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Toward a Calculus of Meaning : Studies in markedness, distinctive features and deixis
Dec 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Edna Andrews and
Yishai Tobin
This volume contains papers presented at a symposium in honor of Cornelis H. van Schooneveld and invited papers on the topics of invariance markedness distinctive feature theory and deixis. It is not a Festschrift in the usual sense of the word but more of a collection of articles which represent a very specific way of defining and viewing language and linguistics. The specific approach presented in this volume has its origins and inspirations in the theoretical and methodological paradigm of European Structuralism in general and the sign-oriented legacy of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce and the functional and communication-oriented approach of the Prague School in particular.
The book is divided in three sections: Theoretical and Methodological Overview: Cornelis H. van Schooneveld; Anatoly Liberman; Petr Sgall; Alla Bemova and Eva Hajicova; Robert Kirsner. Studies in Russian and Slavic Languages: Edna Andrews; Lawrence E. Feinberg; Annie Joly Sperling; Ronald E. Feldstein; Irina Dologova and Elena Maksimova; Stefan M. Pugh. Applications to Other Languages Language Families and Aphasia: Ellen Contini-Morava; Barbara A. Fennell; Victor A. Friedman; Robert Fradkin; Yishai Tobin; Mark Leikin.
The book is divided in three sections: Theoretical and Methodological Overview: Cornelis H. van Schooneveld; Anatoly Liberman; Petr Sgall; Alla Bemova and Eva Hajicova; Robert Kirsner. Studies in Russian and Slavic Languages: Edna Andrews; Lawrence E. Feinberg; Annie Joly Sperling; Ronald E. Feldstein; Irina Dologova and Elena Maksimova; Stefan M. Pugh. Applications to Other Languages Language Families and Aphasia: Ellen Contini-Morava; Barbara A. Fennell; Victor A. Friedman; Robert Fradkin; Yishai Tobin; Mark Leikin.
De Lingua Latina X : A new critical text and English translation with prolegomena and commentary
Dec 1996
Book
Author(s):
Daniel J. Taylor
De Lingua Latina X has never been so courageously edited nor so daringly translated as in this long-awaited sequel to Taylor’s Declinatio (SiHoLS 2). The editor’s intimate familiarity with both the extant archetype and Varro’s unique linguistic theory and practice make this volume indispensable for an understanding of LL X one of the most important texts in the entire corpus of Latin grammatical writings. The stimulating Prolegomena introduce Varro his revolutionary language science book ten and both the manuscript and the editorial traditions and the Commentary explains in absorbing detail how and why the editor has set the text as he has. The world’s foremost Varro scholar of this day has successfully combined classical philology and the history of linguistics to produce an inspired new edition and novel translation of book ten of Varro’s magnum opus.
The Grammar of Possession : Inalienability, incorporation and possessor ascension in Guaraní
Dec 1996
Book
Author(s):
Maura Velázquez-Castillo
The Grammar of Possession: Inalienability incorporation and possessor ascension in Guaraní is an exhaustive study of linguistic structures in Paraguayan Guaraní which are directly or indirectly associated with the semantic domain of inalienability. Constructions analyzed in the book include adnominal and predicative possessive constructions noun incorporation and possessor ascension. Examples are drawn from a rich data base that incorporate native speaker intuitions and resources in the construction of illustrative linguistic forms as well as the analysis of the communicative use of the forms under study. The book provides a complete picture of inalienability as a coherent integrated system of grammatical and semantic oppositions in a language that has received little attention in the theoretical linguistic literature.
The analysis moves from general principles to specific details of the language while applying principles of Cognitive Grammar and Functional Linguistics. There is an explicit aim to uncover the particularities of form-meaning connections as well as the communicative and discourse functions of the structures examined. Other approaches are also considered when appropriate resulting in a theoretically informed study that contains a rich variety of considerations.
The analysis moves from general principles to specific details of the language while applying principles of Cognitive Grammar and Functional Linguistics. There is an explicit aim to uncover the particularities of form-meaning connections as well as the communicative and discourse functions of the structures examined. Other approaches are also considered when appropriate resulting in a theoretically informed study that contains a rich variety of considerations.
Terminology, LSP and Translation : Studies in language engineering in honour of Juan C. Sager
Dec 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Harold Somers
A state-of-the-art volume highlighting the links between lexicography terminology language for special purposes (LSP) and translation and Machine Translation that constitute the domain of Language Engineering.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Part I: Terminology and Lexicography. Takes us through terminological problems and solutions in Europe the former Soviet Union and Egypt.<br/>Part II focuses on LSP for second language learners and lexical analysis.<br/>Part III treats translator training in a historical context as well as new methods from cognitive and corpus linguistics.<br/>Part IV is about the application of language engineering in Machine Translation corpus linguistics and multilingual text generation.<br/>
From Grammar to Science : New Foundations for General Linguistics
Dec 1996
Book
Author(s):
Victor H. Yngve
Although efforts have been under way for the past two centuries to treat language scientifically linguists and others who work with language speech or communication have not found an adequate scientific foundation in current linguistic theory. Many of the difficulties are caused by longstanding confusions between the logical domain of science and grammar and the physical domain of sound waves and the people who speak and understand.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>In this book therefore the last impediments of tradition the ancient semiotic-grammatical foundations of linguistics are set aside. We move into the physical domain where theories and hypotheses can be tested against observations of the physical reality. Here new foundations are laid that are fully consonant with modern science as practiced in physics chemistry and biology.<br/>On these foundations is built a structure of testable specific dynamic causal laws of communicative behavior that provides support for treating previously recalcitrant context-dependent semantic pragmatic interactive rhetorical and literary phenomena. The central role of context in the foundations of the theory provides the insights of scientific lawfulness while still honoring the particularity of situations celebrated in the humanities.
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics : Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume IX: Washington D.C., 1995
Dec 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Mushira Eid and
Dilworth B. Parkinson
This volume includes twelve papers selected from the Ninth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics held at Georgetown University Washington D.C. 1995. Three of the papers deal with codeswitching with Arabic two with the acquisition of Arabic and four with different aspects of Arabic grammatical structure. The volume also includes three papers presenting data on negation in some Arabic dialects (including those of Yemen Morocco Egypt).<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The topics are diverse and include Arabic and constraints on codeswitching verb embeddings and collocations in codeswitching ellipsis in child language acquisition clitic left dislocation parameter resetting in second language acquisition accessing pharyngeal place and the derivation of imperatives.<br/>
Aspects of Argument Structure Acquisition in Inuktitut
Nov 1996
Book
Author(s):
Shanley E.M. Allen
This book discusses the first language acquisition of three morphosyntactic mechanisms of transitivity alternation in arctic Quebec Inuktitut. Data derive from naturalistic longitudinal spontaneous speech samples collected over a nine-month period from four Inuit children. Both basic and advanced forms of passive structures are shown to be used productively by Inuktitut-speaking children at an early age relative to English-speaking children but consistent in age with speakers of non-Indo-European languages reported on in the literature; potential explanations of this difference include frequency of caregiver input and details of language structure. Morphological causatives appear slightly later in the acquisition sequence and their first instances reflect use of unanalyzed routines. Lexical causatives are present from the earliest ages studied. Evidence of a period of overgeneralization of lexical causatives in one subject at the same time as the morphological causative shows signs of being productively acquired suggests that the seeming overgeneralization may reflect nothing more than as yet unstable use of the morphological causative. Noun incorporation structures are shown to be used productively by Inuktitut-speaking children at an early age relative to Mohawk-speaking children; potential explanations of this difference include details of language structure and relative language use in the environments of the learners. Findings are considered in light of current debates in the literature concerning continuity versus maturation of grammatical structure and concerning the functional categories available to the child at early stages of acquisition. Data presented argue against late maturation and suggest that all functional categories may be accessed by the Inuktitut-speaking child early in the acquisition process.
Heraklit : Der Werdegang des Weisen
Nov 1996
Book
Author(s):
Martina Stemich Huber
In der älteren Tradition wird Heraklit zu den Naturphilosophen gezählt doch sein Denken grenzt sich vom reinen Ansammeln von Wissensmaterial und den kosmologischen Spekulationen der ionischen Naturphilosophen ab. Heraklit distanziert sich vom allgemein erfahrbaren Wissen und geht mit Hilfe der konsequenten Rückkehr zu sich selber der Erkenntnissuche nach.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Die anhand einer Reihe ausgewählter Fragmente durchgeführte Untersuchung erbringt neu den Nachweis wie Heraklit eine klare Pädagogik vorschreibt die in manchen Aspekten spätere philosophische Denkformen vorausnimmt. Im Rahmen seiner Paideia gibt er Anweisungen zur Lebenseinstellung und zum ethischen Verhalten welche angehende Schüler befähigen sollen nach dem Logos zu suchen. Bei dieser Suche nach dem Logos in der eigenen Psyche begegnet er dem Logos der Welt. Heraklits Wirklichkeitsvorstellung entsteht aus der Wende nach innen aufgrund derer eine nicht inhaltlich neue Kosmologie sondern ein von einer veränderten Perspektive her betrachteter Kosmos sichtbar wird.<br/>Die so verstandene Weisheitssuche bildetet in der griechischen Gedankenwelt ein Novum: denn erst Heraklit formte die Auffassung von Philosophie als systematische Suche welche mit der Rückwendung auf sich selber zur Erkenntnis der kosmischen Wirklichkeit gelangt.
Trubetzkoy's Orphan : Proceedings of the Montréal Roundtable on “Morphonology: contemporary responses” (Montréal, October 1994)
Nov 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Rajendra Singh
In putting ‘morphonology’ up for adoption as a chapitre particulier in 1929 Trubetzkoy started a debate regarding the boundary between phonology and morphology that has not ended yet. Essentially a record of a roundtable devoted to that boundary (Montréal October 1994) Trubetzkoy’s Orphan is a full and fascinating picture of some very important contemporary attempts to define it. In addition to papers that focus on it the volume also contains important papers on the closely related topics of ‘morphoprosody’ and the ‘lexicon’ views from ‘the floor’ and ‘the outside’ and edited transcripts of the discussions that took place at the Montréal Roundtable.
Intended both for practicising and future phonologists and morpho-logists Trubetzkoy’s Orphan is a valuable record of a very important debate regarding one of the most central questions in phonology and morphology.
Intended both for practicising and future phonologists and morpho-logists Trubetzkoy’s Orphan is a valuable record of a very important debate regarding one of the most central questions in phonology and morphology.
Microparametric Syntax and Dialect Variation
Nov 1996
Book
Editor(s):
James R. Black and
Virginia Motapanyane
Richard Kayne’s introduction to this volume stresses that comparative work on the syntax of very closely related languages and dialects is a research tool promising to provide both a broad understanding of parameters at their finest-grained and an approach to the question of the minimal units of syntactic variation. The 11 articles in this collection demonstrate the use of this tool in analyzing microparametric variation principally with reference to Chomsky’s Minimalist program in a variety of languages. Topics include se/si constructions hypothetical infinitives and adverbial quantifiers in French and other Romance languages; that-trace variation Scandinavian possessive constructions reflexives and subject-verb agreement in Icelandic & Faroese and verb clusters in continental West Germanic dialects; anaphoric agreement in Labrador Inuttut; negative particle questions in Chinese; imperative inversion in Belfast English; and the second person singular interrogative in the traditional vernacular of Bolton.
Anglicisms, Neologisms and Dynamic French
Oct 1996
Book
Author(s):
Michael D. Picone
This comprehensive study of Anglicisms in the context of accelerated neological activity in Contemporary Metropolitan French not only provides detailed documentation and description of a fascinating topic but opens up new vistas on issues of general linguistic interest: the effects of technology on language the analyticity-syntheticity controversy the lexical contribution to language vitality the study of compound word formation the interplay between cultural and linguistic affectivity. By investigating the dynamics of borrowing within the larger framework of general neological productivity and by bringing to bear cognitive and pragmatic considerations a much-needed fresh approach to the entire question of Anglicisms takes shape. All pertinent phenomena regarding Anglicisms in French — a topic which continues to command the attention of language commentators and defenders in France and elsewhere — are explored: integral borrowings semantic calques structural calques the generation of pseudo-Anglicisms and hybrids graphological and phonological phenomena. In each case the phenomenon is investigated in the proper context of its interaction with other pertinent neological phonological and sociocultural developments. These include general changes in French compound word formation modified derivational dynamics the microsystem of pseudo-Classical morphology historic phonological instabilities the pressure for more synthetic types of lexical production in relation to the needs of technology and society. Rather than adhering rigidly to any single theoretical model there is an attempt to set up a dialog between differing models in order to arrive at a multidimensional view of the phenomena investigated.
Classification Syntaxique des Constructions Adjectivales en Coréen
Oct 1996
Book
Author(s):
Jeesun Nam
The purpose of this study is the systematic description of a set of data called Adjectives in Korean which reduces to a minimum theoretical preoccupations and abstract formalisations with no practical applications. The framework of our research is the Lexicon-grammar whose fundamental idea is that the minimal meaningful unit is the simple sentence and not an isolated word. This work is constituted as follows: given that the corpus extracted from current dictionaries is insufficient for our purpose we will reconstitute a complete corpus: first with a formal definition and then according to some other principles discussed in the first section. With this more complete corpus (5300 items) we will examine in the second section general syntactic properties of adjectival constructions. The third section is devoted to the description of 15 classes of adjectival structures. These syntactic classes will be represented in the form of tables in the annex. The results obtained in this work are indispensable at least for the following activities: first the elaboration or verification of a linguistic theory demands a priori examination and systematic description of empirical data; furthermore a syntactic description of lexical data which is as exhaustive as possible has a particular interest in the perspective of the elaboration of a lexicon suitable for computer processing of natural language.L’objectif de cette étude est la description systématique d’un ensemble de données dit Adjectifs en coréen en réduisant au minimum les préoccupations théoriques et les formalisations abstraites et éloignées des faits. Notre démarche s’inscrit dans le cadre du Lexique-grammaire dont l’idée fondamentale est que l’unité minimale de sens est la phrase simple et non le mot isolé. Ce travail est constitué de la manière suivante: étant donné que le corpus extrait des dictionnaires actuels est insuffisant pour notre objectif on reconstituera un corpus complet: d’abord avec une définition formelle et ensuite selon certains autres principes dont nous parlerons dans la première partie; une fois ce corpus constitué (5300 items) on examinera dans la deuxième partie les propriétés syntaxiques générales des constructions adjectivales; la troisième partie est consacrée à décrire 15 classes de structures adjectivales. Ces classes syntaxiques se présentent sous la forme des tables dans l’annexe. Les résultats que nous avons obtenus dans ce travail sont indispensables au moins pour les deux activités suivantes: d’abord une élaboration ou une vérification d’une théorie linguistique exige préalablement l’examen et la description systématique de données empiriques; par ailleurs une description syntaxique des données lexicales aussi exhaustive que possible a un intérêt particulier dans la perspective de l’élaboration d’un lexique adéquat au traitement informatique du langage naturel.
Advances in Clinical Phonetics
Oct 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Martin J. Ball and
Martin Duckworth
Advances in Clinical Phonetics focuses on important developments in phonetic description. Recent years have seen increasing developments in phonetic description in both instrumental and impressionistic approaches. Not restricted to the phonetics of normal speech clinical phoneticians and speech scientists working with disordered speech have been at the forefront of recent work. Some instrumental developments (such as electropalatography) and some transcription developments (such as extIPA symbols) have been spearheaded by clinical phoneticians. The present collection describes and explores these developments. Part one consists of major accounts of advances in clinical phonetics contributed by major international researchers: Raymond D. Kent; William Hardcastle; Martin J. Ball and John Local; and Wolfram Ziegler and Erich Hartmann. The second part comprises six chapters where such advances are illustrated in the context of specific case studies by authors from America and Europe: Fiona Gibbon William Hardcastle Hilary Dent and Fiona Nixon; Marie-Thèrése Le Normand and Claude Chevrie-Muller; Kate Moore and Anna-Maja Korpijaakko-Huuhka; Martin J. Ball and Joan Rahilly; P. Dejonckere and G. Wieneke; Nigel Hewlett Nicola Topham and Catherine McMullen; and Shaween Awan.
Demonstrating the wideranging and lively nature of the field of clinical phonetics the current contributions offer building blocks for further developments in phonetic description — both improvements in instrumentation and refinements in impressionistic transcription leading to an increase in our understanding of the speech production process both in normal and atypical speakers.
Demonstrating the wideranging and lively nature of the field of clinical phonetics the current contributions offer building blocks for further developments in phonetic description — both improvements in instrumentation and refinements in impressionistic transcription leading to an increase in our understanding of the speech production process both in normal and atypical speakers.
The Social Uses of Literacy : Theory and Practice in Contemporary South Africa
Oct 1996
Book
Author(s):
Brian Street
Editor(s):
Mastin Prinsloo and
Mignonne Breier
This book details the findings of a research project investigating the social uses of literacy in a range of contexts in South Africa. This approach treats literacy not simply as a set of technical skills learnt in formal education but as social practices embedded in specific contexts discourses and positions. What this means is made clear through a series of fine-grained accounts of social uses and meanings of literacy in contexts ranging from the taxi industry in Cape Town to family farms urban settlements and displacement sites rural land holdings and various sites during the 1994 elections and among different sectors of South African society Black Colored and White.
Since the view of literacy presented here is so dependent on context the book provides not only descriptions of literacy practices but also rich insights into the complexity of everyday social life in contemporary South Africa at a major point of transition. It can be read as a concrete way of understanding the emergence of the New South Africa as it appears to actors on the ground focused through attention to one central feature of contemporary life — the uses and meanings of literacy.
“Using fascinating and carefully documented case-study material this book raises vital questions about literacy and illiteracy and about adult education. Above all it questions the efficacy of any literacy programme which fails to acknowledge the many ways in which uneducated and so called ‘illiterate’ people already use reading writing and numeracy in their everyday lives.” Jenny Maybin The Open University Milton Keynes
Since the view of literacy presented here is so dependent on context the book provides not only descriptions of literacy practices but also rich insights into the complexity of everyday social life in contemporary South Africa at a major point of transition. It can be read as a concrete way of understanding the emergence of the New South Africa as it appears to actors on the ground focused through attention to one central feature of contemporary life — the uses and meanings of literacy.
“Using fascinating and carefully documented case-study material this book raises vital questions about literacy and illiteracy and about adult education. Above all it questions the efficacy of any literacy programme which fails to acknowledge the many ways in which uneducated and so called ‘illiterate’ people already use reading writing and numeracy in their everyday lives.” Jenny Maybin The Open University Milton Keynes
Germanic Linguistics : Syntactic and diachronic
Oct 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Rosina L. Lippi-Green and
Joseph C. Salmons
This volume contains ten revised and expanded papers selected from the dozens presented at the last Michigan-Berkeley Germanic Linguistics Roundtable five contributions each from syntax (by Werner Abraham Sarah Fagan Isabella Barbier John te Velde and Ruth Lanouette) and historical linguistics (by Garry Davis and Gregory Iverson Mary Niepokuj Neil Jacobs Edgar Polomé and David Fertig).
The authors start from current theoretical discussions in syntactic and diachronic research using theory to address longstanding but still current problems in Germanic linguistics from clitic placement and verb-second phenomena through the Verschärfung to the Twaddellian view of umlaut. Each contribution relies on careful sifting of data situated in the relevant comparative context Germanic Indo-European and cross-linguistic.
The authors start from current theoretical discussions in syntactic and diachronic research using theory to address longstanding but still current problems in Germanic linguistics from clitic placement and verb-second phenomena through the Verschärfung to the Twaddellian view of umlaut. Each contribution relies on careful sifting of data situated in the relevant comparative context Germanic Indo-European and cross-linguistic.
Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Variation
Oct 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Robert Bayley and
Dennis R. Preston
This volume corrects the relative neglect in Second Language Acquisition studies of the quantitative study of language variation and provides insights into such issues as language transfer acquisition through exposure language universals learner’s age and so forth.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>These studies bolster the idea that a full account of SLA development (and hence a “theory of SLA”) must be built on not only detailed accounts of interlanguage data but also on a wide appeal to factors which govern the psycholinguistic bases of SLA. <br/>An important addition to the volume is a comprehensive guide to both the DOS and Macintosh versions of the VARBRUL statistical program used by variationists.<br/>
Foundations of Understanding
Oct 1996
Book
Author(s):
Natika Newton
How can symbols have meaning for a subject? Foundations of Understanding argues that this is the key question to ask about intentionality or meaningful thought. It thus offers an alternative to currently popular linguistic models of intentionality whose inadequacies are examined: the goal should be to explain not how symbols mental or otherwise can refer to or ‘mean’ states of affairs in the external world but how they can mean something to us the users. The essence of intentionality is shown to be conscious understanding the roots of which lie in experiences of embodiment and goal-directed action. A developmental path is traced from a foundation of conscious understanding in the ability to perform basic actions through the understanding of the concept of an objective external world to the understanding of language and abstract symbols. The work is interdisciplinary: data from the neurosciences and cognitive psychology and the perspectives of phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty are combined with traditional philosophical analysis. The book includes a chapter on the nature of conscious qualitative experience and its neural correlates. (Series A)
Concept-Driven Development and the Organization of the Process of Change : An evaluation of the Swedish Working Life Fund
Oct 1996
Book
Author(s):
Bjørn Gustavsen,
Bernd Hofmaier,
Marianne Ekman Philips and
Anders Wikman
The Swedish Working Life Fund — a temporary organization functioning from 1990 to 1995 — distributed 10 billion Swedish crowns for workplace development and initiated 25000 projects. About half of the total labor market was affected. This evaluation study which is built on case studies as well as a survey of a representative sample of the project population describes the emergent characteristics of organization development in Swedish enterprises and services. In order to locate the efforts of the Fund within an explanatory context the study draws on the idea of concept-driven change of participation in development processes of development coalitions of infrastructure for change and of a society that is supportive of change.
Reported Speech : Forms and functions of the verb
Sept 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Theo Janssen and
Wim van der Wurff
In sentences containing reported speech thought or perception it is possible to distinguish different voices or views associated with different discourse roles. They originate in two different clauses: one clause signals a reporting situation and the other a reported situation.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>This volume examines the methods used for combining these two types of clauses in a range of languages. In each of the contributions the focus is on the forms and functions of verbs; topics dealt with include the meaning of tense mood and aspect (and their interaction) in the various types of reported speech the speech act status of reported utterances correlations between reporting verbs and verbs in reported clauses (and the conjunctions introducing them) and possible intra-systemic and cross-linguistic correlations of these properties.<br/>The articles concentrate on the Slavic languages Russian Bulgarian Macedonian Serbian Croatian and Slovene the Romance languages Latin Old and Modern French and Spanish the Germanic languages Swedish German Dutch and English the Indo-Iranian language Bengali and Mandarin Chinese.<br/>
Numeral Classifier Systems : The Case of Japanese
Sept 1996
Book
Author(s):
Pamela A. Downing
Numeral Classifier Systems considers the functional significance of the Japanese numeral system its conclusions based on a corpus of 500 uses of classifier constructions drawn from oral and written Japanese texts.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Interestingly although the Japanese system appears to conform at least superficially to universalistic predictions about its semantic structure this study reports that in actual usage the semantic role of classifiers is slight — only very rarely do they carry any lexical information unavailable from the context or the noun with which the classifier occurs. It does appear however that the system has an important role to play in providing pronoun-like anaphoric elements and in marking pragmatic distinctions such as the individuatedness of referents and the newness of numerical information. For these reasons the classifier system is deeply involved in a number of subsystems of Japanese grammar and the demise of the system (sometimes rumored to be impending) would have substantial implications for the structure of the language as a whole.
Language and Society in Early Modern England : Selected essays 1982–1994
Sept 1996
Book
Author(s):
Vivian Salmon
This volume brings together twelve previously published essays divided into three sections: 1. Surveys of 16th- and 17th-Century Linguistic Scholarship 2. The Study of Universal and Particular Traits of Language and 3. Language Learning and Language Instruction. The volume is completed by an index of biographical names and an index of subjects and terms.
Theoretical Linguistics and Grammatical Description : Papers in honour of Hans-Heinrich Lieb
Aug 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Robin Sackmann and
Monika Budde
This volume presents a collection of 23 papers by renowned linguists on current research in the field of theoretical linguistics. The book focuses on linguistic theory and metatheory and on fundamental concepts and assumptions of modern linguistics.
Learnability and the Lexicon : Theories and second language acquisition research
Aug 1996
Book
Author(s):
Alan Juffs
This book provides a critical review of recent theories of semantics-syntax correspondences and makes new proposals for constraints on semantic structure relevant to syntax. Data from several languages are presented which suggest that semantic structure in root morphemes is subject to parametric variation which has effect across a variety of verb classes including locatives unaccusatives and psych verbs.The implications for first and second language acquisition are discussed. In particular it is suggested that different parametric settings may lead to a learnability problem if adult learners do not retain access to sensitivity to underlying semantic organization and morphological differences between languages provided by Universal Grammar.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>An experiment with Chinese-speaking learners of English is presented which shows that learners initially transfer L1 semantic organization to the L2 but are able to retreat from overgeneralisations and achieve native-like grammars in this area.<br/>Suggestions for further research in this rapidly developing area of theory and acquisition research are also made.
Towards a Social Science of Language : Papers in honor of William Labov. Volume 1: Variation and change in language and society
Aug 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Gregory R. Guy,
Crawford Feagin,
Deborah Schiffrin and
John Baugh
This is a two-volume collection of original research papers designed to reflect the breadth and depth of the impact that William Labov has had on linguistic science. Four areas of 'Labovian' linguistics are addressed: First is the study of variation and change; the papers in sections I and II of the first volume take this as their central theme with a focus on either the social context and uses of language (I) or on the the internal linguistic dynamics of variation and change (II). The study of African American English and other language varieties in the Americas spoken by people of African descent and influenced by their linguistic heritage is the subject of the papers in section III of the first volume. The third theme is the study of discourse; the papers in section I of the second volume develop themes in Labovian linguistics that go back to Labov's work on narrative descriptive and therapeutic discourse. Fourth is the emphasis on language use the search for discursive interactive and meaningful determinants of the complexity in human communication. Papers with these themes appear in section II of the second volume.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>
Studies in Anaphora
Aug 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Barbara A. Fox
The last 15 years has seen an explosion of research on the topic of anaphora. Studies of anaphora have been important to our understanding of cognitive processes the relationships between social interaction and grammar and of directionality in diachronic change. The contributions to this volume represent the “next generation” of studies in anaphora — defined broadly as those morpho-syntactic forms available to speakers for formulating reference — taking as their starting point the foundation of research done in the 1980s. These studies examine in detail and with a richness of methods and theories what patterns of anaphoric usage can reveal to us about cognition social interaction and language change.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>
Minimal Ideas : Syntactic studies in the minimalist framework
Aug 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Werner Abraham,
Samuel David Epstein,
Höskuldur Thráinsson and
C. Jan-Wouter Zwart
The articles in this volume are inspired by the Minimalist Program first outlined in Chomsky’s MIT Fall term class lectures of 1991 and in his seminal paper “A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory”. The articles seek to develop further some key idea in the Minimalist Program sometimes in ways deviating from the course taken by Chomsky.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The articles are preceded by a 40 page introduction into the minimalist framework. The introduction pays special attention to the question how the minimalist framework developed out of the Principles and Parameters (Government and Binding) framework. The introduction serves as a guide through the entire volume presenting the issues to be discussed in the articles in detail and offering a thematic overview over the volume as a whole.<br/>Most of the articles in this volume are concerned with issues raised in Chomsky’s first two minimalist papers namely “A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory” (1993 first distributed in 1992) and “Bare Phrase Structure” (1995a first distributed 1994). In acknowledgment of this each article starts out with a quote from Chomsky (1993 1995a). This quote also serves to highlight the particular grammatical or theoretical issue that is primarily discussed in the relevant article.<br/>Several articles relate issues raised in Chomsky’s first two minimalist papers to the basic ideas in Kayne’s book The Antisymmetry of Syntax (1994 distributed in part in manuscript form in 1993). In many respects therefore these articles develop alternatives to ideas proposed in chapter 4 “Categories and Transformations” of Chomsky’s most recent book The Minimalist Program (1995b). Some of the articles contain references to chapter 4 and some comments on similarities and differences between ideas developed in these papers and in chapter 4 of Chomsky 1995b can also be found in the Introduction to this volume.<br/>
Beyond Theory : Changing organizations through participation
Jul 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Stephen Toulmin and
Bjørn Gustavsen
Action Research is one of the most practical and down-to-earth ways of doing research into working life. Beyond Theory draws on examples and actual cases to discuss action research within the framework of the modern and postmodern theory of science debate. While action research has been much criticized by the traditionalists the book reflects a convergence between action research and positions emerging out of the critique of scientific traditionalism. Discussions between these two fields of knowledge originally so very different can enrich both. The book will be useful not only to researchers and academics but to anyone who is interested in the role and use of knowledge in social and organizational development.
Generative Perspectives on Language Acquisition : Empirical findings, theoretical considerations and crosslinguistic comparisons
Jul 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Harald Clahsen
Against the background of the proliferation of the various subdisciplines of language acquisition research over the past decades this volume aims to enhance the existing but somewhat fragile links between language acquisition and theoretical linguistics. With regard to previous research the book focuses on the acquisition of syntax and syntactic theory specifically on Chomskyan Generative Grammar.
The Whorf Theory Complex : A critical reconstruction
Jun 1996
Book
Author(s):
Penny Lee
At last — a comprehensive account of the ideas of Benjamin Lee Whorf which not only explains the nature and logic of the linguistic relativity principle but also situates it within a larger ‘theory complex’ delineated in fascinating detail. Whorf’s almost unknown unpublished writings (as well as his published papers) are drawn on to show how twelve elements of theory interweave in a sophisticated account of relations between language mind and experience. The role of language in cognition is revealed as a central concern some of his insights having interesting affinity with modern connectionism. Whorf’s gestaltic ‘isolates’ of experience and meaning crucial to understanding his reasoning about linguistic relativity are explained. A little known report written for the Yale anthropology department is used extensively and published for the first time as an appendix. With the Whorf centenary in 1997 this book provides a timely challenge to those who take pleasure in debunking his ideas without bothering to explore their subtlety or even reading them in their original form.
Fractals of Brain, Fractals of Mind : In search of a symmetry bond
Jun 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Earl Mac Cormac and
Maxim I. Stamenov
This collective volume is the first to discuss systematically what are the possibilities to model different aspects of brain and mind functioning with the formal means of fractal geometry and deterministic chaos. At stake here is not an approximation to the way of actual performance but the possibility of brain and mind to implement nonlinear dynamic patterns in their functioning. The contributions discuss the following topics (among others): the edge-of-chaos dynamics in recursively organized neural systems and in intersensory interaction the fractal timing of the neural functioning on different scales of brain networking aspects of fractal neurodynamics and quantum chaos in novel biophysics the fractal maximum-power evolution of brain and mind the chaotic dynamics in the development of consciousness etc. It is suggested that the ‘margins’ of our capacity for phenomenal experience are ‘fractal-limit phenomena’. Here the possibilities to prove the plausibility of fractal modeling with appropriate experimentation and rational reconstruction are also discussed. A conjecture is made that the brain vs. mind differentiation becomes possible most probably only with the imposition of appropriate symmetry groups implementing a flowing interface of features of local vs. global brain dynamics. (Series B)
Functional Descriptions : Theory in practice
Jun 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Ruqaiya Hasan,
Carmel Cloran and
David Butt
This volume focuses on the relation between theory and description by examining aspects of transitivity in different languages. Transitivity — or case grammar to use the popular term — has always occupied a centre-stage position in linguistics not least because of its supposedly privileged relation to states of affairs in the real world. Using a systemic functional perspective the ten papers in this volume make a contribution to this scholarship by focusing on the transitivity patterns in language as the expression of the experiential metafunction. Through a study of different languages — English Dutch German Finnish Chinese and Pitjantjatjara — the contributors provide functional descriptions of the various categories of process their participants and circumstances including phenomena such as di-transitivity causativity the get-passive etc. With the relation between theories and descriptions running through the ten chapters of this volume as sometimes an overt and sometimes a covert theme the chapters point to the nature of the linguistic fact which is linked ineluctably on the one hand to the nature of the theory and on the other to the speakers’ experience of the world in which they live.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The majority of papers included in the volume derive from the 19th International Systemic Functional Congress at Macquarie University.<br/>
Language, Action and Context : The early history of pragmatics in Europe and America 1780–1930
Jun 1996
Book
Author(s):
Brigitte Nerlich and
David D. Clarke
The roots of pragmatics reach back to Antiquity especially to rhetoric as one of the three liberal arts. However until the end of the 18th century proto-pragmatic insights tended to be consigned to the pragmatic that is rhetoric wastepaper basket and thus excluded from serious philosophical consideration.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>It can be said that pragmatics was conceived between 1780 and 1830 in Britain but also in Germany and in France in post-Lockian and post-Kantian philosophies of language. These early ‘conceptions’ of pragmatics are described in the first part of the book.<br/>The second part of the book looks at pragmatic insights made between 1830 and 1880 when they were once more relegated to the philosophical and linguistic underground. The main stage was then occupied by a fact-hunting historical comparative linguistics on the one hand and a newly spiritualised philosophy on the other.<br/>In the last part the period between 1880 and 1930 is presented when pragmatic insights flourished and were sought after systematically. This was due in part to a new upsurge in empiricism positivism and later behaviourism in philosophy linguistics and psychology. Between 1780 and 1930 philosophers psychologists sociologists and linguists came to see that language could only be studied in the context of dialogue in the context of human life and finally as being a kind of human action itself.
Teaching Translation and Interpreting 3 : New Horizons. Papers from the Third Language International Conference, Elsinore, Denmark, 1995
Jun 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Cay Dollerup and
Vibeke Appel
Selected papers from the Third Language International Conference on Translator and Interpreter Training. Capping the series of conferences on this theme in Denmark the present volume brings together a choice selection of the papers read by scholars and teachers from five continents and within all specialities in Translation Studies. In combination with the two previous volumes of the same title the book offers an up-to-date comprehensive representative overview focusing on main issues in teaching in the relatively new field of translation. There are informed and incisive discussions of subtitling interpreting and translation spanning from its historical beginnings to presentations of machine translation and predictions of the future of translation work. Contributions ranging from discussions on the interplay between theory and teaching teaching literary translation introducing students to central issues in translation practice and historical and social issues in teaching translation.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>
Computer-Mediated Communication : Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives
Jun 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Susan C. Herring
Text-based interaction among humans connected via computer networks such as takes place via email and in synchronous modes such as “chat” MUDs and MOOs has attracted considerable popular and scholarly attention. This collection of 14 articles on text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) is the first to bring empirical evidence from a variety of disciplinary perspectives to bear on questions raised by the new medium.<br />The first section linguistic perspectives addresses the question of how CMC compares with speaking and writing and describes its unique structural characteristics. Section two on social and ethical perspectives explores conflicts between the interests of groups and those of individual users including issues of online sex and sexism. In the third section cross-cultural perspectives the advantages and risks of using CMC to communicate across cultures are examined in three studies involving users in East Asia Mexico and students of ethnically diverse backgrounds in remedial writing classes in the United States. The final section deals with the effects of CMC on group interaction: in a women’s studies mailing list a hierarchically-organized workplace and a public protest on the Internet against corporate interests.
Reference and Referent Accessibility
Jun 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Thorstein Fretheim and
Jeanette K. Gundel
The papers in this volume are concerned with the question of how a speaker’s intended referent is interpreted by the addressee. Topics include the interpretation of coreferential vs. disjoint reference the role of intonation syntactic form and animacy in reference understanding and the way in which general principles of utterance interpretation constrain possible interpretations of referring expressions. The collection arises from a workshop on reference and referent accessibility which was held at the 4th International Pragmatics Conference in Kobe Japan July 25-30 1993.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>
The Search for a New Alphabet : Literary studies in a changing world
Jun 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Harald Hendrix,
Joost J. Kloek,
Sophie Levie and
Willie van Peer
Literary Studies is currently going through a deep transformation preparing itself for the launch into the twenty-first century.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The present volume which is dedicated to Douwe Fokkema on the occasion of his retirement from Utrecht University captures this transformation in a number of squibs by a select international group of scholars. Topics dealt with are: canon formation conventions cultural relativism hermeneutics vs. empirical studies and the problem of values all themes very much central to current discussions in comparative literature and literary theory. Taken together they form a variegated picture of a discipline in a changing world continually involved so to speak in ‘The Search for a New Alphabet.’
Prague Linguistic Circle Papers : Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague nouvelle série. Volume 2
May 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Eva Hajičová,
Oldřich Leška,
Petr Sgall and
Zdena Skoumalová
Volume 2 of the Prague Linguistic Circle Papers constitutes a single whole together with Vol. 1 of the series reviving the classical series of Travaux du Cercle linguistique de Prague which was of great importance for the development of European structural linguistics in the 1930s. In the present volume nine Czech linguists and eight authors from abroad present new ideas in various domains from basic properties of the system of language to discourse types and to history of linguistics in the 20th century. Fundamental issues of structural linguistics are discussed by C.H. van Schooneveld and F. Čermák those of quantitative linguistics by M. Těšitelová of sentence structure by H.-H. Lieb Y. Tobin J. Panevová T. Gross and J. Šabršula discourse patterns are dealt with by J. Hoffmannová S. Čmejrková and F. Šticha phonology and graphemics by E. Battistella A. Svoboda and P.A. Luelsdorff with S.V. Chesnokov and the lexicon by L. Waugh and V. Straková.
Die Einheit der Welt : Die Qi-Theorie des Neo-Konfuzianers Zhang Zai (1020–1077)
May 1996
Book
Author(s):
Wolfgang Ommerborn
Der Neo-Konfuzianismus bildet mit seinen verschiedenen Strömungen die wichtigste Geistesschule des imperialen China seit der Song-Zeit (960-1279). Er entstand als Reaktion auf die das chinesische Denken in den Jahrhunderten vorher stark beeinflussenden Schulen des Buddhismus und des Neo-Daoismus und versteht sich selbst als eine Rückkehr zu der Essenz der ursprünglichen konfuzianischen Lehre vor der Han-Zeit (206 v.u.Z.-221 n.u.Z.). Wesentliche Elemente in den Theorien der beiden gegnerischen Schulen wurden aber vom Neo-Konfuzianismus absorbiert und haben ihn ohne Zweifel bereichert und neue Elemente in den Konfuzianismus getragen.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Zhang Zai gehört zu den wichtigsten Vertretern des Neo-Konfuzianismus. Er hat dem Begriff Qi erstmals innerhalb der konfuzianischen Schule eine zentrale Bedeutung gegeben. Qi ist ein ontologischer Begriff der in der Lehre Zhang Zais auf die eine alle Dinge konstituierende Substanz verweist deren unaufhörlicher Prozeß des Verdichtens und Zerstreuens das Entstehen und Vergehen der Dingen hervorruft. Einzelding und Universum sind wesentlich gleich denn sie finden ihre Einheit in der Substanz Qi. Der Mensch hat die Fähigkeit und Aufgabe im Erkenntnisprozeß die Einheit der Welt zu erfassen und die als ein wesentlicher Aspekt dem Qi immanenten sittlichen Prinzipien (Li) im Denken und Handeln zu verwirklichen. So wird er zum Weisen und erlangt die höchste Stufe des menschlichen Seins.
Content, Expression and Structure : Studies in Danish functional grammar
May 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen,
Michael Fortescue,
Peter Harder,
Lars Heltoft and
Lisbeth Falster Jakobsen
This collection of papers offers an alternative to mainstream functional linguistics on two points. Especially in American linguistics function and structure are often viewed almost as polar opposites; in addition structure is often understood as being only a matter of linguistic form — or expression — as opposed to content. The book tries to illustrate why function and structure must be understood as mutually dependent in relation to language — and why the most interesting aspect of language structure is the way it structures the content side of language. In this the book represents a reaffirmation of traditional concerns in structural linguistics especially with respect to the structural integrity of individual languages — but with a reversal of traditional priority: structure is not autonomous but must be understood on the basis of function. Without being hostile to typological and universal generalizations the articles suggest that similarities between languages can only be responsibly discussed on the basis of an understanding that includes a respect for language differences.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The book contains discussions of a number of different languages including Nahuatl Danish Sign Language French and Tlapanec and focuses on the way meaning is organized in the grammar of Danish. A final section sums up theoretical perspectives.<br/>
Units in Mandarin Conversation : Prosody, discourse, and grammar
May 1996
Book
Author(s):
Hongyin Tao
This book provides a new way of studying grammar. The basic thrust of the book is to investigate grammar based on a prosodic unit the intonation unit (IU) in spontaneous speech. The author challenges the dominant practice in the study of syntax which has been to focus on the unit of the artificially constructed sentence. The book shows that some basic notions developed from sentence-level data often do not account well for speech data. For example in many versions of syntactic theory the basic syntactic structure of any sentence is assumed to comprise both an NP and a VP (with variations in terminology). However the author shows that a Mandarin sentence in spoken discourse can consist of a lone NP or a transitive verbal expression without any explicit argument (which is not due to anaphora). Although the book concerns Mandarin discourse and grammar it will be of interest to students of a wide range of fields including discourse analysis syntax conversation analysis prosodic studies and typological studies.
Towards a Critical Sociolinguistics
May 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Rajendra Singh
This collection of twelve essays some of which have been written specifically for this volume by well-known European and North-American sociolinguists reflects an increasing recognition within the field that sociological and theoretical innocence can no longer be underwritten by it and offers a multi-pronged and multi-methodological way to move towards a critical reflexive and theoretically responsible socio-linguistics. It explores with courage and sensitivity some very important areas in the enormous space between Bloomfieldian 'idiolect' and Chomskyan 'UG' in order to situate the human linguistic enterprise and offers valuable insights into human linguisticality and sociality. These explorations expose the limits of correlationism determinism and positivistic reificationism and offer new ways of doing sociolinguistics. Intended for both practicing and future sociolinguists it is an ideal text-book for the times particularly for graduate and advanced undergraduate students.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>
Korean
May 1996
Book
Author(s):
Suk-Jin Chang
Spoken by nearly 70 million people not only within the Korean Peninsula but also in five continents Korean is one of a dozen major languages of the world. Yet outside Korea it is not as much studied as it should be nor has it acquired commensurate international recognition. With its difficult sound system rich word formation patterns and complex sentence structures Korean is one of the most challenging to learn as a foreign language yet there is little that is written in English about Korean. This book eminently fills this gap. The author presents Korean in a lucid and readable manner covering topics from scripts to sounds from words to sentences and from discourse to text analysis. It is therefore both comprehensive and concise. It avoids unnecessary details but includes all essential subjects and describes them in a well-organized theory-free prose. This book should be a handy reference for both teachers and students of Korean especially those abroad.
Public Sector Transformation : Rethinking markets and hierarchies in government
Apr 1996
Book
Author(s):
Frieder Naschold and
Casten von Otter
State administration in modern industrialized countries is facing major challenges to its basic institutional premises. The changing conditions of the global economy mean that the public sector needs to develop far-reaching strategies for innovation. A fundamental reform of the public sector is thus one of the most urgent issues on the international agenda. The volume examines and compares trends issues and experiences of this reform process in Sweden and Germany.
Knowledge and Skills in Translator Behavior
Apr 1996
Book
Author(s):
Wolfram Wilss
This book represents an approach which is intended to give readers a general insight into what translators really do and to explain the concepts and tools of the trade bearing in mind that translation cannot be reduced to simple principles that can easily be separated from each other and thus be handled in isolation. On the whole the book is more process- than product-centred. Translation is seen as an activity with an intentional and a social dimension establishing links between a source-language community and a target-language community and therefore requiring a specific kind of communicative behavior based on the question “Who translates what for whom and why?” To the extent that the underlying principles assumptions and conclusions are convincing to the reader the practical implications of the book last but not least in translation teaching are obvious.
Grammaticalization of the Complex Sentence : A case study in Chadic
Apr 1996
Book
Author(s):
Zygmunt Frajzyngier
The general objective of the study is systematic examination of the processes involved in the formation and evolution of complex sentence constructions in a group of genetically related languages. The Chadic language group at about 140 languages constitutes the largest and most diversified branch of the Afroasiatic family. One of the findings of the present work is that languages starting from the same base may develop quite different morphological and syntactic structures. With respect to issues of general linguistic interest the book deals with motivations for grammaticalization: It is proposed that one of the most important motivations is satisfaction of the principle of well formedness that is that every element in an utterance must have its role transparent to the hearer either by inherent lexical properties or by grammatical means. In the present work both aspects of grammaticalization viz. the emergence of grammatical constructions and the emergence of grammatical morphemes are given equal weight. In addition to semantic metaphor and metonymy as mechanisms in the processes of grammaticalization the present work develops the notion of semiotic metonymy whereby a part of a sign performs the function of the sign. It is shown that semiotic metonymy plays an important role in the grammaticalization of grammatical morphemes and constructions into other morphemes and constructions. The book also shows that unindirectionality is not a governing principle with respect to the development of grammatical morphemes into other grammatical morphemes; rather there is considerable evidence and theoretical justification for the bidirectionality principle.
Studies in Stemmatology
Apr 1996
Book
Editor(s):
Pieter van Reenen and
Margot van Mulken
This volume contains ten papers selected from among those presented at the annual Free University Stemmatological Colloquia 1990-93. Current issues in (automated) stemmatology paleography and codicology are addressed from contemporary theoretical perspectives. All papers focus on new directions in textuology and manuscript affiliation and especially on the use of computer science in this field.The theoretical implications of computer-assisted stemma construction are explored. In combination with achievements in codicology and paleography these investigations allow for dealing with the major problems in textuology: extreme complex and entangled manuscript traditions.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Following an introductory chapter part 1 presents six theoretical contributions on stemmatology and part 2 deals with auxiliary fields in textuology such as codicology and paleography. In part 3 applications of the previously developed fields are presented.
The Genesis of a Language : The formation and development of Korlai Portuguese
Mar 1996
Book
Author(s):
J. Clancy Clements
Korlai Portuguese (KP) a Portuguese-based creole only recently discovered by linguists originated around 1520 on the west coast of India. Initially isolated from its Hindu and Muslim neighbors by social and religious barriers the small Korlai community lost virtually all Portuguese contact as well after 1740. This volume is the first-ever comprehensive treatment of the formation linguistic components and rapidly changing situation of this exotic creole.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The product of ten years of research Korlai Creole Portuguese provides an exciting in-depth diachronic look at a language that is now showing the strain of intense cultural pressure from the surrounding Marathi-speaking population. Framed in Thomason and Kaufman’s 1988 model of contact-induced language change the author’s analysis is enriched by numerous comparisons with sister creoles apart from medieval Portuguese and Marathi.<br/>This book contrastively examines the following areas: <br/>phonemic inventories phonological processes stress assignment syllable structure paradigm restructuring paradigm use lexicon word formation semantic borrowing loan translations grammatical relation marking pre- and postnominal modification negation subject and object deletion embedding and word order.
The Dative : Volume 1: Descriptive studies
Mar 1996
Book
Editor(s):
William Van Belle and
Willy Van Langendonck
Since antiquity scholars have been fascinated by the phenomena of case. The explanation for this fascination is as Hjelmslev already pointed out over fifty years ago the fact that he who can unravel the meaning of case-relations has the key to language structure as a whole.
For over three years a team of twenty scholars affiliated with the Linguistics Department of Leuven University in Belgium has concentrated on case phenomena in different languages both Indo- and non-Indo-European. It is the first time that such a large scale investigation into case has been undertaken. Noteworthy is also its reliance on computer-stored corpora of authentic material.
The results are published as a series (Case and Grammatical Relations across Languages) of which the first volume a bibliography appeared in 1994.
The first volume on the dative case contains 13 articles each of which gives a detailed syntactic-semantic description of the dative or its counterparts in a particular language. In addition to the lexico-syntactic frames in which they occur a number of textual and extra-linguistic factors are taken into account. Languages investigated are English (K. Davidse) German (L. Draye) Dutch (W. Van Belle & W. Van Langendonck) Afrikaans (L.G. de Stadler) Latin (W. Van Hoecke) French (L. Melis) Spanish (N. Delbecque & B. Lamiroy) Portuguese (R. de Andrade) Polish (B. Rudzka-Ostyn) Hungarian (G. Tóth) Pashto (W. Skalmowski) Hebrew (P. Swiggers) and Orizaba Nahuatl (D. Tuggy).
For over three years a team of twenty scholars affiliated with the Linguistics Department of Leuven University in Belgium has concentrated on case phenomena in different languages both Indo- and non-Indo-European. It is the first time that such a large scale investigation into case has been undertaken. Noteworthy is also its reliance on computer-stored corpora of authentic material.
The results are published as a series (Case and Grammatical Relations across Languages) of which the first volume a bibliography appeared in 1994.
The first volume on the dative case contains 13 articles each of which gives a detailed syntactic-semantic description of the dative or its counterparts in a particular language. In addition to the lexico-syntactic frames in which they occur a number of textual and extra-linguistic factors are taken into account. Languages investigated are English (K. Davidse) German (L. Draye) Dutch (W. Van Belle & W. Van Langendonck) Afrikaans (L.G. de Stadler) Latin (W. Van Hoecke) French (L. Melis) Spanish (N. Delbecque & B. Lamiroy) Portuguese (R. de Andrade) Polish (B. Rudzka-Ostyn) Hungarian (G. Tóth) Pashto (W. Skalmowski) Hebrew (P. Swiggers) and Orizaba Nahuatl (D. Tuggy).
Consciousness and Self-Consciousness : A defense of the higher-order thought theory of consciousness
Mar 1996
Book
Author(s):
Rocco J. Gennaro
This interdisciplinary work contains the most sustained attempt at developing and defending one of the few genuine theories of consciousness. Following the lead of David Rosenthal the author argues for the so-called 'higher-order thought theory of consciousness'. This theory holds that what makes a mental state conscious is the presence of a suitable higher-order thought directed at the mental state. In addition the somewhat controversial claim that “consciousness entails self-consciousness” is vigorously defended. The approach is mostly 'analytic' in style and draws on important recent work in cognitive science perception artificial intelligence neuropsychology and psychopathology. However the book also makes extensive use of numerous Kantian insights in arguing for its main theses and in turn sheds historical light on Kant's theory of mind. A detailed analysis of the relationships between (self-)consciousness behavior memory intentionality and de se attitudes are examples of the central topics to be found in this work. (Series A)
Status and Power in Verbal Interaction : A study of discourse in a close-knit social network
Mar 1996
Book
Author(s):
Julie Diamond
Status and Power in Verbal Interaction is a sociolinguistic study of conversation in a social context. Using an ethnographic methodology and a network analysis of the social roles and relationships in a particular language community the book explores how speakers negotiate status relationship and ultimately contest power through discourse. Of chief concern to the study is how speakers manage to negotiate relationship roles — which here consists of institutional status as well as the more variable social standing — using conversation. Discourse is seen to be not only what people say but how they say it — how speakers take the floor bring new topic to the floor interrupt each other and become a resource person in a conversation. The study revolves around the idea that power while intricately tied to social standing and institutional status is more than the sum of one’s institutional standing age education race and gender. Though these factors convey rank conversants nonetheless use discourse to jockey for position and contest their relational role vis-a-vis their discourse partners. While institutional standing may be more or less fixed power of relational roles fluctuates greatly because as the study shows power is accorded through a process of ratifying the positive self-image of a speaker. Thus one’s standing in a group is a community negotiation. By investigating power in community at a micro-level of analysis this study adds a new dimension to existing understandings of power.