cognitive translation and interpreting studies by examining three important trends: methodological innovation the evolution of research design and the continuing integration of translation process research results with the core findings of the cognitive sciences. Several of the volume’s essays focus on fruitful new process research methods such as eye tracking and keystroke logging that have arisen to supplement the use of think-aloud protocols. Another set of contributions investigates how some central theories concepts and methods from our sister disciplines of psycholinguistics cognitive psychology and neuroscience can inform our understanding of translation processes and their development in novices and experts. Yet another set of essays argues that methodological innovation and integration with the cognitive sciences can lead to more robust research designs and theoretical frameworks to explain the intricacies of cognitive processing during translation and interpreting. Thus this timely volume actively demonstrates that a new theoretical and methodological consensus in cognitive translation studies is emerging promising to greatly improve the quality verifiability and generalizability of translation process research.

A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula is the second comparative history of a new subseries with a regional focus published by the Coordinating Committee of the International Comparative Literature Association. As its predecessor for East-Central Europe this two-volume history distances itself from traditional histories built around periods and movements and explores from a comparative viewpoint a space considered to be a powerful symbol of inter-literary relations. Both the geographical pertinence and its symbolic condition are obviously discussed when not even contested.

Written by an international team of researchers who are specialists in the field this history is the first attempt at applying a comparative approach to the plurilingual and multicultural literatures in the Iberian Peninsula. The aim of comprehensiveness is abandoned in favor of a diverse and extensive array of key issues for a comparative agenda.

A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula undermines the primacy claimed for national and linguistic boundaries and provides a geo-cultural account of literary inter-systems which cannot otherwise be explained.

This volume is part of a book set which can be ordered at a special discount: https://www.benjamins.com/series/chlel/chlel.special_offer_chlip.pdf

This monograph proposes a new interpretation of the intrasegmental structure of consonants and provides the first systematic intra- and cross-linguistic study of consonant prevocalization. The proposed model represents consonants as inherently bigestural and makes strong predictions that are automatically relevant to phonological theory at both the diachronic and synchronic levels and also to the phonetics of articulatory evolution. It also clearly demonstrates that a wide generalization of the notion of consonant prevocalization provides a uniform account for many well-known processes generally considered independent – from asynchronous palatalization in Polish to intrusive [r] in nonrhotic English to vowel epentheses in Avestan and to pre-/s/ vowel prothesis in Welsh. Consonant prevocalization has not played a significant role in the development of modern phonological theory to date and this work is the first to highlight its broad theoretical significance. It develops important theoretical insights with a wealth of supporting data and a rich bibliography. No doubt this book will be of great interest to phonologists phoneticians typologists and historical linguists.

This volume presents a typological/theoretical introduction plus eight papers about ergative alignment in 16 Amazonian languages. All are written by linguists with years of fieldwork and comparative experience in the region all describe details of the synchronic systems and several also provide diachronic insight into the evolution of these systems. The five papers in Part I focus on languages from four larger families with ergative patterns primarily in morphology. The typological contribution is in detailed consideration of unusual splits changes in ergative patterns and parallels between ergative main clauses and nominalizations. The three papers in Part II discuss genetically isolated languages. Two present dominant ergative patterns in both morphology and syntax the other a syntactic inverse system that is predominantly ergative in discourse. In each the authors demonstrate that identification of traditional grammatical relations is problematic. These data will figure in all future typological and theoretical debates about grammatical relations.

This volume offers a first survey of projects from around the world that seek to implement Creole languages in education. In contrast to previous works this volume takes a holistic approach. Chapters discuss the sociolinguistic educational and ideological context of projects policy developments and project implementation development and evaluation. It compares different kinds of educational activities focusing on Creoles and discusses a list of procedures that are necessary for successfully developing evaluating and reforming educational activities that aim to integrate Creole languages in a viable and sustainable manner into formal education. The chapters are written by practitioners and academics involved in educational projects. They serve as a resource for practitioners academics and persons wishing to devise or adapt educational initiatives. It is suitable for use in upper level undergraduate and post-graduate modules dealing with language and education with a focus on lesser used languages.

Adjectives are comparatively less well studied than the lexical categories of nouns and verbs. The present volume brings together studies in the syntax and semantics of adjectives. Four of the contributions investigate the syntax of adjectives in a variety of languages (English French Mandarin Chinese Modern Hebrew Russian Spanish and Serbocroatian). The theoretical issues explored include: the syntax of attributive and predicative adjectives the syntax of nominalized adjectives and the identification of adjectives as a distinct lexical category in Mandarin Chinese. A further four contributions examine different aspects in the semantics of adjectives in English French and Spanish dealing with superlatives comparatives and aspect in adjectives. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in syntax formal semantics and language typology.

Natural languages offer many examples of “displacement” i.e. constructions in which a non-local expression is critical for some grammatical end. Two central examples include phenomena such as raising and passive on the one hand and control on the other. Though each phenomenon is an example of displacement they have been theoretically distinguished. Movement rules have generated the former and formally very different construal rules the latter. The Movement Theory of Control challenges this differentiation and argues that the operations that generate the two constructions are the same the differences arising from the positions through which the displaced elements are moved. In the context of the Minimalist Program reducing the class of basic operations is methodologically prized. This volume is a collection of original papers that argue for this approach to control on theoretical and empirical grounds as well. The papers also develop and constrain the movement theory to account for novel phenomena from a variety of languages.

Grimm Language addresses a number of issues in the Grimms’ fairy tales from a (Germanic) linguist’s point of view. In sections dealing with the Grimms’ use of regional dialect material various grammatical constructions and specific nouns and adjectives in their Children’s and Household Tales the author argues that the Grimms were consciously or unconsciously following a number of objectives. These included reinforcing the overall Germanic impression of the tales (though we now know that many of them had French inspiration) striking the right balance between archaic and colloquial language to arrive at an ideal narrative style for what was arguably a new genre and promoting or at least reflecting stereotypes concerning the proper roles for boys and girls. The book will be of interest not only to those interested in fairy tales and the Grimms’ in particular but also more generally to those interested in the intersection between linguistics and literary scholarship.

Benefactives are constructions used to express that a state of affairs holds to someone’s advantage. The same construction sometimes also serves as a malefactive whose meanings are generally not a simple mirror image of the benefactive. Benefactive constructions cover a wide range of phenomena: malefactive passives general and specialized benefactive cases and adpositions serial verb constructions and converbal constructions (including e.g. verbs of giving and taking) benefactive applicatives and other morphosyntactic strategies. The present book is the first collection of its kind to be published on this topic. It includes both typological surveys and in-depth descriptive studies exploring both the morphosyntactic properties and the semantic nuances of phenomena ranging from the familiar English double-object construction and the Japanese adversative passive to comparable phenomena found in lesser-known languages of Africa Asia and the Americas. The book will appeal to typologists and linguists interested in linguistic diversity and it will also be a useful reference work for linguists working on language description.

Text is highly structured and structured at a variety of levels. But what are the units of text which levels are at stake and what establishes the structure that binds the units together? This volume just as the predecessor a spin off of one of the workshops on constraints in discourse contains the most recent thoroughly reviewed papers by specialists in the area that try to give answers to such questions. It helps deepening the understanding of a multiplicity of mechanisms and constraints that are at work during production and comprehension of well-formed discourse. Researchers from linguistics both formal and psycholinguistics artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences will appreciate this book as a valuable resource for information and inspiration.