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This monograph is the first book-length study on Old High German syntax from a generative perspective in twenty years. It provides an in-depth exploration of the Old High German pre-verb-second grammar by answering the following questions: To what extent did generalized verb movement exist in Old High German? Was there already obligatory XP-movement to the left periphery in declarative root clauses? What deviations from the linear verb-second restriction are attested and what do such phenomena reveal about the structure of the left sentence periphery? Did verb placement play the same role in sentence typing as in the modern verb-second languages? A further major topic is null subjects: It is claimed that Old High German was a partial pro-drop language. All these issues are addressed from a comparative-diachronic perspective by integrating research on other Old Germanic languages in particular on Old English and Gothic. This book is of interest to all those working in the fields of comparative Germanic syntax and historical linguistics.

This volume covering a range of topics such as Spanish as a heritage language in the United States policy issues pragmatics and language contact sociolinguistic variation and contact and Bozal (Creole) Spanish will serve the interests of linguists educators and policy makers alike. It provides cutting edge research on varieties of Spanish spoken by children teenagers and adults in places as diverse as Chicago New York New Mexico and Houston; Valencia and Galicia; the Andean highlands; and the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The emphasis is on spoken Spanish although researchers also investigate code-switching in the lyrics of bachata songs and the presence of creole in Cuban and Brazilian literature. This collection will be of interest wherever Spanish is spoken.

This book a tribute to Angela Downing consists of twenty papers taking a broadly functional perspective on language with topics ranging from the general (grammar as an evolutionary product text comprehension integrative linguistics) to particular aspects of the grammars of languages (Bulgarian English Icelandic Spanish Swedish). The more specific papers are sequenced according to Halliday’s division into ideational textual and interpersonal aspects of the grammar and cover a wide range of areas including aspect argument structure noun phrase/nominal group structure and nominalisations pronominal clitics theme in relation to writing skills discourse structures and markers the role of attention in conversation the functions of topic phatic communion subjectification formulaic language and modality. A recurrent theme in the volume is the use of corpus materials in order to base functional descriptions on authentic productions. Overall the volume constitutes a panoramic but nevertheless detailed view of some important current trends in functional linguistics.

Clausal connection is one of the key building blocks of language and thus a field where a wide range of syntactic semantic pragmatic and cognitive phenomena meet. The availability of large databases as well as considerable advances in corpus-linguistic methods have strengthened the interest in the history of features linking clauses or larger chunks of text. The papers in this volume combine a thorough corpus-based analysis of the history of individual connectives their co-occurrence patterns and patterns of variation and change from both intra- and inter-systemic perspectives with a variety of methodological tools ranging from sophisticated methods of grammatical analysis to pragmatics text linguistics and discourse analysis. Drawing on quantitatively and qualitatively improved data the studies reconstruct the history of a wide range of connectives in English from various new theoretical perspectives.

This volume contains ten articles exploring a wide range of issues in the analysis of the imperative clause from a generative perspective. The language data investigated in detail in the articles come from Dutch English German (old) Scandinavian Spanish and South Slavic; there is further significant discussion of data from other Germanic and Romance languages. The phenomena addressed (in several cases in more than one article leading to some lively debate about contentious issues) include the following: the nature and interpretation of imperative subjects; the properties of participial imperatives; clitic behavior; restrictions on topicalization; word order; null arguments; negative imperatives; and imperatives in embedded clauses. The volume has a substantial introduction sketching the results of earlier generative work on the topic (most of it scattered across disparate outlets) the issues left open by this earlier work and the contribution to further insight and understanding made by the book's articles.

This book departs from the premise that context and appropriateness represent complex relational configurations which can no longer be conceived as analytic primes but rather require the accommodation of micro and macro perspectives to capture their inherent dynamism. The edited volume presents a collection of papers which examine the connectedness between context and appropriateness from interdisciplinary perspectives. The papers use different theoretical frameworks such as situation theory speech act theory cognitive pragmatics sociopragmatics discourse analysis argumentation theory and functional linguistics. They reflect current moves in pragmatics and discourse analysis to cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries by integrating relevant premises and insights in particular cognition negotiation of meaning sequentiality recipient design and genre.

Cognitive English Grammar is designed to be used as a textbook in courses of English and general linguistics. It introduces the reader to cognitive linguistic theory and shows that Cognitive Grammar helps us to gain a better understanding of the grammar of English. The notions of motivation and meaningfulness are central to the approach adopted in the book. In four major parts comprising 12 chapters Cognitive English Grammar integrates recent cognitive approaches into one coherent model allowing the analysis of the most central constructions of English. Part I presents the cognitive framework: conceptual and linguistic categories their combination in situations the cognitive operations applied to them and the organisation of conceptual structures into linguistic constructions. Part II deals with the category of ‘things’ and their linguistic structuring as nouns and noun phrases. It shows how things are grounded in reality by means of reference quantified by set and scalar quantifiers and qualified by modifiers. Part III describes situations as temporal units of various layers: internally as types of situations; and externally as located relative to the time of speech and grounded in reality or potentiality. Part IV looks at situations as relational units and their structuring as sentences. Its two chapters are devoted to event schemas and space and metaphorical extensions of space.

Cognitive English Grammaroffers a wealth of linguistic data and explanations. The didactic quality is guaranteed by the frequent use of definitions and examples a glossary of the terms used overviews and chapter summaries suggestions for further reading and study questions. For the Key to Study Questions click here.

This book departs from the premise that political discourse is intrinsically connected with media discourse as shaped by its cultural and transcultural characteristics. It presents a collection of papers which examine political discourse in the media from a cross-culturally comparative perspective in Arab Dutch British Finnish Flemish French German Israeli Swedish US-American and international contexts. By using different theoretical frameworks such as conversation analysis discourse analysis pragmatics and systemic functional linguistics the papers reflect current moves in political discourse analysis to cross-disciplinary and methodological boundaries by integrating semiotics particularly multimodality cognition context genre and recipient design.

This volume brings together papers which address issues regarding the copy theory of movement. According to this theory a trace is a copy of the moved element that is deleted in the phonological component but is available for interpretation at L(ogical) F(orm). Thus far the bulk of the research on the copy theory has mainly focused on interpretation issues at LF. The consequences of the copy theory for syntactic computation per se and for the syntax–phonology mapping in particular have received much less attention in the literature despite its crucial relevance for the whole architecture of the model. As a contribution to fill this gap this volume congregates recent work that deals with empirical and conceptual consequences of the copy theory of movement for the inner working of syntactic computations within the Minimalist Program with special emphasis on the syntax–phonology mapping.

This stimulating new book as the premier work introducing bilingual lexicography from a communicative perspective is launched to represent original thinking and innovative theorization in the field of bilingual lexicography. It treats the bilingual dictionary as a system of intercultural communication and bilingual dictionary making as a dynamic process realized by sets of choices characterizing the overall nature of the dictionary. It examines the dictionary and dictionary making by using a model of lexicography which stresses the three-way relationship of compiler dictionary context and user and incorporates them into a unified coherent framework. Throughout the study special focus is on English and Chinese bilingual lexicography. It will serve not only as a valuable guide to those interested in dictionary compilation and theoretical inquiries but also as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in bilingual lexicography.