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Formal Grammars in Linguistics and Psycholinguistics : Volume 1: An Introduction to the Theory of Formal Languages and Automata, Volume 2: Applications in Linguistic Theory, Volume 3: Psycholinguistic Applications
Dec 2008
Book
Author(s):
Willem J.M. Levelt
Almost four decades have passed since Formal Grammars first appeared in 1974. At that time it was still possible to rather comprehensively review for (psycho)linguists the relevant literature on the theory of formal languages and automata on their applications in linguistic theory and in the psychology of language. That is no longer feasible. In all three areas developments have been substantial if not breathtaking. Nowadays an interested linguist or psycholinguist opening any text on formal languages can no longer see the wood for the trees as it is by no means evident which formal mathematical tools are really required for natural language applications. An historical perspective can be helpful here. There are paths through the wood that have been beaten since decades; they can still provide useful orientation. The origins of these paths can be traced in the three volumes of Formal Grammars brought together in the present re-edition. In a newly added postscript the author has sketched what has become after all these years of formal grammars in linguistics and psycholinguistics or at least some of the core developments. This chapter may provide further motivation for the reader to make a trip back to some of the historical sources.
Case and Grammatical Relations : Studies in honor of Bernard Comrie
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Greville G. Corbett and
Michael Noonan
The papers in this volume can be grouped into two broad overlapping classes: those dealing primarily with case and those dealing primarily with grammatical relations. With regard to case topics include descriptions of the case systems of two Caucasian languages the problems of determining how many cases Russian has and whether Hungarian has a case system at all the issue of case-combining the retention of the dative in Swedish dialects and genitive objects in the languages of Europe. With regard to grammatical relations topics include the order of obliques in OV and VO languages the effects of the referential hierarchy on the distribution of grammatical relations the problem of whether the passive requires a subject category the relation between subjecthood and definiteness and the issue of how the loss of case and aspectual systems triggers the use of compensatory mechanisms in heritage Russian.
Current Issues in Generative Hebrew Linguistics
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Sharon Armon-Lotem,
Gabi Danon and
Susan Rothstein
This volume presents a collection of specially commissioned papers devoted to analyzing the linguistics of Modern Hebrew from a number of perspectives. Various aspects of Modern Hebrew grammar are discussed including the structure of the lexicon grammatical features and inflectional morphology as well as the grammaticalization of semantic and pragmatic distinctions. The psycholinguistic issues addressed include the acquisition of morphological knowledge the pro-drop parameter and question formation as well as language use in hearing-impaired native speakers. The collection of these papers together in a single volume allows these phenomena to be considered not in isolation but in the context of the grammatical system of which the language is an expression. As a consequence more general issues connected to Modern Hebrew begin to emerge such as the role of the inflectional morphological system in the grammar and a rich set of facts and analyses relevant for many related issues are made available to the reader.
Controversy and Confrontation : Relating controversy analysis with argumentation theory
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Frans H. van Eemeren and
Bart Garssen
The essays that are collected in Controversy and Confrontation provide a closer insight into the relationship between controversy and confrontation that deepens our understanding of the functioning of argumentative discourse in managing differences of opinion. Their authors stem from two backgrounds. First the controversy scholars Dascal Marras Euli Regner Ferreira and Lessl discuss historical controversies in science both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective; Saim concentrates on a historical controversy; Fritz provides a historical perspective on controversies by analyzing communication principles. Second the argumentation scholars Johnson van Laar van Eemeren Garssen and Meuffels address theoretical or empirical aspects of argumentative confrontation; Aakhus and Vasilyeva examine argumentative discourse from the perspective of conversation analysis; Jackson analyzes argumentative confrontation in a recent debate between scientists and politicians. Last but not least two contributors Kutrovátz and Zemplén make an attempt to bridge the study of historical controversy and the study of argumentation.
Style Shifting in Japanese
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Kimberly Jones and
Tsuyoshi Ono
This innovative and interdisciplinary book on style shifting in Japanese brings together a wide range of perspectives and methodologies—including discourse analysis sociolinguistics cognitive linguistics and functional linguistics—to look at a variety of types of style shifting in both spoken and written Japanese discourse. Though diverse in approach the contributions all reflect the belief that language use is inextricably linked to both context and language structure in mutually constitutive relationships. Topics covered include shifting between "polite" and "plain" styles the emergence of a "semi-polite" style speakers' strategic use of gendered styles or regional dialects shifting between different deictic expressions and prosodic shifting. This careful and detailed examination advances our understanding of the complex phenomenon of style shifting not only in Japanese but also more generally and will be of interest to researchers and students in fields such as linguistics linguistic anthropology communication studies and second language acquisition and teaching.
Positioning in Media Dialogue : Negotiating roles in the news interview
Dec 2008
Book
Author(s):
Elda Weizman
This book proposes a socio-pragmatic exploration of the discursive practices used to construe and dynamically negotiate positions in news interviews. It starts with a discursive interpretation of ‘positioning’ ‘role’ and ‘challenge’ puts forward the relevance of a distinction between social and interactional roles demonstrates how challenges bring to the fore the relevant roles and role-components of the participants and shows that in news interviews speakers constantly position and re-position themselves and each other through discourse.The discussion draws on an empirical fine-grained analysis of a 24-hour corpus of news interviews on Israeli television and a corpus of media references. The author postulates a discrepancy between interlocutors’ normative expectations which presuppose an asymmetrical division of labor on the one hand and real-life practice which exhibits partial symmetry in speakers’ selection of discourse patterns as well as reciprocity in the use of challenge strategies on the other. Special attention is given to irony and terms of address which are shown to act as the center-points of satellite challenge strategies geared as an ensemble toward the co-construction of reciprocal positioning. The analysis of three case studies further sheds light on the negotiations of intertwined positionings in context.
Cognition Distributed : How cognitive technology extends our minds
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Itiel E. Dror and
Stevan Harnad
Our species has been a maker and user of tools for over two million years but "cognitive technology" began with language. Cognition is thinking and thinking has been "distributed" for at least the two hundred millennia that we have been using speech to interact and collaborate allowing us to do collectively far more than any of us could have done individually. The invention of writing six millennia ago and print six centuries ago has distributed cognition still more widely and quickly among people as well as their texts. But in recent decades something radically new has been happening: Advanced cognitive technologies especially computers and the Worldwide Web are beginning to redistribute cognition in unprecedented ways not only among people and static texts but among people and dynamical machines. This not only makes possible new forms of human collaboration but new forms of cognition. This book examines the nature and prospects of distributed cognition providing a conceptual framework for understanding it and showcasing case studies of its development. This volume was originally published as a Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition (14:2 2006).
Current Trends in Contrastive Linguistics : Functional and cognitive perspectives
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
María de los Ángeles Gómez González,
J. Lachlan Mackenzie and
Elsa M. González Álvarez
This book examines the contribution of various recent developments in linguistics to contrastive analysis. The articles range across a broad gamut of languages with most attention going to the languages of Europe. They show how advances in theory and computer technology are together impacting the field of contrastive linguistics. Part I focuses from a broadly functional-cognitive viewpoint on the close link with typology stressing the importance of embedding the treatment of grammatical categories in their contexts of use. Part II turns to methodological issues exploring the enormous potential offered by parallel computer-accessible corpora to contrastive linguistics and to enhancing the testability authenticity and empirical adequacy of cross-linguistic studies. Part III is concerned with contrastive semantics ranging from individual items to entire grammatical constructions and shows how meanings are coupled to language-specific cognitive strategies and even to cultural differences in subjective awareness and the fashioning of personal identity.
Naturalness and Iconicity in Language
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Klaas Willems and
Ludovic De Cuypere
Iconicity and naturalness remain controversial concepts in recent linguistic research. The present volume aims to scrutinize unresolved issues of iconicity and naturalness in language. The studies discuss topics such as naturalism in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of linguistics linguistic iconicity in semiotics iconic structures in Sign Languages natural and unnatural sound patterns the iconic nature of parts of speech the relation between (un)markedness and naturalness and lexical and syntactic iconicity. The research conducted is based on sound (meta)theoretical analyses and/or original empirical research. The data and innovative views presented are bound to spark discussion in an age-old debate that has lost nothing of its significance.
Productivity : Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic
Dec 2008
Book
Author(s):
Jóhanna Barðdal
Productivity of argument structure constructions is a new emerging field within cognitive-functional linguistics. The term productivity as used in linguistic research contains at least three subconcepts: ‘extensibility’ ‘regularity’ and ‘generality’. The focus in this study of case and argument structure constructions in Icelandic is on the concept of extensibility while generality and regularity are regarded as derivative of extensibility. Productivity is considered to be a function of type frequency semantic coherence and the inverse correlation between these two. This study establishes productivity as an emergent feature of the grammatical system in an analysis that is grounded in a usage-based constructional approach where constructions are organized into lexicality-schematicity hierarchies. The view of syntactic productivity advocated here offers a unified account of productivity in that it captures different degrees of productivity ranging from highly productive patterns through various intermediate degrees of productivity to low-level analogical extensions.
A Corpus-driven Study of Discourse Intonation : The Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (Prosodic)
Dec 2008
Book
Author(s):
Winnie Cheng,
Chris Greaves and
Martin Warren
The book is the first to apply David Brazil’s Discourse Intonation systems (prominence tone key and termination) to the study of a corpus of authentic naturally-occurring spoken discourses. The Hong Kong Corpus of Spoken English (prosodic) is made up of approximately one million words consisting of four sub-corpora of equal size namely academic conversation business and public. The participants are all adults and typically have either Cantonese or English as their first language. The four Discourse Intonation systems are described in terms of how the system works and how they are manifested in the corpus both across the sub-corpora and also across speakers in the corpus. The book is accompanied with a CD containing the prosodically transcribed corpus together with iConc which is the software designed and written specifically to interrogate the HKCSE (prosodic). The issues raised and discussed are all of importance in Conversation Analysis Corpus Linguistics Discourse Analysis Discourse Intonation Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication.
The Left Periphery : The interaction of syntax, pragmatics and prosody in Czech
Dec 2008
Book
Author(s):
Anne Sturgeon
This study of the interaction of syntax pragmatics and prosody in left peripheral positions focuses on two left dislocation constructions in Czech Hanging Topic Left Dislocation and Contrastive Left Dislocation. The structure of the left periphery is delineated through a thorough description and analysis of these constructions with respect to their syntactic behavior discourse function and prosody. Following recent work on the Syntax-Phonology interface prosody in these constructions is shown to interact in interesting ways with the narrow syntax. Unexpected patterns of left-edge resumption are explained through the role of the PF component of the grammar.
The Dynamics of Linguistic Variation : Corpus evidence on English past and present
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Terttu Nevalainen,
Irma Taavitsainen,
Päivi Pahta and
Minna Korhonen
Variability is characteristic of any living language. This volume approaches the ‘life cycle’ of linguistic variability in English using data sources that range from electronic corpora to the internet. In the spirit of the 1968 Weinreich Labov and Herzog classic the fifteen contributions divide into three sections each highlighting different stages in the dynamics of English across time and space. They show first how increase in variability can be initiated by processes that give rise to new patterns of discourse which can ultimately crystallize into new grammatical elements. The next phase is the spread of linguistic features and patterns of discourse both new and well established through the social and regional varieties of English. The final phase in this ebb and flow of linguistic variability consists of processes promoting some variable features over others across registers and regional and social varieties thus resulting in reduced variation and increased linguistic homogeneity.
In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory : Essays in the four fields of anthropology. In honor of Harold Crane Fleming
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
John D. Bengtson
Compiled in honor and celebration of veteran anthropologist Harold C. Fleming this book contains 23 articles by anthropologists (in the general sense) from the four main disciplines of prehistory: archaeology biogenetics paleoanthropology and genetic (historical) linguistics. Because of Professor Fleming’s major focus on language — he founded the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory and the journal Mother Tongue — the content of the book is heavily tilted toward the study of human language its origins historical development and taxonomy. Because of Fleming’s extensive field experience in Africa some of the articles deal with African topics.
This volume is intended to exemplify the principle in the words of Fleming himself that each of the four disciplines is enriched when it combines with any one of the other four. The authors are representative of the cutting edge of their respective fields and this book is unusual in including contributions from a wide range of anthropological fields rather than concentrating in any one of them.
This volume is intended to exemplify the principle in the words of Fleming himself that each of the four disciplines is enriched when it combines with any one of the other four. The authors are representative of the cutting edge of their respective fields and this book is unusual in including contributions from a wide range of anthropological fields rather than concentrating in any one of them.
Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction
Dec 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Gisella Ferraresi and
Maria Goldbach
This is a collection of state-of-the-art papers in the field of syntactic reconstruction. It treats a range of topics which are representative of current debates in historical syntax. The novelty and merit of the present book is the editors believe that in contrast to most previous work on diachronic syntax it combines the perspectives of the traditional philological research on syntactic reconstruction with the insights of modern syntactic theory as it is emphasised in the Foreword by Giuseppe Longobardi. The volume includes articles by well-recognized researchers in historical linguistics with a focus on syntactic change. In the present volume syntactic reconstruction is discussed from a variety of angles including historical linguistics phenomena of language contact generative approaches as well as typological and variationist research. In the articles languages from a diverse range of families are discussed including Indo-European North and South Caucasian Sino-Tibetan and Turkic.
Subordination and Coordination Strategies in North Asian Languages
Nov 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Edward J. Vajda
Across North Asia complex sentence formation patterns display an unusually high prevalence of suffixed relational morphemes used to convey subordination. Suffixal subordinators occur in a variety of genetic groupings most notably Samoyedic Turkic and Tungusic but also in some of the region’s language isolates such as Ket and Ainu. No general study has surveyed complex sentences across Northern Eurasia and the Pacific Rim an area noted both for its complicated web of language contact phenomena and its long-established genetic divisions. The 14 chapters in this volume survey synthetic and analytic methods of subordination and coordination. Much of the data reflect original fieldwork and several chapters focus on critically endangered languages. Nearly every family or isolate in North Asia is taken into consideration as are all major formal and functional types of complex sentence formation.
The Grammar of Repetition : Nupe grammar at the syntax–phonology interface
Nov 2008
Book
Author(s):
Jason Kandybowicz
Displacement is a fundamental property of grammar. Typically when an occurrence moves it is pronounced in only one environment. This was previously viewed as a primitive/irreducible property of grammar. Recent work however suggests that it follows from principled interactions between the syntactic and phonological components of grammar. As such the phonetic character of movement chains can be seen as both a reflection of and probe into the syntax-phonology interface. This volume deals with repetition an atypical outcome of movement operations in which displaced elements are pronounced multiple times. Although cross-linguistically rare the phenomenon obtains robustly in Nupe a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria. Repetition raises a tension of the descriptive-explanatory variety. In order to achieve both measures of adequacy movement theory must be supplemented with an account of the conditions that drive and constrain multiple pronunciation. This book catalogs these conditions bringing to light a number of undocumented aspects of Nupe grammar.
The Syntactic Nature of Inner Aspect : A minimalist perspective
Nov 2008
Book
Author(s):
Jonathan E. MacDonald
This book explores the syntactic nature of inner aspect from a minimalist perspective. It begins with the new observation that there are two independent properties at play in English inner aspect: the object-to-event mapping and event structure. From a discussion of English statives and Russian it is concluded that the former property is variant and the latter universal; a minimalist conception of language variation arises naturally in this context. Additionally an exploration of a lexical derivational approach to achievements leads to the expectation that there are no accomplishments in the lexicon. A detailed look at idioms suggests that this expectation is met. These results support the division of labor between an operative lexicon and narrow syntax in aspectual composition; this naturally poses a problem for (neo-)constructional approaches to inner aspect. Finally one conclusion reached about the syntactic nature of inner aspect regards the object-to-event mapping: it is a purely syntactic phenomenon.
Animating Expressive Characters for Social Interaction
Nov 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Lola Cañamero and
Ruth Aylett
Animated interactive characters and robots that are able to function in human social environments are being developed by a large number of research groups worldwide. Emotional expression as a key element of human social interaction and communication is often added in an attempt to make them appear more natural to us. How can such artefacts be given emotional displays that are believable and acceptable to humans? This is the central question of Animating Expressive Characters for Social Interaction.
The ability to express and recognize emotions is a fundamental aspect of social interaction. Not only is it a central research question it has been explored in animated films dance and other expressive arts for a much longer period. This book is unique in presenting a multi-disciplinary approach to animation in its broadest sense: from internal mechanisms to external displays not only from a graphical perspective but more generally examining how to give characters an “anima” so that they appear as life-like entities and social partners to humans. (Series B)
The ability to express and recognize emotions is a fundamental aspect of social interaction. Not only is it a central research question it has been explored in animated films dance and other expressive arts for a much longer period. This book is unique in presenting a multi-disciplinary approach to animation in its broadest sense: from internal mechanisms to external displays not only from a graphical perspective but more generally examining how to give characters an “anima” so that they appear as life-like entities and social partners to humans. (Series B)
Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface
Nov 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Robert D. Van Valin Jr.
Investigations of the Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics Interface presents on-going research in Role and Reference Grammar in a number of critical areas of linguistic theory: verb semantics and argument structure the nature of syntactic categories and syntactic representation prosody and syntax information structure and syntax and the syntax and semantics of complex sentences. In each of these areas there are important results which not only advance the development of the theory but also contribute to the broader theoretical discussion. In particular there are analyses of grammatical phenomena such as transitivity in Kabardian the verb-less numeral quantifier construction in Japanese and an unusual kind of complex sentence in Wari’ (Chapakuran Brazil) which not only illustrate the descriptive and explanatory power of the theory but also present interesting challenges to other approaches. In addition there are papers looking at the implications and applications of Role and Reference Grammar for neurolinguistic research parsing and automated text analysis.
From Polysemy to Semantic Change : Towards a typology of lexical semantic associations
Nov 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Martine Vanhove
This book is the result of a joint project on lexical and semantic typology which gathered together field linguists semanticists cognitivists typologists and an NLP specialist. These cross-linguistic studies concern semantic shifts at large both synchronic and diachronic: the outcome of polysemy heterosemy or semantic change at the lexical level. The first part presents a comprehensive state of the art of a domain typologists have long been reluctant to deal with. Part two focuses on theoretical and methodological approaches: cognition construction grammar graph theory semantic maps and data bases. These studies deal with universals and variation across languages illustrated with numerous examples from different semantic domains and different languages. Part three is dedicated to detailed empirical studies of a large sample of languages in a limited set of semantic fields. It reveals possible universals of semantic association as well as areal and cultural tendencies.
Dimensions of Forensic Linguistics
Nov 2008
Book
Editor(s):
John Gibbons and
M. Teresa Turell
This volume functions as a guide to the multidisciplinary nature of Forensic Linguistics understood in its broadest sense as the interface between language and the law. It seeks to address the links in this relatively young field between theory method and data without neglecting the need for new research questions in the field. Perhaps the most striking feature of this collection is its range strikingly illustrating the multi-dimensionality of Forensic Linguistics. All of the contributions share a preoccupation with the painstaking linguistic work involved using and interpreting data in a restrained and reasoned way.
Shaping Minds : A discourse analysis of Chinese-language community mental health literature
Nov 2008
Book
Author(s):
Guy Ramsay
Mental illness is an increasing concern of government health services across the globe. It is timely therefore that community education about mental illness is subject to discourse analysis. Shaping Minds explores how the psychoeducational message is presented to Chinese-speaking audiences in China Taiwan and Australia. The book uniquely examines community education materials in a language rarely examined by discourse analysts but which is nevertheless spoken by around a fifth of the world’s population and constitutes an important ‘minority’ language throughout the Western world. The book identifies the discursive features that characterise the Chinese-language texts and analyses them cross-culturally highlighting the impact of cultural traditions political systems and dominant conceptions of society. These insights into how Chinese-language community health pamphlets and handbooks are positioned to shape the minds of readers will engage both discourse analysts and mental health professionals providing services to Chinese-speaking communities across the globe.
Clitic Doubling in the Balkan Languages
Nov 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Dalina Kallulli and
Liliane Tasmowski
This volume is a collection of articles on clitic doubling a phenomenon that has preoccupied generative linguists since the 1980s when its theoretical importance was noted. Clitic doubling is prevalent in the Balkan languages. However generative studies initially dealt with its properties in Romance languages with the Balkan patterns coming increasingly into focus. Since the mid-nineties these patterns presented a variety of challenges to the generalisations reached on the basis of Romance while also raising new research questions. The volume deals among other things with the following aspects of the phenomenon: its extension within and outside the Balkan Sprachbund and the observed variation; its realizational possibilities and the constraints on the status of the doubled DP (direct or indirect object pronominal or non-pronominal); its semantics (definite specific presupposed neither) and pragmatics (topic or not D-linked or not); its temporal and locational genesis; the relationship between the clitic and its associate.
Topics in Language Resources for Translation and Localisation
Nov 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Elia Yuste Rodrigo
Language Resources (LRs) are sets of language data and descriptions in machine readable form such as written and spoken language corpora terminological databases computational lexica and dictionaries and linguistic software tools. Over the past few decades mainly within research environments LRs have been specifically used to create optimise or evaluate natural language processing (NLP) and human language technologies (HLT) applications including translation-related technologies. Gradually the infrastructures and exploitation tools of LRs are being perceived as core resources in the language services industries and in localisation production settings. However some efforts ought yet to be made to raise further awareness about LRs in general and LRs for translation and localisation in particular to a wider audience in all corners of the world. Topics in Language Resources for Translation and Localisation sets out to establish the state of the art of this ever expanding field and underscores the usefulness that LRs can potentially have in the process of creating adapting managing standardising and leveraging content for more than one language and culture from various perspectives.
The Social Construction of SARS : Studies of a health communication crisis
Nov 2008
Book
Editor(s):
John H. Powers and
Xiaosui Xiao
When the SARS virus began its spread from southern China around the world in spring 2003 it caught regional and international health officials by surprise. The SARS epidemic itself lasted for only a few months whereas its treatment in communicative terms keeps providing us with important lessons that can prepare us all for the much larger pandemic that many are predicting will eventually occur. While the medical aspects of SARS are now relatively well understood the discursive rhetorical dimensions are much less so.
As an international epidemic SARS arrived in a number of distinctive societies with the result that different communities handled the crisis in different ways some far more effectively than others. Accordingly the 12 chapters in The Social Construction of SARS are studies of how a major health-related crisis was understood and dealt with from a communicative perspective in such diverse places as Hong Kong mainland China Singapore Taiwan Canada and the United States during the SARS outbreak.
As an international epidemic SARS arrived in a number of distinctive societies with the result that different communities handled the crisis in different ways some far more effectively than others. Accordingly the 12 chapters in The Social Construction of SARS are studies of how a major health-related crisis was understood and dealt with from a communicative perspective in such diverse places as Hong Kong mainland China Singapore Taiwan Canada and the United States during the SARS outbreak.
The Pragmatics of Making it Explicit
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer
Robert Brandom’s Making it Explicit (1994) marks a Copernican turn in the philosophy of mind and language as this collection of critical essays together with Brandom’s enlightening answers convincingly shows. Though faithful to Wittgenstein’s pragmatic turn in spirit Brandom gives a systematic account of human sapience as a whole – by grounding our relation to the world by words on our discursive practice assessing its normative basis which is instituted by scorekeeping activities and sanctioning attitudes and thus trying to avoid mystifying mentalism as well as dogmatic naturalism in our account of the human spirit. The topics emphasized in this volume concern the place of Brandom’s inferentialist and normative semantics in 20th century philosophy of language (Frege Carnap Quine) also in comparison to cognitive linguistics (Chomsky) instrumentalist pragmatism and functionalist understanding of the use of signs (Sellars) deflation of intentionality (Brentano) the logical analysis of predicative structures (Kant) the role of constructions for understanding the constitution of objectivity by de-re-ascriptions and the problem of anti-representationalism or how to treat malapropisms (Davidson).This volume was originally published as a Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition (13:1 2005)
Roots of Creole Structures : Weighing the contribution of substrates and superstrates
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Susanne Maria Michaelis
This book reflects an ongoing shift in the study of contact languages: After a period of history-free universalism it directs the attention to the individual historical circumstances under which the pidgin and creole languages arose. The contributions deal with different areas of language structure including phonology morphology and syntax providing a wealth of structural and sociohistorical data that any comprehensive theory of contact languages will have to account for. Each of the papers provides a thorough description of a structural phenomenon against the background of the sociohistorical contact situation. The languages covered in the book are: Guiné-Bissau Creole Haitian Creole Hawai‘i Creole Indo-Portuguese creoles Jamaican Creole Lingua Franca North American French Mauritian Creole Santomense Saramaccan Seychelles Creole Sranan Surinamese Maroon creoles Vincentian Creole and Zamboangueño Chavacano.
Studies in French Applied Linguistics
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Dalila Ayoun
Studies in French Applied Linguistics invites the reader to adopt a broad perspective on applied linguistics illustrating the fascinating multifaceted work researchers are conducted in so many various inter-connected subfields. The five chapters of the first part are dedicated to the first and second language acquisition of French in various settings: First language acquisition by normal children from a generative perspective and by children with Specific Language Impairment; second language acquisition in Canadian immersion settings from a neurolinguistic approach to phonology and natural language processing and CALL. The six chapters of the second part explore the contribution of French in various subfields of applied linguistics such as an anthropological approach to literacy issues in Guadeloupean Kréyòl literacy issues in new technologies phonological and lexical innovations in the banlieues French in North Africa language planning and policy in Quebec as well as the emerging field of forensic linguistics from an historical perspective.
Crosslinguistic Studies of Clause Combining : The multifunctionality of conjunctions
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Ritva Laury
The study of clause combining has been advanced lately by increasing interest in the study of actual language use in a typologically diverse set of languages. A number of received understandings have been challenged among these the idea of clause combinations as being divisible into subordination and coordination in a binary fashion. Connected to this idea is the nature of conjunctions a topic treated in several articles here. Couched within the larger issue of the nature of categoriality in language several of the papers show that conjunctions are highly polyfunctional items and that clause combining is only one of the uses to which speakers put them. Other topics treated in the volume are the historical development of conjunctions and the use of formulaic main clause constructions as projective units in conversation. The articles manifest both typological and theoretical breadth. They are based on data from Bulgarian English Estonian Finnish Indonesian Japanese and Spanish. The theoretical approaches include discourse-functional interactional historical and generative linguistics.
Grammar and Interaction : Pivots in German conversation
Oct 2008
Book
Author(s):
Emma Betz
This monograph provides a micro-analytic description of the structure and communicative use of syntactic pivot constructions in German. Using the methodology of Conversation Analysis this work shows that pivots emerge in interaction in response to local communicative needs.Exclusively found in spoken German pivots allow a speaker to extend an utterance beyond a possible completion point in a syntactically and prosodically unobtrusive way. Speakers utilize this basic property to promote context-specific actions: managing boundaries of speakership bridging sequential and topical junctures and dealing with different types of interactional trouble.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Through a close examination of syntactic pivots as an interactional resource this work shows that spoken linguistic structures can only be fully understood if we acknowledge the temporality of language and view grammar as usage-based and negotiable. This book thus contributes to a growing body of research at the intersection of grammar and interaction.
Rhetoric in Detail : Discourse analyses of rhetorical talk and text
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Barbara Johnstone and
Christopher Eisenhart
The eleven studies in this volume illustrate and advance the synthesis of discourse analysis with rhetorical studies. Rhetoric in Detail shows how a variety of techniques from discourse analysis can be useful in studying such concerns as agency legitimation controversy and style and how concepts from rhetoric including genre and figuration can enrich the work of discourse analysts. The authors’ research sites range from government commissions political speeches newspaper reports and letters to interviews and conversations in beauty salons and online. Methodological overviews interspersed throughout survey critical discourse analysis interactional sociolinguistics grounded theory computer-aided corpus analysis narrative analysis and participant observation and provide suggestions for further reading. Rhetoric in Detail is an invaluable source for rhetoricians looking for systematic grounded ways of approaching new more vernacular sites for rhetorical discourse and for discourse analysts interested in seeing what they can learn from the tradition and practice of rhetorical analysis.
What We Remember : The construction of memory in military discourse
Oct 2008
Book
Author(s):
Mariana Achugar
This interdisciplinary monograph explores the discursive manifestations of the conflict over how to remember and interpret the actions of the military during the last dictatorship in Uruguay (1973-1985). Through the exploration of the discursive ways in which this powerful group represents past events and participants we can trace the ideological struggle over how to reconstruct a traumatic past. By looking at memory as a social and discursive practice the analysis identifies particular semiotic practices and linguistic patterns deployed in the construction of memory. The discursive description of what is remembered how it is remembered and who remembers serves to explain how the institution’s construction of the past is transformed and maintained to respond to outside criticism and create an institutional identity as a lawful state apparatus. This book should interest discourse analysts historians sociologists and researchers in the field of transitional justice.
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Ilana Mushin and
Brett Baker
Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages is the first major survey to address the issue of the effects of information packaging on Australian languages widely known for nonconfigurationality. The papers are based on individual fieldwork and describe a wide range of Australian languages of different types ranging from the polysynthetic languages of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley to the classical types represented by Walpiri. Topics covered include the pragmatics of information exchange the interaction of noun class marking with polarity and referentiality the effects of specificity on argument indexing the discourse uses of the ergative case the contribution of pronouns to NP reference the interaction of tense and aspect clitics with information structure clause-initial position and discourse and grammar in Australian languages. The volume will appeal to scholars interested in discourse typology syntax semantics and pragmatics.
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics : Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic linguistics. Volume XXI: Provo, Utah, March 2007
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Dilworth B. Parkinson
This volume contains a selection of reviewed and revised papers from the twenty-first Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics which was held on March 2–3 2007 at Brigham Young University in Provo Utah. The papers in this volume deal with a variety of topics in Arabic linguistics with a notable number of them emphasizing pragmatic aspects. The papers here included place a high value on the presentation of authentic data and explore different approaches in their analysis.
Dialogue and Rhetoric
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Edda Weigand
The volume deals with the relationship between dialogue and rhetoric. The actual state of the art in dialogue analysis is characterized by a tendency to overcome the distinction between competence and performance and to combine components from both sides of the dichotomy in a way which includes rules as well as inferences. The same is true of rhetoric: the guidelines proposed here no longer state that rationality and persuasion are mutually exclusive but suggest that they interact in what might be called the ‘mixed game’. The concept of a dialogic rhetoric thus poses the question of how to integrate the different voices. Part I of the volume assembles several ‘rhetorical paradigms’ which are applied to real-life performance. Part II on ‘rhetoric in the mixed game’ contains a selection of papers which illustrate the interaction of various components. The Round Table discussion in Part III brings proponents of different paradigms face to face with each other and shows how they justify their own positions and present arguments against rival paradigms.
Second Language Acquisition and the Younger Learner : Child's play?
Oct 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Jenefer Philp,
Rhonda Oliver and
Alison Mackey
This new volume of work highlights the distinctiveness of child SLA through a collection of different types of empirical research specific to younger learners. Characteristics of children’s cognitive emotional and social development distinguish their experiences from those of adult L2 learners creating intriguing issues for SLA research and also raising important practical questions regarding effective pedagogical techniques for learners of different ages. While child SLA is often typically thought of as simple (and often enjoyable and universally effortless) in other words as “child’s play” the complex portraits of young second language learners which emerge in the 16 papers collected in this book invite the reader to reconsider the reality for many younger learners. Chapters by internationally renowned authors together with reports by emerging researchers describe second and foreign language learning by children ranging from pre-schoolers to young adolescents in home and school contexts with caregivers peers and teachers as interlocutors.
The Bantu–Romance Connection : A comparative investigation of verbal agreement, DPs, and information structure
Sept 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Cécile De Cat and
Katherine Demuth
This landmark volume is the first work specifically designed to explore the extent to which striking surface morpho-syntactic similarities between Bantu and Romance languages actually represent similar syntactic structures. In particular it explores the timely and much debated issues of verbal morphology and agreement the structure of DPs and word order/information structure with the goal of providing a better understanding of the structure of the different languages investigated and the implications this holds for syntactic theory more generally. All of the papers draw on data from both Bantu and Romance languages providing a framework for much-needed further comparative research on the nature of linguistic structure its diversity and constraints and the implications this has for learnability/acquisition. The volume also provides an important precedent for incorporating insights from Bantu linguistic structure into mainstream of syntax research.
Sign Bilingualism : Language development, interaction, and maintenance in sign language contact situations
Sept 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Carolina Plaza-Pust and
Esperanza Morales-López
This volume provides a unique cross-disciplinary perspective on the external ecological and internal psycholinguistic factors that determine sign bilingualism its development and maintenance at the individual and societal levels. Multiple aspects concerning the dynamics of contact situations involving a signed and a spoken or a written language are covered in detail i.e. the development of the languages in bilingual deaf children cross-modal contact phenomena in the productions of child and adult signers sign bilingual education concepts and practices in diverse social contexts deaf educational discourse sign language planning and interpretation. This state-of-the-art collection is enhanced by a final chapter providing a critical appraisal of the major issues emerging from the individual studies in the light of current assumptions in the broader field of contact linguistics. Given the interdependence of research policy and practice the insights gathered in the studies presented are not only of scientific interest but also bear important implications concerning the perception understanding and promotion of bilingualism in deaf individuals whose language acquisition and use have been ignored for a long time at the socio-political and scientific levels.
An Introduction to the Theory of Formal Languages and Automata
Sept 2008
Book
Author(s):
Willem J.M. Levelt
The present text is a re-edition of Volume I of Formal Grammars in Linguistics and Psycholinguistics a three-volume work published in 1974. This volume is an entirely self-contained introduction to the theory of formal grammars and automata which hasn’t lost any of its relevance. Of course major new developments have seen the light since this introduction was first published but it still provides the indispensible basic notions from which later work proceeded. The author’s reasons for writing this text are still relevant: an introduction that does not suppose an acquaintance with sophisticated mathematical theories and methods that is intended specifically for linguists and psycholinguists (thus including such topics as learnability and probabilistic grammars) and that provides students of language with a reference text for the basic notions in the theory of formal grammars and automata as they keep being referred to in linguistic and psycholinguistic publications; the subject index of this introduction can be used to find definitions of a wide range of technical terms. An appendix has been added with further references to some of the core new developments since this book originally appeared.
Social Lives in Language – Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities : Celebrating the work of Gillian Sankoff
Sept 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Miriam Meyerhoff and
Naomi Nagy
This volume offers a synthetic approach to language variation and language ideologies in multilingual communities. Although the vast majority of the world’s speech communities are multilingual much of sociolinguistics ignores this internal diversity. This volume fills this gap investigating social and linguistic dimensions of variation and change in multilingual communities. Drawing on research in a wide range of countries (Canada USA South Africa Australia Papua New Guinea Solomon Islands Vanuatu) it explores: connections between the fields of creolistics language/dialect contact and language acquisition; how the study of variation and change particularly in cases of additive bilingualism is central to understanding social and linguistic issues in multilingual communities; how changing language ideologies and changing demographics influence language choice and/or language policy and the pivotal place of multilingualism in enacting social power and authority and a rich array of new empirical findings on the dynamics of multilingual speech communities.
Phonology : A cognitive grammar introduction
Sept 2008
Book
Author(s):
Geoffrey S. Nathan
This textbook introduces the reader to the field of phonology from allophones to faithfulness and exemplars. It assumes no prior knowledge of the field and includes a brief review chapter on phonetics. It is written within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics but covers a wide range of historical and contemporary theories from the Prague School to Optimality Theory. While many examples are based on American and British English there are also discussions of some aspects of French and German colloquial speech and phonological analysis problems from many other languages around the world. In addition to the basics of phoneme theory features and morphophonemics there are chapters on casual speech first and second language acquisition and historical change. A final chapter covers a number of issues in contemporary phonological theory including some of the classic debates in Generative Phonology (rule ordering abstractness ‘derivationalism’) and proposals for usage-based phonologies.
Incomplete Acquisition in Bilingualism : Re-examining the Age Factor
Sept 2008
Book
Author(s):
Silvina Montrul
Age effects have played a particularly prominent role in some theoretical perspectives on second language acquisition. This book takes an entirely new perspective on this issue by re-examining these theories in light of the existence of apparently similar non-native outcomes in adult heritage speakers who unlike adult second language learners acquired two or more languages in childhood. Despite having been exposed to their family language early in life many of these speakers never fully acquire or later lose aspects of their first language sometime in childhood. The book examines the structural characteristics of "incomplete" grammatical states and highlights how age of acquisition is related to the type of linguistic knowledge and behavior that emerges in L1 and L2 acquisition under different environmental circumstances. By underscoring age of acquisition as a unifying factor in the study of L2 acquisition and L1 attrition it is claimed that just as there are age effects in L2 acquisition there are also age effects or even perhaps a critical period in L1 attrition. The book covers adult L2 acquisition attrition in adults and in children and includes a comparison of adult heritage language speakers and second language learners.
St Helenian English : Origins, evolution and variation
Sept 2008
Book
Author(s):
Daniel Schreier
This volume provides the first-ever sociolinguistic analysis of English on the island of St Helena the oldest variety of English in the Southern Hemisphere. It is based on a concise synchronic profile of the variety (describing its segmental phonology and morphosyntax) and an evaluation of diachronic material in the form of letters court cases ghost stories etc. The analysis is embedded into a theoretical framework of contact linguistics (contact dialectology and pidgin/creole linguistics) and builds upon the social and sociodemographic development of the community. The aims of this book are to trace the origins and evolution of the variety to pinpoint the forms of English it affiliates with today and the inputs it derived from historically and to investigate whether local contact scenarios have led to the formation of regionally distinctive varieties across the island. Insights from St Helenian English thus challenge us to rethink principles of classification that are applied to determine the status of post-colonial varieties of English.
Textual Translation and Live Translation : The total experience of nonverbal communication in literature, theater and cinema
Sept 2008
Book
Author(s):
Fernando Poyatos
After the many interdisciplinary perspectives on nonverbal communication offered by the author in his previous seven John Benjamins books which have generated a wide range of scholarly applications the present monograph is dominated by a very broad concept of translation. This treatment of translation includes theater and cinema (enriching our intellectual-sensorial experience of both 'reading act' and 'viewing act') and offers among other topics: sensorial-intellectual-emotional pre- and post-reading interactions with books; mute or audible 'oralization' of texts; the translator's linguistic and nonverbal-cultural fluency and implicit textual paralanguage and kinesics; translating functions of pictorial illustrations; the blind's text and film perception; the foreign reader's cultural background and circumstances; theater and cinema spectators' total sensory-intellectual experience of plays and films beyond staging or projection; the multiple interrelationships between cinema and theater performers spectators and their environments of special interest to all those involved in the theater; and the translator's challenging textual perception of sounds and movements. Over 800 literary quotations and two virtually exhaustive English inventories of sound- and movement-denoting words with many examples offer serious students of translation language or literature a rich reference and drill source.
The Limits of Syntactic Variation
Sept 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Theresa Biberauer
Against the background of the past half century’s typological and generative work on comparative syntax this volume brings together 16 papers considering what we have learned and may still be able to learn about the nature and extent of syntactic variation. More specifically it offers a multi-perspective critique of the Principles and Parameters approach to syntactic variation evaluating the merits and shortcomings of the pre-Minimalist phase of this enterprise and considering and illustrating the possibilities opened up by recent empirical and theoretical advances. Contributions focus on four central topics: firstly the question of the locus of variation whether the attested variation may plausibly be understood in parametric terms and if so what form such parameters might take; secondly the fate of one of the most prominent early parameters the Null Subject Parameter; thirdly the matter of parametric clusters more generally; and finally acquisition issues.
Lessons from Documented Endangered Languages
Sept 2008
Book
Editor(s):
K. David Harrison,
David S. Rood and
Arienne Dwyer
This volume represents part of an unprecedented and still growing effort to advance coordinate and disseminate the scientific documentation of endangered languages. As the pace of language extinction increases linguists and native communities are accelerating their efforts to speak remember record analyze and archive as much as possible of our common human heritage that is linguistic diversity. The window of opportunity for documentation is narrower than the actual lifetime of a language and is now rapidly closing for many languages represented in this volume. The authors of these papers unveil newly collected data from previously poorly known and endangered languages. They organize highly complex linguistic facts - paradigms affixes vowel patterns - while pointing out the theoretically challenging aspects of these. Beyond this they reflect on the social and human dimensions discussing particular problems of nostalgia and modernity memory and forgetting and obsolescence and ethics while viewing language as not merely data on a page but as a living creation in the minds and mouths of its speakers.
Interdependence of Diachronic and Synchronic Analyses
Aug 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Folke Josephson and
Ingmar Söhrman
The focus of this volume is the interdependence of diachrony and synchrony in the investigation of syntactic structure. A diverse set of modern and ancient languages is investigated from this perspective including Hittite the Classical languages Old Norse Coptic Bantu languages Australian languages and Creoles. A variety of topics are covered including TAM diathesis valency case marking cliticization and grammaticalization. This volume should be of interest to
syntacticians typologists and historical linguists with an interest in syntax and morphology.
Constructing the Self
Aug 2008
Book
Author(s):
Valerie Gray Hardcastle
Constructing the Self analyzes the narrative conception of self filling a serious gap in philosophy and grounding discussion in other disciplines. It answers the questions:
• What are the connections between our interpretations selfhood and conscious phenomenal experience?
• Why do we believe that our interpretations of our life-defining events are narrative in nature?
• From the myriad of thoughts actions and emotions which constitute our experiences how do we choose what is interpretively important the tiny subset that composes the self?
By synthesizing the different approaches to understanding the self from philosophy of mind developmental psychology psychopathology and cognitive science this monograph gives us deeper insight into what being minded being a person and having a self are as well as clarifies the difference and relation between conscious and unconscious mental states and normal and abnormal minds. The explication also affords new perspectives on human development and human emotion. (Series A)
• What are the connections between our interpretations selfhood and conscious phenomenal experience?
• Why do we believe that our interpretations of our life-defining events are narrative in nature?
• From the myriad of thoughts actions and emotions which constitute our experiences how do we choose what is interpretively important the tiny subset that composes the self?
By synthesizing the different approaches to understanding the self from philosophy of mind developmental psychology psychopathology and cognitive science this monograph gives us deeper insight into what being minded being a person and having a self are as well as clarifies the difference and relation between conscious and unconscious mental states and normal and abnormal minds. The explication also affords new perspectives on human development and human emotion. (Series A)
The Perfect Time Span : On the present perfect in German, Swedish and English
Aug 2008
Book
Author(s):
Björn Rothstein
This book is the first book-length study on the Swedish present perfect. It provides an in-depth exploration of the present perfect in English German and Swedish. It is claimed that only a discourse-based ExtendedNow-approach fully accounts for the present perfect. The main claim is that the length of the ExtendedNow-interval varies cross-linguistically. The book is couched within the framework of the Discourse Representation Theory and also within Distributed Morphology. It is shown that Swedish provides empirical evidence against all previous research in the field. The following questions are investigated: Is it possible to assign a single uniform meaning to the present perfect? How can we account for the different readings of the perfect? How can we account for the cross-linguistic variation? These issues are addressed from a comparative perspective by integrating previous research on the present perfect. This book is of interest to all those working in the field of tense and aspect.
Germanic Future Constructions : A usage-based approach to language change
Aug 2008
Book
Author(s):
Martin Hilpert
This study offers a Construction Grammar approach to the historical development and modern usage of future constructions in English German Dutch Danish and Swedish. On the basis of corpus data constructions such as English be going to or German werden are analyzed as symbolic units that convey a range of temporal and modal meanings. A special focus lies on the main verbs that occur with these constructions. Statistical co-occurrence patterns between constructions and lexical items guide the semantic analyses in this study: It is argued that a construction that conventionally occurs with main verbs such as write or speak differs functionally from a construction that typically occurs with verbs such as rain or increase. The same approach is also applied historically: If a construction co-occurs with different main verbs at subsequent stages in time this is seen as a sign of semantic change.
The Syntax of Jamaican Creole : A cartographic perspective
Aug 2008
Book
Author(s):
Stephanie Durrleman
This book offers an in-depth study of the overall syntax of (basilectal) Jamaican Creole the first since Bailey (1966). The author a Jamaican linguist meticulously examines distributional and interpretative properties of functional morphology in Jamaican Creole (JC) from a cartographic perspective (Cinque 1999 2002; Rizzi 1997 2004) thus exploring to what extent the grammar of JC provides morphological manifestations of an articulate IP CP and DP. The data considered in this work offers new evidence in favour of these enriched structural analyses and the instances where surface orders differ from the underlying functional skeleton are accounted for in terms of movement operations. This investigation of Jamaican syntax therefore allows us to conclude that the 'poor' inflectional morphology typical of Creole languages in general and of (basilectal) Jamaican Creole in particular does not correlate with poor structural architecture. Indeed the free morphemes discussed as well as the word order considerations that indicate syntactic movement to designated projections serve as arguments in favour of a rich underlying functional map.
Language Contact and Contact Languages
Aug 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Peter Siemund and
Noemi Kintana
This new volume on language contact and contact languages presents cutting-edge research by distinguished scholars in the field as well as by highly talented newcomers. It has two principal aims: to analyze language contact from different perspectives – notably those of language typology diachronic linguistics language acquisition and translation studies; and to describe explain and elaborate on universal constraints on language contact. The individual chapters offer systematic comparisons of a wealth of contact situations and the book as a whole makes a valuable contribution to deepening our understanding of contact-induced language change. With its broad approach this work will be welcomed by scholars of many different persuasions.
English Adjective Comparison : A historical perspective
Aug 2008
Book
Author(s):
Victorina González-Díaz
The present work contributes to a better understanding of the English system of degree by means of a study of a number of aspects in the evolution of adjective comparison that have so far either been considered controversial or not been accounted for at all. As will be shown the diachronic aspects analysed will also have synchronic implications. Furthermore unlike previous synchronic as well as diachronic accounts of adjective comparison this monograph does not concentrate only on the ‘standard’ comparative strategies (i.e. inflectional and periphrastic forms) but also deals with double periphrastic comparatives thus providing an analysis of the whole range of comparative structures in English.
The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation
Aug 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Jorge Díaz-Cintas
While complementing other volumes in the BTL series in its exploration of the state of the art of translator training this collection of essays is solely focused on audiovisual translation one of the most complex and dynamic areas of the translation discipline. The book offers an easily accessible yet comprehensive introduction to the fascinating subject of translating films video games and other audiovisual material. Offering a balance between theory and practice the main aim of this volume is to provide a wealth of teaching and learning ideas in areas such as subtitling dubbing and voice-over without forgetting the newer fields of subtitling for the deaf and audio description for the blind. The Didactics of Audiovisual Translation offers exercises and more on a companion website highlighting its fundamentally interactive approach and the activities proposed can be adapted to different learning environments and used with different language combinations: https://benjamins.com/sites/btl.77
Adapting Health Communication to Cultural Needs : Optimizing documents in South-African health communication on HIV and AIDS
Aug 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Piet Swanepoel and
Hans Hoeken
The question of what constitutes effective health communication has been addressed mainly by scholars working in American and European cultural contexts. Many people who could benefit most from effective health communication however come from different cultures. A prime example is the threat posed by HIV/AIDS to the people of South Africa. Although it is generally acknowledged that health communication needs to be tailored to the target audience’s characteristics with cultural background being one of the most salient ones little research has been done on how to achieve this. In this book we bring together leading scholars in the field of health communication as well as communication scholars from South Africa. As such it can serve as an example of the promises and the limitations of general health communication theories to local praxis as well as provide guidelines for the development of better health communication in South Africa.
Between Text and Image : Updating research in screen translation
Aug 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Delia Chiaro,
Christine Heiss and
Chiara Bucaria
Over the past decade interest in research on screen translation has increased sharply while at the same time fast moving technological breakthroughs are continually modifying and renewing both products and well-established methods of linguistic mediation. Thus as more scholars choose to devote their energies to investigating this multi-faceted field there is an ever-growing need to map out where the discipline stands and where it is going in terms of research.
This book sets out to establish the state of the art of this ever expanding field and at the same time to underscore the work of scholars following new paths of investigation both in terms of innovative linguistic mediations being examined and pioneering experimental design.
The volume includes descriptions of sophisticated electronic databases and corpora of audiovisual products for the big and small screen and the rationale behind them e.g. how they are created and programmed for querying; technical limitations; homogeneity in querying languages. Furthermore Between Text and Image also includes a number of cutting edge studies in audience perception of audiovisual products i.e. empirically based viewer centred studies which are still rare yet essential if we wish to gain a thorough understanding of the field.
Finally the volume does not fail to ignore examples of original research carried out from both a traditional linguistic viewpoint and from a more cultural perspective.
This book sets out to establish the state of the art of this ever expanding field and at the same time to underscore the work of scholars following new paths of investigation both in terms of innovative linguistic mediations being examined and pioneering experimental design.
The volume includes descriptions of sophisticated electronic databases and corpora of audiovisual products for the big and small screen and the rationale behind them e.g. how they are created and programmed for querying; technical limitations; homogeneity in querying languages. Furthermore Between Text and Image also includes a number of cutting edge studies in audience perception of audiovisual products i.e. empirically based viewer centred studies which are still rare yet essential if we wish to gain a thorough understanding of the field.
Finally the volume does not fail to ignore examples of original research carried out from both a traditional linguistic viewpoint and from a more cultural perspective.
Dictionary Use in Foreign Language Writing Exams : Impact and implications
Jul 2008
Book
Author(s):
Martin East
This book provides an in-depth analysis of what happens when intermediate level learners of a foreign language use a bilingual dictionary when writing. Dictionaries are frequently promoted to people learning a foreign language. Nevertheless teachers often talk about their students’ inability to use dictionaries properly especially when they write and this can be problematic. This book paints a comprehensive picture of the differences a dictionary makes and brings out the implications for language learning teaching and testing practices. It draws on research in which participants in three studies took writing tests in two test conditions – with and without a dictionary. They were also asked what they thought about the two test types. Their performances and opinions were analyzed in a variety of ways. Conclusions from the data highlight some of the practical issues to be kept in mind if we want to help foreign language learners to use bilingual dictionaries effectively when writing.
English Historical Linguistics 2006 : Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume II: Lexical and Semantic Change
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Richard Dury,
Maurizio Gotti and
Marina Dossena
The papers collected in this volume were first presented at the 14th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Bergamo 2006). Alongside studies of syntax morphology and dialectology published in two sister volumes many innovative contributions focused on semantics pragmatics and register variation. A rich variety of state-of-the-art studies and plenary lectures by acknowledged world experts in the field bears witness to the quality of the scholarly interest in this field of research. In all the contributions well-established methods combine with new theoretical approaches in an attempt to shed more light on phenomena that have hitherto remained unexplored or have only just begun to be investigated. The accurate peer-reviewed selection ensures the methodological homogeneity of the papers.
Theoretical and Empirical Issues in Grammaticalization
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Elena Seoane and
María José López-Couso
This volume and its companion oneRethinking grammaticalization: New perspectives offer a selection of papers from the Third International Conference New Reflections on Grammaticalization held at the University of Santiago de Compostela in July 2005. The overall aim of the book is to enrich our understanding of what grammaticalization entails via detailed case studies in combination with theoretical and methodological discussions. Some of the theoretical issues discussed in the sixteen articles included in the volume are the nature of grammaticalization and related processes such as anti- re- and degrammaticalization the relationship between grammaticalization and lexicalization the role of frequency in grammaticalization and the interplay between information structure and grammaticalization. Other topics covered are the grammaticalization of composite predicates in English the emergence of modal particles in German and particle clusters in Dutch and the grammaticalization of various modal auxiliaries in Spanish and in Swedish.
English Historical Linguistics 2006 : Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume III: Geo-Historical Variation in English
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Marina Dossena,
Richard Dury and
Maurizio Gotti
The papers collected in this volume were first presented at the 14th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Bergamo 2006). Alongside studies of syntax morphology lexis and semantics published in two sister volumes many innovative contributions focused on geo-historical variation in English. A carefully peer-reviewed selection including two plenary lectures appears here in print for the first time bearing witness to the increasing scholarly interest in varieties of English other than so-called ‘standard’ English. In all the contributions well-established methods of historical dialectology combine with new theoretical approaches in an attempt to shed more light on phenomena that have hitherto remained unexplored or have only just begun to be investigated. Perceptual dialectology is also taken into consideration and state-of-the-art tools such as electronic corpora and atlases are employed consistently ensuring the methodological homogeneity of the contributions.
Current Trends in Child Second Language Acquisition : A generative perspective
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Belma Haznedar and
Elena Gavruseva
This volume presents recent generative research on the nature of grammars of child second language (L2) acquirers -- a learner population whose exposure to an L2 occurs between the ages of 4 to 8. The main goal is to define child L2 acquisition in relation to other types of acquisition such as child monolingual and bilingual acquisition adult L2 acquisition and specific language impairment. This comparative perspective opens up new angles for the discussion of currently debated issues such as the role of Universal Grammar in constraining development developmental sequences in L2 maturational influences on the 'growth' of grammar critical period effects for different linguistic domains initial state and ultimate attainment in relation to length of exposure and L1-transfer in relation to age of onset. These issues are explored using longitudinal cross-sectional and experimental data from L2 children acquiring a range of languages including Dutch English French and Greek.
English Historical Linguistics 2006 : Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Maurizio Gotti,
Marina Dossena and
Richard Dury
The papers selected for this volume were first presented at the 14th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Bergamo 2006). At that important event alongside studies of phonology lexis semantics and dialectology (presented in two companion volumes in this series) many innovative contributions focused on syntax and morphology. A carefully peer-reviewed selection including one of the plenary lectures appears here in print for the first time bearing witness to the quality of the scholarly interest in this field of research. In all the contributions well-established methods combine with new theoretical approaches in an attempt to shed more light on phenomena that have hitherto remained unexplored or have only just begun to be investigated. State-of-the-art tools such as electronic corpora and concordancing software are employed consistently ensuring a methodological homogeneity of the contributions.
Taboo in Advertising
Jul 2008
Book
Author(s):
Elsa Simões Lucas Freitas
Taboos are much more than just a synonym of ‘forbidden’. Proof of the concept’s complexity can be found in the way ads often try to hide the taboo inherent to their products or conversely in the way certain taboo readings are foregrounded on purpose in other ads. This volume shows why and how that happens using print and television ads to exemplify (a) the elaborate strategies used by ads for certain products to cleverly hide the taboo inherent to them and (b) the deliberate recourse to taboo references in ads for products that do not present any taboo connotation. The linguistic analysis undertaken takes into account the different modes (verbal language music sound effects moving and static images) that convey meaning in ads. Taboo is very often conveyed or disguised through one of the channels while the others play the opposite role thus achieving a balance that prevents the ad from being too obscure to be understood or too daring for the general public to accept it. For this comprehensive approach concepts are drawn from different disciplines: textual and semiotic analysis from linguistics theories of taboo from anthropology and background to advertising from media studies.
Essays on Nominal Determination : From morphology to discourse management
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Henrik Høeg Müller and
Alex Klinge
This volume brings together scholars of diverse theoretical persuasions who all share an interest in capturing the role that nominal determination and reference assignment play in the complicated interplay between thought language and communication. The articles can be divided roughly into five main areas of concern: the conceptual level of determination; the emergence and function of articles; their semantic contribution to nominal interpretation; the morphology and syntax of determiners; and the interplay and contrasts between articles demonstratives and possessives. Thus linguistic and philosophical issues in the subject field of nominal determination are addressed at all interface levels between morphology syntax semantics and pragmatics. This volume shows that different theoretical frameworks may be brought fruitfully together in the effort to formulate new analyses of well-known problems but also to raise new questions and point to new areas which may prove interesting topics for future research both in functional and formal paradigms.
Rethinking Grammaticalization : New perspectives
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
María José López-Couso and
Elena Seoane
This volume and its companion one Theoretical and empirical issues in grammaticalization offer a selection of papers from the Third International Conference New Reflections on Grammaticalization held in Santiago de Compostela in July 2005. From the rich programme of the conference (over 120 papers) the twelve contributions included in this volume were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in grammaticalization and suggest possible directions for future investigations in the field. Combining theoretical discussions with the analysis of particular test cases from a wide range of languages from various language families the selected papers focus on such central questions as the need for a broader notion of grammaticalization the distorting effects of grammaticalization on grammar the areal perspective in grammaticalization and the relevance of contact-induced change to grammaticalization. Other topics discussed include the development of markers of textual connectivity and the emergence of cardinal numerals and numeral systems.
ESP in European Higher Education : Integrating language and content
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez and
Christine A. Räisänen
The Bologna Reform has been implemented in a large part of the European Union and it is time to take a short pause to reflect over some of the lessons learned up to now. The aim of this book is to share experiences and reflections on English for Specific Purposes pedagogy in Western European higher education. Taking as a starting point the development of the EU policies during the past couple of decades and their national implementations the chapters in this book provide various perspectives both theoretical and practical on the ways in which the reform has been implemented and its effects on the teaching of ESP. Experiences of developing programmes and courses incorporating Content and Language Integrated Learning and Autonomous and Lifelong Learning are described as well as Problem-Based Learning and Process-Genre Pedagogies. The book also includes chapters on the crucial but often neglected issue of teacher support in meeting the challenges of teaching content through the medium of English.
Pedagogical Specialised Lexicography : The representation of meaning in English and Spanish business dictionaries
Jul 2008
Book
Author(s):
Pedro A. Fuertes Olivera and
Ascensión Arribas-Baño
This stimulating new book which combines dictionary research and linguistic knowledge analyses the representation of meaning in business dictionaries from a pedagogical perspective. By examining in detail the macrostructure mediostructure access structure and microstructure of eight business dictionaries this book presents interesting findings on how the dictionaries studied represent the ‘noun-term’ and on how they cope with the principles of new lexicography that aims at solving the needs of a specific type of user with specific types of problems related to a specific type of user situation. This exhaustive study which makes simultaneous contributions to the theory of terminology lexicography and LSP teaching defends a methodological confluence between LSP lexicography and terminology and proposes some guiding principles towards the construction of pedagogically-oriented specialised dictionaries that must target students enrolled in LSP courses: Business English Business Spanish Business Translation etc.
Unity and Diversity of Languages
Jul 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Piet van Sterkenburg
The Permanent International Committee of Linguists (Comité International Permanent des Linguistes CIPL) has organized the 18th Congress of Linguists in Seoul (July 21-26 2008) in close collaboration with the Linguistic Society of Korea. In this book one finds the invited talks which address hot topics in various subdisciplines presented by outstanding and internationally well known experts. In addition the state-of-the-art papers provide an overview of the most important research areas of contemporary linguistics.
First Language Acquisition of Morphology and Syntax : Perspectives across languages and learners
Jun 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes,
María Pilar Larrañaga and
John Clibbens
The papers comprising this volume focus on a broad range of acquisition phenomena (subject dislocation structural case word order determiners pronouns quantifiers and logical words) from different languages and language combinations. These include languages with large numbers of speakers (French German Spanish) and less frequently spoken ones (Norwegian Russian Swiss-German Hebrew Basque and Serbo-Croatian) within different language acquisition scenarios and a wide range of populations. Most contributions adopt a common theoretical background within the generative approach with the aim to advance discuss and critically analyse other research on first bilingual and language impaired acquisition. The various sections of this stimulating volume reflect different theoretical and methodological perspectives of current research investigating morphology and syntax and offer diverging interpretations.
Corpora and Discourse : The challenges of different settings
Jun 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Annelie Ädel and
Randi Reppen
This book brings together contributions from a diverse collection of scholars who explore different ways of combining corpus linguistics and discourse analysis studying discourse at the prosodic lexical and textual levels. Both spoken and written discourse are investigated in a variety of settings including academia the workplace news and entertainment. Not only does the volume offer a rich sample of English-language discourse from around the world including international learner and non-standard varieties of English but it also covers a range of topics and methods. This book will be of particular interest to researchers and students specializing in discourse studies English linguistics and corpus linguistics.
Modality, Aspect and Negation in Persian
Jun 2008
Book
Author(s):
Azita H. Taleghani
This monograph presents a morpho-syntactic investigation on modality aspect and negation by concentrating on Persian and is designed to contribute to theoretical linguistics and the study of Iranian languages. The analysis is based on the Minimalist program. This research challenges the idea that the syntactic structure maps on the semantic interpretation or vice versa. The discussion presented in this monograph shows that the syntactic structure of Persian modals is uniform no matter if the modals are interpreted as having root or epistemic readings. Although it is claimed that modals are raising constructions in different languages modals in Persian which does not have subject-raising constructions show a different syntactic behavior. Furthermore the structural analysis of the interaction of Persian modals and negation shows that because of the scope interaction of negation and modals the syntactic structure of modals with respect to negation mostly corresponds to the semantic interpretation of modals.
The Syntax of (Anti-)Causatives : External arguments in change-of-state contexts
Jun 2008
Book
Author(s):
Florian Schäfer
This book develops an approach to the causative alternation that assumes syntactic event decomposition and a configurational theta theory. It is couched within the framework of the Minimalist Program and especially within Distributed Morphology. Central to the work is the syntax and semantics of canonical external arguments of causative verbs as well as of oblique causers and causative PPs in the context of anticausative verbs in different languages such as Germanic Romance Balkan and Caucasian languages. The book also develops a new account of the origin and nature of the morphological marking which is often found on anticausatives across languages. The main claim is that this morphology is a reflex of a syntactic way to prohibit the assignment of the external theta role. Moreover the book develops an account about the origin of the implicit agent in generic middles which often bear the same morphology as marked anticausatives.
Modality–Aspect Interfaces : Implications and typological solutions
Jun 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Werner Abraham and
Elisabeth Leiss
The main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complements – embedded infinitival perfectivity implies root modal reading whereas embedded infinitival imperfectivity triggers epistemic readings. However in marked contexts such as negated ones the aspectual affinities of modal verbs are neutralized or even subject to markedness inversion. All of this suggests that languages that do not or only partially bestow upon full modal verb paradigms seek to express modal variations in terms of their aspect oppositions. This typological tenet is investigated in a variety of languages from Indo-European (German Slavic Armenian) African Asian Amerindian and Creoles. Seeming deviations and idiosyncrasies in the interaction between aspect and modality turn out to be highly rule-based.
Languages and Cultures in Contrast and Comparison
Jun 2008
Book
Editor(s):
María de los Ángeles Gómez González,
J. Lachlan Mackenzie and
Elsa M. González Álvarez
This volume explores various hitherto under-researched relationships between languages and their discourse-cultural settings. The first two sections analyze the complex interplay between lexico-grammatical organization and communicative contexts. Part I focuses on structural options in syntax deepening the analysis of information-packaging strategies. Part II turns to lexical studies covering such matters as human perception and emotion the psychological understanding of ‘home’ and ‘abroad’ the development of children’s emotional life and the relation between lexical choice and sexual orientation. The final chapters consider how new techniques of contrastive linguistics and pragmatics are contributing to the primary field of application for contrastive analysis language teaching and learning. The book will be of special interest to scholars and students of linguistics discourse analysis and cultural studies and to those entrusted with teaching European languages and cultures. The major languages covered are Akan Dutch English Finnish French German Italian Norwegian Spanish and Swedish.
The Shared Mind : Perspectives on intersubjectivity
Jun 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Jordan Zlatev,
Timothy P. Racine,
Chris Sinha and
Esa Itkonen
The cognitive and language sciences are increasingly oriented towards the social dimension of human cognition and communication. The hitherto dominant approach in modern cognitive science has viewed “social cognition” through the prism of the traditional philosophical puzzle of how individuals solve the problem of understanding Other Minds. The Shared Mind challenges the conventional “theory of mind” approach proposing that the human mind is fundamentally based on intersubjectivity: the sharing of affective conative intentional and cognitive states and processes between a plurality of subjects. The socially shared intersubjective foundation of the human mind is manifest in the structure of early interaction and communication imitation gestural communication and the normative and argumentative nature of language. In this path breaking volume leading researchers from psychology linguistics philosophy and primatology offer complementary perspectives on the role of intersubjectivity in the context of human development comparative cognition and evolution and language and linguistic theory.
The Layered DP : Form and meaning of French indefinites
Jun 2008
Book
Author(s):
Tabea Ihsane
This book examines argumental un-NPs and du/des-NPs in French: nominals with the indefinite article and with the so-called ‘partitive article’ respectively. The main aim is to account for the different interpretations of these indefinites and to determine how interpretation and structure are related. This study thus concerns the syntax-semantics interface with an emphasis on the composition of the left periphery and the inflectional domain of the indefinites mentioned. It is realized in the framework of generative grammar and in a cartographic approach. A crucial proposal put forward in this book is that indefinites of different semantic types are associated with different left peripheries. The analysis further suggests that the inflectional domain of these indefinites may comprise three discrete functional projections encoding the features [count] [quantity] and [number]. Interestingly these results seem to extend to a selection of bare nouns in Romance and Germanic languages.
Morphology and Language History : In honour of Harold Koch
Jun 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Claire Bowern,
Bethwyn Evans and
Luisa Miceli
This volume aims to make a contribution to codifying the methods and practices linguists use to recover language history focussing predominantly on historical morphology. The volume includes studies on a wide range of languages: not only Indo-European but also Austronesian Sinitic Mon-Khmer Basque one Papuan language family as well as a number of Australian families. Few collections are as cross-linguistic as this reflecting the new challenges which have emerged from the study of languages outside those best known from historical linguistics. The contributors illustrate shared methodological and theoretical issues concerning genetic relatedness (that is the use of morphological evidence for classification and subgrouping) reconstruction and processes of change with a diverse range of data. The volume is in honour of Harold Koch who has long combined innovative research on understudied languages with methodological rigour and codification of practices within the discipline.
Request Strategies : A comparative study in Mandarin Chinese and Korean
Jun 2008
Book
Author(s):
Yong-Ju Rue and
Grace Zhang
This book investigates request strategies in Mandarin Chinese and Korean and is one of the first attempts to address cross-cultural strategies employed in the speech act of requests in two non-Western languages. The data drawn from role-plays and naturally recorded conversations complement each other in terms of exhaustiveness and authenticity.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>This study explores the similarities and differences of the request patterns that emerged in the Chinese and Korean data and the intricate relation between request strategies and social factors (such as power and distance). The findings raise questions about the influence of methodology on data and the applicability of so called universals to East Asian languages. They also offer new insights into generally held ideas of directness and requesting behaviours in Chinese and Korean and the problems of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication. This research is suggestive for the disciplines of cross-cultural pragmatics cross-cultural communication contrastive linguistics applied linguistics and discourse analysis.
Locative Alternation : A lexical-constructional approach
Jun 2008
Book
Author(s):
Seizi Iwata
The aim of the present volume is two-fold: to give a coherent account of the locative alternation in English and to develop a constructional theory that overcomes a number of problems in earlier constructional accounts. The lexical-constructional account proposed here is characterized by two main features. On the one hand it emphasizes the need for a detailed examination of verb meanings. On the other it introduces lower-level constructions such as verb-class-specific constructions and verb-specific constructions and makes full use of these lower-level constructions in accounting for alternation phenomena. Rather than being a completely new version of construction grammar the proposed lexical-constructional account is an automatic consequence of the basic tenet of constructional approaches as being usage-based.
Limiting the Iconic : From the metatheoretical foundations to the creative possibilities of iconicity in language
Jun 2008
Book
Author(s):
Ludovic De Cuypere
Iconicity has become a popular notion in contemporary linguistic research. This book is the first to present a synthesis of the vast amount of scholarship on linguistic iconicity which has been produced in the previous decades ranging from iconicity in phonology and morpho-syntax to the role of iconicity in language change. An extensive analysis is provided of some basic but nonetheless fundamental questions relating to iconicity in language including: what is a linguistic sign and how are linguistic signs different from signs in general? What is an iconic sign and how may iconicity be involved in language? How does iconicity pertain to the relation between language and cognition? This book offers a new and comprehensive theoretical framework for iconicity in language. It is argued that the linguistic sign is fundamentally arbitrary but that iconicity may be involved on a secondary level adding extra meaning to an utterance.
Metaphor and Gesture
Jun 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Alan Cienki and
Cornelia Müller
This volume is the first to offer an overview on metaphor and gesture — a new multi-disciplinary area of research. Scholars of metaphor have been paying increasing attention to spontaneous gestures with speech; meanwhile researchers in gesture studies have been focussing on the abstract ideas which receive physical representation through metaphors when speakers gesture. This book presents a snapshot of the state of the art in these converging fields offering research papers as well as commentaries from multiple perspectives. In addition to conceptual metaphor theory it includes different theoretical approaches to semiotics and the methods used range from controlled experimentation to cognitive ethnography to lexical semantic analysis. The use of metaphor in gesture is shown to reflect idiosyncracies of thought in the moment of speaking as well as structural cultural and interactional patterns. The series of commentaries discusses the potential importance of studying metaphor and gesture from the perspectives of such fields as anthropology cognitive linguistics conversation analysis psychology and semiotics.
Phraseology : An interdisciplinary perspective
Jun 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Sylviane Granger and
Fanny Meunier
Long regarded as a peripheral issue phraseology is now taking centre stage in a wide range of fields. This recent explosion of interest undoubtedly has a great deal to do with the development of corpus linguistics research which has both demonstrated the key role of phraseological expressions in language and provided researchers with automated methods of extraction and analysis. The aim of this volume is to take stock of current research in phraseology from a variety of perspectives: theoretical descriptive contrastive cultural lexicographic and computational. It contains overview chapters by leading experts in the field and a series of case studies focusing on a wide range of multiword units: collocations similes idioms routine formulae and recurrent phrases. The volume is an invitation for experienced phraseologists to look at the field with different eyes and a useful introduction for the many researchers who are intrigued by phraseology but need help in finding their way in this rich but complex domain.
Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Anna Asbury,
Jakub Dotlačil,
Berit Gehrke and
Rick Nouwen
The category P belongs to a less studied area in theoretical linguistics which has only recently attracted considerable attention. This volume brings together pioneering work on adpositions in spatial relations from different theoretical and cross-linguistic perspectives. The common theme in these contributions is the complex semantic and syntactic structure of PPs. Analyses are presented in several different frameworks and approaches including generative syntax optimality theoretic semantics and syntax formal semantics mathematical modeling lexical syntax and pragmatics. Among the languages featured in detail are English German Hebrew Igbo Italian Japanese and Persian. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of formal semantics syntax and language typology as well as scholars with a more general interest in spatial cognition.
'Subordination' versus 'Coordination' in Sentence and Text : A cross-linguistic perspective
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Cathrine Fabricius-Hansen and
Wiebke Ramm
The papers collected in this volume (including a comprehensive introduction) investigate semantic and discourse-related aspects of subordination and coordination in particular the relationship between subordination/coordination at the sentence level and subordination/coordination – or hierarchical/non-hierarchical organization – at the discourse level. The contributions in part I are concerned with central theoretical questions; part II consists of corpus-based cross-linguistic studies of clause combining and discourse structure involving at least two of the languages English German Dutch French and Norwegian; part III contains papers addressing specific – predominantly semantic – topics relating to German English or French; and the papers in part IV approach the topic of subordination coordination and rhetorical relations from a diachronic (Old Indic and Early Germanic) perspective. The book aims to contribute to a better understanding of information packaging on the sentence and text level related within a particular language as well as cross-linguistically.
Mediating Discourse Online
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Sally Magnan Pierce
Information and communication technology is transforming our notion of literacy. In the study of second language learning there is an acute need to understand how learners collaborate in mediating discourse online. This edited volume offers essays and research studies that lead us to question the borders between speech and writing to redefine narrative to speculate on the consequences of many-to-many communication and to ponder the ethics of researching online interaction. Using diverse technologies (bulletin boards course management systems chats instant messaging online gaming) and situated in different cultural environments the studies explore intercultural notions of identity voice and collaboration. Although the studies come from varying theoretical perspectives they point as a whole to insights to be gained from an ecological approach to studying how people make discourse online. The volume will especially benefit researchers in the digital arena and instructors who must consider how online interaction affects language learning and use.
Explorations in Integrational Linguistics : Four essays on German, French, and Guaraní
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Robin Sackmann
Integrational Linguistics (IL) developed by the German linguist Hans-Heinrich Lieb and others is an approach to linguistics that integrates linguistic descriptions construed as ‘declarative’ theories with a detailed theory of language that covers all classical areas of linguistics from phonology to sentence semantics and takes linguistic variation both synchronic and diachronic fully into account.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The aim of this book is to demonstrate how some controversial issues in language description are resolved in Integrational Linguistics. The four essays united here cover nearly all levels of language systems: phonetics and phonology (“The Case for Two-Level Phonology” by Hans-Heinrich Lieb on German obstruent tensing and French nasal alternation) morphology (“Form and Function of Verbal Ablaut in Contemporary Standard German” by Bernd Wiese) morphology and syntax (“Inflectional Units and Their Effects” by Sebastian Drude on the person system in Guaraní) and syntax and sentence semantics (“Topic Integration” by Andreas Nolda on ‘split topicalization’ in German).
Literacies, Global and Local
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Mastin Prinsloo and
Mike Baynham
The articles collected in this volume draw on or relate to a body of work that has become known as the ‘New Literacy Studies’ (NLS) which studies literacy as situated semiotic practices that vary across sites in specific ways that are socially shaped. The collection offers a body of empirically and theoretically based papers on literacy ethnography as well as providing engagements with critical issues around literacy and education. The articles offer complementary perspectives on research and theory in literacy studies and include research perspectives from Africa Asia Australia Europe as well as North and South America. The researchers are all concerned to take the work of the New Literacy Studies further by expanding on its conceptual resources and research sites.
Interaction of Morphology and Syntax : Case studies in Afroasiatic
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Zygmunt Frajzyngier and
Erin Shay
The present volume deals with hitherto unexplored issues on the interaction of morphology and syntax. These selected and invited papers mainly concern Cushitic and Chadic languages the least-described members of the Afroasiatic family. Three papers in the volume explore one or more typological characteristics across an entire language family or branch while others focus on one or two languages within a family and the implications of their structures for the family the phylum or linguistic typology as a whole. The diversity of topics addressed within the present volume reflects the great diversity of language structures and functions within the Afroasiatic phylum.
Split Possession : An areal-linguistic study of the alienability correlation and related phenomena in the languages of Europe
May 2008
Book
Author(s):
Thomas Stolz,
Sonja Kettler,
Cornelia Stroh and
Aina Urdze
This book is a functional-typological study of possession splits in European languages. It shows that genetically and structurally diverse languages such as Icelandic Welsh and Maltese display possessive systems which are sensitive to semantically based distinctions reminiscent of the alienability correlation. These distinctions are grammatically relevant in many European languages because they require dedicated constructions. What makes these split possessive systems interesting for the linguist is the interaction of semantic criteria with pragmatics and syntax. Neutralisation of distinctions occurs under focus. The same happens if one of the constituents of a possessive construction is syntactically heavy. These effects can be observed in the majority of the 50 sample languages. Possessive splits are strong in those languages which are outside the Standard Average European group. The bulk of the European languages do not behave much differently from those non-European languages for which possession splits are reported. The book reveals interesting new facts about European languages and possession to typologists universals researchers and areal linguists.
Asymmetric Events
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
The book introduces the concept of asymmetric events an important concept in language and cognition which for the first time in linguistic literature is identified in a more systematic way and analyzed in a number of different languages including typologically or genetically unrelated ones. Asymmetric events are two or more events of unequal status in an utterance and papers in the volume present ways in which a linguistic description of main events in a sentence is different (morphologically syntactically discursively) from a description of backgrounded events. The prototypical asymmetries involving perception cognition and language are identified in subordination nominalization and modification of various kinds but they extend to coordinate structures serial verbs spatial language and viewing arrangement as well as part - whole relations. The perspective is broadly cognitive and functional the authors use different though complementing methodologies some include corpus data and the asymmetries are shown to have a variety of stylistic and ideological implications.An in-depth analysis of manifold asymmetries in structure and function of diverse languages makes this volume of interest to linguists of different persuasion philosophers cognitive researchers discourse analysts and students of language and cognition.
Directions in Empirical Literary Studies : In honor of Willie van Peer
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Sonia Zyngier,
Marisa Bortolussi,
Anna Chesnokova and
Jan Auracher
Directions in Empirical Literary Studies is on the cutting edge of empirical studies and is a much needed volume. It both widens the scope of empirical studies and looks at them from an intercultural perspective by bringing together renowned scholars from the fields of philosophy sociology psychology linguistics and literature all focusing on how empirical studies have impacted these different areas. Theoretical issues are discussed and solid methods are presented. Some chapters also show the relation between empirical studies and new technology examining developments in computer science and corpus linguistics. This book takes a global perspective with contributors from many different countries both senior and junior researchers. Broad in scope and interdisciplinary in nature it contributes with the state-of-the-art developments in the field.
Variational Pragmatics : A focus on regional varieties in pluricentric languages
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Klaus P. Schneider and
Anne Barron
This collection of papers is designed to establish variational pragmatics. This new field is situated at the interface of pragmatics and dialectology and aims at systematically investigating the effect of macro-social pragmatic variation on language in action. As such it challenges the widespread assumption in the area of pragmatics that language communities are homogeneous and also addresses the current research gap in sociolinguistics for variation on the pragmatic level. The introductory chapter establishes the rationale for studying variational pragmatics as a separate field of inquiry systematically sketches the broader theoretical framework and presents a framework for further analysis. The papers which follow are located within this framework. They present empirical variational pragmatic research focusing on regional varieties of pluricentric languages. Speech acts and other discourse phenomena are addressed and analysed in a number of regional varieties of Dutch English French German and Spanish. The seminal nature of this volume its empirical orientation and the extensive bibliography make this book of interest to both researchers and students in pragmatics and sociolinguistics.
Adpositions : Pragmatic, semantic and syntactic perspectives
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Dennis Kurzon and
Silvia Adler
This book is a collection of articles which deal with adpositions in a variety of languages and from a number of perspectives. Not only does the book cover what is traditionally treated in studies from a European and Semitic orientation – prepositions but it presents studies on postpositions too. The main languages dealt with in the collection are English French and Hebrew but there are articles devoted to other languages including Korean Turkic languages Armenian Russian and Ukrainian. Adpositions are treated by some authors from a semantic perspective by others as syntactic units and a third group of authors distinguishes adpositions from the point of view of their pragmatic function. This work is of interest to students and researchers in theoretical and applied linguistics as well as to those who have a special interest in any of the languages treated.
Crossing Borders in Community Interpreting : Definitions and dilemmas
May 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Carmen Valero Garcés and
Anne Martin
At conferences and in the literature on community interpreting there is one burning issue that reappears constantly: the interpreter’s role. What are the norms by which the facilitators of communication shape their role? Is there indeed only one role for the community interpreter or are there several? Is community interpreting aimed at facilitating communication empowering individuals by giving them a voice or in wider terms at redressing the power balance in society? In this volume scholars and practitioners from different countries address these questions offering a representative sample of ongoing research into community interpreting in the Western world of interest to all who have a stake in this form of interpreting. The opening chapter establishes the wider contextual and theoretical framework for the debate. It is followed by a section dealing with codes and standards and then moves on to explore the interpreter’s role in various different settings: courts and police healthcare schools occupational settings and social services.
Corpus and Context : Investigating pragmatic functions in spoken discourse
Apr 2008
Book
Author(s):
Svenja Adolphs
Corpus and Context explores the relationship between corpus linguistics and pragmatics by discussing possible frameworks for analysing utterance function on the basis of spoken corpora. The book articulates the challenges and opportunities associated with a change of focus in corpus research from lexical to functional units from concordance lines to extended stretches of discourse and from the purely textual to multi-modal analysis of spoken corpus data. Drawing on a number of spoken corpora including the five million word Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE funded by CUP (c)) a specific speech act function is being explored using different approaches and different levels of analysis. This involves a close analysis of contextual variables in relation to lexico-grammatical and discoursal patterns that emerge from the corpus data as well as a wider discussion of the role of context in spoken corpus research.
The Semantics of Generics in Dutch and Related Languages
Apr 2008
Book
Author(s):
Albert Oosterhof
This monograph is a comprehensive study of the various ways in which genericity can be expressed in Dutch dialects of Dutch and languages related to Dutch. On the basis of empirical (corpus- and questionnaire-based) data a wide range of topics are discussed which have been addressed in the literature on the semantics and pragmatics of generics. The empirical data presented in this book shed new light on issues crucial to the study of genericity. A number of widely accepted ideas are shown to be problematic. For example arguments are presented against the well-known claim that progressive forms typically exclude characterizing interpretations. Furthermore the author shows that speakers do not agree in their judgements of the acceptability of bare plurals (as well as other noun phrase types) in generic contexts. Such data are a problem for the influential thesis that bare plurals refer to kinds unambiguously.
Analysing Identities in Discourse
Apr 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Rosana Dolón and
Júlia Todolí
The discursive construction of identity is often under the control of the dominant forces in society and frequently results in forms of manipulation and abuse. This awareness led to the celebration of the First International Conference on CDA (València 2004) where over three-hundred academics working in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis became actively engaged in this important issue.
The seven studies included in this volume have been selected as representative of those areas of human experience that have been given most intellectual attention and considered to be in fact in need for critical unravelling. Ethnic categorization in multicultural classrooms patriotic discourse construction in Chinese readers the denial of Palestinian identity in schoolbooks the diverse constructions of European identities Arabs constructing themselves on the worldwide web identity construction in sexual assault trials the representations of a dangerous ‘other’ in cases of PLWHAs are the contextual perspectives embraced in this book to account for forms of power abuse in the discursive construction of identities.
The seven studies included in this volume have been selected as representative of those areas of human experience that have been given most intellectual attention and considered to be in fact in need for critical unravelling. Ethnic categorization in multicultural classrooms patriotic discourse construction in Chinese readers the denial of Palestinian identity in schoolbooks the diverse constructions of European identities Arabs constructing themselves on the worldwide web identity construction in sexual assault trials the representations of a dangerous ‘other’ in cases of PLWHAs are the contextual perspectives embraced in this book to account for forms of power abuse in the discursive construction of identities.
Speech Acts in the History of English
Apr 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Andreas H. Jucker and
Irma Taavitsainen
Did earlier speakers of English use the same speech acts that we use today? Did they use them in the same way? How did they signal speech act values and how did they negotiate them in case of uncertainty? These are some of the questions that are addressed in this volume in innovative case studies that cover a wide range of speech acts from Old English to Present-day English. All the studies offer careful discussions of methodological and theoretical issues as well as detailed descriptions of specific speech acts. The first part of the volume is devoted to directives and commissives i.e. speech acts such as requests commands and promises. The second part is devoted to expressives and assertives and deals with speech acts such as greetings compliments and apologies. The third part finally contains technical reports that deal primarily with the problem of extracting speech acts from historical corpora.
Aspect and Modality in Kwa Languages
Apr 2008
Book
Editor(s):
Felix K. Ameka and
Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu
This book explores the thesis that in the Kwa languages of West Africa aspect and modality are more central to the grammar of the verb than tense. Where tense marking has emerged it is invariably in the expression of the future and therefore concerned with the impending actualization or potentiality of an event hence with modality rather than the purely temporal sequencing associated with tense. The primary grammatical contrasts are perfective versus imperfective. The main languages discussed are Akan Dangme Ewe Ga and Tuwuli while Nzema-Ahanta Likpe and Eastern Gbe are also mentioned. Knowledge about these languages has deepened considerably during the past decade or so and ideas about their structure have changed. The volume therefore presents novel analyses of grammatical forms like the so-called S-Aux-O-V-Other or “future” constructions and provides empirical data for theorizing about aspect and modality. It should be of considerable interest to Africanist linguists typologists and creolists interested in substrate issues.