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The papers in this volume focus on the impact of information structure on language acquisition thereby taking different linguistic approaches into account. They start from an empirical point of view and examine data from natural first and second language acquisition which cover a wide range of varieties from early learner language to native speaker production and from gesture to Creole prototypes. The central theme is the interplay between principles of information structure and linguistic structure and its impact on the functioning and development of the learner's system. The papers examine language-internal explanatory factors and in particular the communicative and structural forces that push and shape the acquisition process and its outcome. On the theoretical level the approach adopted appeals both to formal and communicative constraints on a learner’s language in use. Two empirical domains provide a 'testing ground' for the respective weight of grammatical versus functional determinants in the acquisition process: (1) the expression of finiteness and scope relations at the utterance level and (2) the expression of anaphoric relations at the discourse level.

The dominance of vision is so strong in sighted people that touch is sometimes considered as a minor perceptual modality. However touch is a powerful tool which contributes significantly to our knowledge of space and objects. Its intensive use by blind persons allows them to reach the same levels of knowledge and cognition as their sighted peers.In this book specialized researchers present the recent state of knowledge about the cognitive functioning of touch. After an analysis of the neurophysiology and neuropsychology of touch exploratory manual behaviors intramodal haptic (tactual-kinesthetic) abilities and cross-modal visual-tactual coordination are examined in infants children and adults and in non-human primates. These studies concern both sighted and blind persons in order to know whether early visual deprivation modifies the modes of processing space and objects. The last section is devoted to the technical devices favoring the school and social integration of the young blind: Braille reading use of raised maps and drawings “sensory substitution” displays and new technologies of communication adapted for the blind. (Series B)

The time-honoured study of dialects took a new turn some forty years ago giving centre stage to social factors and the quantitative analysis of language variation and change. It has become a discipline that no scholar of language can afford to ignore. This collection identifies the main theoretical and methodological issues currently preoccupying researchers in social dialectology drawing not only on variation in English in the UK USA New Zealand Europe and elsewhere but also in Arabic Greek Norwegian and Spanish dialects. The volume brings together previously unpublished work by the world's most prolific and well-respected social dialectologists as well as by some younger dynamic researchers. Together the authors provide new perspectives on both the traditional areas of sociolinguistic variation and change and the newer fields of dialect formation dialect diffusion and dialect levelling. They provide a snapshot of some of the burning issues currently preoccupying researchers in the field and give signposts to the future direction of the discipline. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>

Silencing is not only a physically coercive act. It is also an act of language involving forms of selection representation and compliance. Discourse and Silencing weaves together theories and examples of discourse from different disciplines in order to put forward a theory of silencing in language: that discursive systems filter represent and displace types of knowledge into other forms of expression.

Each chapter of the book analyses examples of silencing through discourse in various social and political fields. The examples cover courtroom trials government censorship domestic violence marital conversations penal institutions news media and political rhetoric. They cover societies ranging from Eastern and Central Europe Canada and the U.S. to New Zealand and Japan. The contributors clarify the difference between chosen silences and the silencing that as a practice seeks to limit alter or de-legitimise another’s discourse. The book also examines the continuous resistances and shifts in discourse and silencing within the social and political frameworks in which interlocutors negotiate their relations to each other.

In this unique account of 60 years of Bible translation Eugene Nida sets out his journey with a personal touch. On the way he reveals the importance of a solid knowledge of Greek and Hebrew as well as of the historical settings in which the Bible was created in order to render effective translations. Through his story we get to know Nida's views on translations through the ages in different cultures and narrative traditions right through to the 21st Century.

This book is in the first place a study in anthropological linguistics that tells the rich history of Bible translation the Bible Societies translator training and cultural translation problems.

Eugene A. Nida (1914) went to UCLA (Phi Beta Kappa 1936) and the University of Southern California (Helenistic Greek 1939). He taught at the Summer Institute of Linguistics from 1937-1952 and is past president of the Linguistic Society of America (1968).

From 1943-1981 he was language consultant for the American Bible Society and the United Bible Societies which led him to study many cultures across 96 countries and to lecture in over a hundred universities and colleges to this day.

His published works include Bible Translating (1946) Customs and Cultures (1954) Toward a Science of Translating (1964) Religion across Cultures (1968) The Sociolinguistics of Intercultural Communication (1996) and Translation in Context (2002).

This volume contains a selection of refereed and revised papers originally presented at the 32nd Linguistics Symposium on Romance Languages dealing with linguistic theory as applied to the Romance languages and on empirical studies on the acquisition of Romance with studies on Romanian French Spanish Portuguese Italian Romansch and Latin.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The theoretical section contains contributions concentrating on specific properties of Romance at the syntax/semantics interface on morphosyntactic issues on subject licensing and case and on phonology. The acquisition section includes contributions on first bilingual and second language acquisition of functional structure word structure quantification and stress.

Second language acquisition has to integrate the totality of the SLA process which includes both the learning of the core syntax of a language and the learning of the lexical items that have to be incorporated into that syntax. But these two domains involve different kinds of learning. Syntax is learnt through a process of implementing a particular set of universal structures whereas the learning of lexis is characterised by the building up of associations (or connections). Yet these two systems must come together in the creation of a whole linguistic system in the mind of an individual. This book is designed to state the implications of these two paradigms in as clear a way as possible through examples of the research carried out within each paradigm and to examine how they can be made to inter-relate in a way which would enable us to explain better the overall process of SLA.

The present work provides a detailed analysis of chain formation and locality conditions imposed on it within the Minimalist Program. It does so by analyzing resumptive strategies in great detail. This study claims that resumptive pronouns and their antecedents are first merged as constituents and are separated via movement (thus forming instances of discontinuous constituents). Resumptive chains are thus akin to the well-known stranding analysis of quantifier float. A taxonomy of islands is developed that crucially ties barriers for movement to agreement possibilities. The stranding of a resumptive pronoun is shown to limit the role of agreement for the moving element thereby allowing a chain to be formed across an island.

This is the first of a two-volume selection of refereed and revised papers originally presented at the international conference From NP to DP at the University of Antwerp. The papers address issues in the syntax and semantics of the noun phrase in particular the so-called DP-hypothesis which takes noun phrases to be headed by a functional head D(eterminer). The major concerns can be grouped around 3 subthemes: the internal syntax of noun phrases the syntax and semantics of bare nouns and indefinites and the expression of measurement in noun phrases. The wealth of data coming from over 40 different languages combined with a thorough introduction to the current issues in the field of NPs/DPs and some alternative syntactic and semantic analyses provide a comprehensive reference work from both a descriptive and a theoretical point of view. The second volume is concerned exclusively with the expression of possession in noun phrases.

This is a state-of-the-art Guide to the fascinating world of the lexicon and its description in various types of dictionaries.

A team of experts brings together a solid Introduction to Lexicography and leads you through decision-making processes step-by-step to compile and design dictionaries for general and specific purposes. The domains of lexicography are outlined and its specific terminology is explained in the Glossary. Each chapter provides ample suggestions for further reading. Naturally electronic dictionaries corpus analysis and database management are central themes throughout the book.

The book also "introduces" questions about the many types of definition meaning sense relations and stylistics. And that is not all: those afraid to embark on a dictionary adventure will find out all about the pitfalls in the chapters on Design.

A Practical Guide to Lexicography introduces and seduces you to learn about the achievements unexpected possibilities and challenges of modern-day lexicography.