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Second-language varieties of English in the South Pacific have received scant attention until now. This monograph offers the first book-length analysis of the sociolinguistics and morphosyntax of three representatives of South Pacific L2 English in comparison – two of which have never been described linguistically. The book describes the spread of English its current status and use in the three island states and compares the most frequent and salient morphosyntactic features to corresponding structures in Asian and African Englishes and the Oceanic substrate languages. As part of a larger theoretical discussion on the multiple factors that determine the evolution and dynamics of L2 varieties in general Mufwene’s feature pool model is extended to a new model that integrates cognitive aspects of language acquisition and use typological aspects of the languages/varieties involved and socio-cultural motivations of language use. The book also examines the role of New Zealand English as a potential epicentre in the South Pacific and considers ethical and methodological issues of linguistic field research.

Winner of the ESSE Book Award 2016 in the category language and linguistics

Winner of the Habilitationspreis of the Deutsche Anglistenverband 2016

This volume presents new findings based on the analysis of spoken corpora in thirteen different Afro-Asiatic languages – a unique endeavor in the domain of lesser-described languages. It will be of interest to corpus linguists general linguists typologists and linguists specializing in Afro-Asiatic languages. In addition to the rarity of corpus studies based on endangered and lesser-described languages the volume is remarkable due to its focus on the role of prosody in interaction with several other phenomena including code-switching and borrowing. Phonology syntax and information structure are explored and the issue of the elaboration of strategies for the typological comparison of corpora is addressed in several papers. The volume also contains a presentation of software development conducted within the scope of the CorpAfroAs project and based upon the widely used ELAN. The sound-indexed and morphosyntactically-annotated corpora with their OLAC metadata and several other deliverables can be accessed and searched at http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/scl.68.website.

This volume dedicated to language transfer starts out with state-of-the-art psycholinguistic approaches to language transfer involving studies on psycho-typological transfer lexical interference and foreign accent. The next chapter on Transfer in Language Learning Contact and Change presents new empirical data from several languages (English German Russian French Italian) on various transfer phenomena ranging from second language acquisition and contact-induced change in word order to cross-linguistic influences in word formation and the lexicon. Transfer in Applied Linguistics scrutinizes on the one hand the external sources of language transfer by investigating bilingual resources and the school context but also by pointing out the differences in academic language in multilingual adolescents. On the other hand internal sources of language transfer in multilingual classrooms are illuminated. A final chapter directs its focus on methodological issues that arise when more than one language is studied systematically and it offers a solution on causal effects for the investigation of heritage language proficiencies. The chapter also includes studies that exploit more innovative methodologies on L1 identification and clitic acquisition.

This volume illustrates the process of conducting interdisciplinary multi-cultural research into the relationship between patient language use and chronic disease management. The ten chapters in this book provide a model for interdisciplinary research in health discourse from start to finish. Part I describes in detail the conceptualization and design of a multi-year research project exploring language use among people living with diabetes. Part II offers a sampler of a variety of qualitative quantitative and contrastive methodologies that have considerable potential in the study of health discourse. Part III brings the research process full circle by discussing issues related to adapting research protocols to diverse cultural contexts translating results into practice and working in interdisciplinary teams.

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

Reports on crime in newspapers do not provide a neutral representation of criminals and their offences but instead construct them in accordance with societal discourse surrounding this issue. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of Linguistics Criminology and Media Studies and demonstrates how Linguistics can contribute to the study of crime in the media. By combining the tools offered by Corpus Linguistics and Critical Stylistics (a text-based framework for Critical Discourse Analysis) evidence is provided for predominant perceptions of crime and their underlying ideologies in both British and German society. This study names and illustrates the most significant linguistic devices used to construct offenders victims and crimes in two newspaper corpora compiled from the German and British press. These devices are then linked to criminological frameworks.

This is the fourth volume of a comprehensive reference work which provides systematic descriptions of the manifestations of gender in languages of diverse areal typological and socio-cultural affiliations. To the 30 languages already analysed in previous volumes Vol. 4 adds another 12 languages whose gendered structures have received little or no academic attention in the past. Again the collection includes a broad spectrum of languages: It contains languages with and without grammatical gender a language with noun classification and a classifier language; larger national languages as well as smaller languages with minority status; and of course members of diverse language families i.e. Indo-European as well as Finno-Ugrian Iroquois Tai-Kadai and Niger-Congo. The volume illustrates the tremendous variation found in the area of gender representation across languages. At the same time it will provide the much-needed material required for an explicitly comparative approach to linguistic manifestations of gender.

Language Variation – European Perspectives V is based on papers presented at the Seventh International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 7) which was held in Trondheim Norway from 26 to 28 June 2013. The 17 papers included in the book explore phonetic and phonological variation (Bitenc and Kenda-Jež; Hildenbrandt and Moosmüller; Jansen; Schaufuß; Schleef Flynn and Ramsammy; Stuart-Smith Rathcke Sonderegger and Macdonald) morphology (Padilla-Moyano) syntax (Christensen and Juel Jensen; Jónsson Brynjólfsdóttir and Sverrisdóttir) morphosyntax (Auger and Wycoff; Cerruti and Regis) language ideology linguistic practices and language attitudes (Strand; Hall-Lew Fairs and Lew; Dunmore and Smith-Christmas) code-switching (Amadou; Bucher) and language documentation (Kühl). The book is essential reading for scholars working on variation and change in European languages. The articles in the present volume investigate Romani Turkish Greek Slovene Picard Swiss-German Basque Danish Italian English Gaelic Icelandic Sign Language Faroe Danish and Norwegian.

The articles in this volume examine a number of critical issues in grammaticalization studies including the relationship between grammaticalization and pragmaticalization subjectification and intersubjectification and grammaticalization and language contact. The contributions consider data from a broad range of spoken and signed languages including Greek Japanese Nigerian Pidgin Swedish and Turkish Sign Language. The authors work in a variety of theoretical frameworks and draw on a number of research traditions. The volume will be of primary interest to historical linguists though the diversity of approaches and sources of data mean that the volume is also likely have considerable general appeal.

This book examines the kinds of talk that service providers working in various settings (e.g. doctors healthcare providers helpline call takers tourist officers) seek to avoid in their interactions with clients when such talk may be expected or due in some way. The studies utilise Conversation Analysis to demonstrate how participants use the interactional practices of avoidance and withholding to construct specific activities as restricted. The various authors also show how in contributing to the restricted character of certain activities withholding and avoidance in turn contribute to both the accomplishment of the particular work of the specific organisations and to the construction of the specific institutional identities of the professionals. Overall the collection offers an authoritative account of restriction and avoidance in workplace interaction.