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Few topics of scientific enquiry have attracted more attention in the last decade than the origin and evolution of language. Few have offered an equivalent intellectual challenge for interdisciplinary collaborations between linguistics cognitive science prehistoric archaeology palaeoanthropology genetics neurophysiology computer science and robotics. The contributions presented in this volume reflect the multiplicity of interests and research strategy used to tackle this complex issue summarize new relevant data and emerging theories provide an updated view of this interdisciplinary venture and when possible seek a future in this broad field of study.

This book presents a thorough description of morphosyntactic knowledge developed by learners of French in four different learning situations — first language (L1) acquisition second (L2) language acquisition bilingualism and acquisition by children with Specific Language Impairment — within the theoretical framework of generative grammar. This approach allows for multiple comparisons across acquisition contexts which provides the reader with invaluable insights into the nature of the acquisition process. The book is divided into four parts each dealing with a major morphosyntactic domain of acquisition: the verbal domain the pronominal domain the nominal domain and the CP domain. Each part contains four chapters the first one presenting an overview of the basic facts and analyses of the relevant properties of French and the next three focusing on the different acquisition contexts. This book will be useful to anyone interested in the acquisition of French and in language development in general. It is also meant to stimulate cross-linguistic research from a theoretical perspective.

In recent years there has been a new interest in evaluating ‘complex’ structures in languages. The implications of such studies are varied e.g. the distinction between supposedly more complex and less complex languages how complexity relates to human knowledge of language and the role of the reduction or increase of complexity in language change and creolization. This book focuses on the latter issue but the conclusions presented here hold of typological ‘complexity’ in general. The chapters in this book show that the notion of complexity as conceived of in linguistics mainly centres on the outer manifestations of language (e.g. numbers of affixes). This exercise is useful in establishing the patterning of languages in terms of their degrees of analyticity or synthesis but it fails to address the properties of the inner rules of these grammars and how these relate to the computational system that governs the human language capacity. Put simply issues of complexity should not be equated with the complexity observed in surface patterns of grammars alone.

Since the 1980s Roger D. Sell’s literary criticism has striven to take account of the (often conflicting) approaches available without compromising the human importance of the literary work: either in terms of its creation or its reception. Sell’s theory of literature draws strength from the interface between literary studies and linguistics and is grounded on the argument that literary making is a primary communicational act between human beings. Other critics have found Sell’s work inspirational.

This book both responds to Sell’s ideas and demonstrates the multifaceted potential of his work. Aware of his trajectory through Literary-Pragmatic ‘Humanizing’ and ‘Mediating’ criticism Humane Readings offers a series of original and focused studies which demonstrate the power provenance and importance of Sell’s approach. Ranging in subject matter from the Early Modern Period to the present a reconfiguration of literary criticism by contemporary readers and practitioners is urged here. Case studies are presented on a range of poetic novelistic dramatic and children’s works. Each illuminates different aspects of Sell’s critical thought.

The current volume contains selected papers submitted after Critical Link 5 (Sydney 2007) and arises from its topic – quality interpreting being a communal responsibility of all the participants. It takes the much discussed theme of professionalisation of community interpreting to a new level by stating that achieving quality depends not only on the technical skills and ethics of interpreters but equally upon all other parties that serve multilingual populations: speakers employers and administrators educational institutions researchers and interpreters. Major articles outline both innovative practices in legal and medical settings and prevailing deficiencies in community interpreting in different countries. While Part I A shared responsibility: The policy dimension addresses the macro environment of specific social policy contexts with constrains that affect interpreting Part II Investigations and innovations in quality interpreting reveals a number of admirable cases of interpreters working together with their client institutions in a variety of social settings. Part III is dedicated to the questions of Pedagogy ethics and responsibility in interpreting. The collection is an important reference book catering to the interpreting community: interpreting practitioners and interpreter users researchers educators and students.

For more than three decades the International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL) has been characterized by diversity both in terms of the theoretical frameworks used by its researchers and the wide variety of languages that are analyzed. ICHL 18 which took place at the Université du Québec à Montréal in August 2007 was no exception to the continuation of this tradition. The articles in the present volume encompass many different approaches and a wide range of theories including grammaticalization generative approaches to linguistic change and variation reanalysis the use of analogy and the interplay between internal and external factors. The volume is divided into four sections dealing with phonology with syntax morphology and semantics with external factors in linguistic change and with tools and methodologies. This way this volume aims to be a reflection of the diverse trends in current historical linguistic study.

When explaining cognition one must explain how representations in the mind or symbols become meaningful by connecting to the external world. This process of connecting symbols with sensorimotor experiences is known as symbol grounding. The classical view of symbol grounding is that it is an individual process: a person or machine interacts with the environment and associates symbols with external experiences.

This volume contains views from different disciplines – ranging from psychology to robotics – on how this view can be extended by first extending symbol grounding to encompass semiotics and by showing how the classical view exaggerates the importance of written language: grounding does not necessarily involve written notations but rather language is an external cognitive resource that allows us to acquire categories and concepts. Secondly as symbol grounding relies on language to acquire and coordinate the process and language is a dynamical process rooted in both culture and biology symbol grounding by extension is also sensitive to culture emotion and embodiment.

The contributions to this volume were previously published in Interaction Studies 8:1 (2007).

In recent years we have witnessed on the one hand an increased interest in cross-linguistic data in formal semantic studies and on the other hand an increased concern for semantic issues in language typology. However only few studies combine semantic and typological research for a particular semantic domain (such as the papers in Bach et al. (1995) on quantification and Smith (1997) on aspect). This book brings together formal semanticists with a cross-linguistic perspective and/or those working on lesser-known languages and typologists interested in semantic theory to discuss semantic variation in the specific domain of Tense Aspect and Mood/Modality.

This volume brings together ten papers all presented at the 8th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (New York City 2007) addressing a wide range of topics in the morphology phonetics phonology pragmatics semantics and syntax of Hungarian with discussion of related facts in other languages as well. The volume includes an analysis of the morphophonology of the infinitival suffix in Optimality Theory a plea for a phonetically-grounded theory of phonology based on partial neutralization of the v/f contrast a Government Phonology account of vowel/zero alternations a discussion of the recursive nature of speech prosody a context-structure perspective on the pragmatics of polarity particles a novel outlook on the prosody semantics and syntax of negative quantifiers a structural approach to the difference between factive and non-factive complements and the distribution of the clausal expletive azt a pioneering study of the licensing and position of overt nominative subjects of infinitival complement clauses a lexicalist perspective on the distribution of ablative cause-PPs in anti-causative constructions and an analysis of the complicated morphosyntax of adpositional preverbs and their doubling in terms of partial chain reduction in a phase-based cyclic mapping of syntax to phonology. The volume will be of interest not just to scholars working on Hungarian but to a general audience of generative linguists.

This volume contains a selection of papers from the 4th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 4) which was held at the University of Cyprus from June 17th–19th 2007. The variety of theoretical frameworks and methodological perspectives (from Generative Grammar Word Grammar Government Phonology Optimality Theory and Distributed Morphology to quantitative Labovian and ethnographic approaches to variation and change real and apparent time studies phonetic analysis and metatheoretical papers on quantitative analysis) as well as the sheer number of linguistic varieties examined attest both to the breadth and scope of the conference and to its status as a meeting-place for synchronic and diachronic linguistic description and theoretical exploration. One of the major themes running through the volume is the explicit concern with methodological refinement. Almost all the contributions address issues of methodology in various aspects of data collection and analysis be they questionnaire surveys and interview data spoken or written corpora real- and apparent-time studies dialect atlases and maps statistical models or software. Alongside methodological issues and especially with regard to the treatment of historical data many of the papers in the volume explicitly address theoretical issues for example the relative weighting of linguistic/systemic cognitive and discourse factors in the exploration of language variation and change.

In this work the Spanish copulae ser and estar are argued to be aspectual morphemes. Their binary opposition reflects the universal aspectual values [±Perfective] which are the same ones overtly expressed by the preterite and imperfect past tense forms in Spanish. It can therefore be shown that different types of states just like different types of events can be categorized based on their aspectual composition. Additionally the inherent semantic differences between events and states can be accounted for by analyzing aspect as applying to events internally and to states externally. A useful resource for the beginning linguist as well as the most seasoned analyst this work is written in language that is easy to understand while remaining faithful to all of the appropriate relevant technical terminology. Anyone who is seriously interested in exploring why the Spanish verbs ser and estar are used the way they are should read this book.

This book foregrounds practices and discourses of ‘translation’ in several non-Western traditions. Translation Studies currently reflects the historiography and concerns of Anglo-American and European scholars overlooking the full richness of translational activities and diverse discourses. The essays in this book which generally have a historical slant help push back the geographical and conceptual boundaries of the discipline. They illustrate how distinctive historical social and philosophical contexts have shaped the ways in which translational acts are defined performed viewed encouraged or suppressed in different linguistic communities. The volume has a particular focus on the multiple contexts of translation in India but also encompasses translation in Korea Japan and South Africa as well as representations of Sufism in different contexts.

Register Variation in Indian English constitutes the first large-scale empirical investigation of an international variety of English. Using a combination of the corpus compiled for this project and relevant sections of ICE-India as its database this work tests existing descriptions and characterizations of English in India and provides the first empirical account of register variation in Indian English (or indeed any international variety of English). Included in this survey are linguistic features that have been examined before and others that have not. From an empirical standpoint it comments on the process of Indianization of the English used in India. The book will be of interest to readers beyond specialists of Indian English as it is one of very few studies to undertake a large-scale corpus analysis for the purpose of dialect research. The book provides a model on which future studies of international Englishes can be based.

This volume brings together recent work on the formal and interpretational properties of determiners across a variety of typologically and geographically unrelated languages. It seeks to answer the core question of modern linguistic theory: Which properties of languages are universal and which are variable? In recent theorizing much of language variation is argued to stem from differences in the properties of features associated with functional heads. As such this volume can be viewed as a case study of one such category: the determiner (D). The contributions all investigate the status of D as a language universal by examining the language-specific syntactic and semantic properties associated with this category. This volume will appeal to researchers and students in syntax and semantics as well as to those who have more a specific interest in determiners and noun phrases.

The papers included in the volume Phonetics and Phonology: Interactions and interrelations are concerned with some of the multiple possible forms of interactions and interrelations in phonetics and phonology: the phonetic and/or phonological nature of speech patterns segmental and prosodic interactions and interactions between segments and features both in child and in adult language combining perception and production data and doing so from theoretically as well as experimentally oriented perspectives. The book is unique in the universe of recent publications for its topic wide scope and coherent thematic content. It is of interest to all researchers teachers and students in the fields of phonetics and phonology as well as to those interested in the interplay between production and perception the organization of grammar and language typology. In general Phonetics and Phonology. Interactions and interrelations may be a useful companion to all those wishing to widen and deepen their knowledge of the sound structure of language(s).

The Transparent Becoming of World undertakes a penetrating inquiry into the quotidian world we take for granted and the brain that silently hoists our bubbles of world-thrownness. After critiquing the traditional views of direct realism indirect realism and idealism the continual becoming of world is explained by a novel integration of process dynamics as formulated by Whitehead Heidegger and Bohm with the burgeoning field of quantum neurophilosophy. A rich ontological duality newly opened by quantum brain theory is exploited: the “between-two” of dual quantum modes. Existence as world-thrownness is between-two in waking and dreaming alike. This highly original interdisciplinary book may be of interest to philosophers psychologists neuroscientists consciousness researchers indeed anyone attracted to the enigma of their own lived existence. (Series A)

This book contains 12 papers contributed by leading scholars in the field of language development studying variants of the languages which originated on the Iberian peninsula. The contributors examine language development in both typically-developing and language-impaired populations who are learning language in diverse learning conditions including language contact as well as monolingual and bilingual Spanish Catalan Galician and Euskera. This expansion and diversification of the database for studying language development is important because it creates new opportunities for testing theoretical claims. Our contributors reconsider theoretical claims relating to the purported adult-like nature of young children’s grammars. While some conclude for example that children in Mexico possess very adult-like semantic-pragmatic competence in the domain of the pragmatic implicatures associated with existential quantifiers others conclude that in particular sociolinguistic registers of Chilean Spanish children are late to develop adult-like competence in plural marking. Taken together the contents of the volume illustrate how the linguistic diversity found in the distinct learning conditions in which language develops offers a wealth of opportunities to further our understanding of linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive development.

This book explores the meanings of educational interactions which aim to promote peace and positive relationships. This analysis is based on theories of communication and active participation in education systems in particular in intercultural settings. The book investigates the cultural presuppositions of dialogues which can empower participants’ expressions in interactions through the management of discussions and conflicts. These presuppositions are observed in the use of language in participants’ narratives and interactions. The book draws on the fine-grained analysis of a large corpus of questionnaires interviews and videotaped interactions collected in 12 camps promoted by CISV (Children’s International Summer Villages) an international organisation which is active in 70 countries. The analysis encompasses both organisational meetings and educational activities involving adults children and adolescents of several nationalities and shows the importance of the different ways in which the adults who coordinate these meetings and activities act and use language. These different ways of acting in interactions can promote both empowering dialogues and disempowering monologues with important consequences for the fulfilment of educational purposes. For its contents theoretical framework and methodology the book may be of interest for educators teachers experts in mediation scholars and students in cultural sociology sociolinguistics communication studies discourse studies and dialogue studies.

The Arab-Israeli struggle is not only a struggle over land but a struggle over language representations. Arab reporters as well as politicians believe that their political discourses about the Middle East conflict are objective accurate and credible. Arab News and Conflict critically examines the role of language in the representations of events and ideologies found in news media.

Drawing on socio-political-linguistic approaches combined with real-case studies the author offers a unique discourse analysis model for analysing politically sensitive language in the media. The focus in this study is on the Arab media discourse in times of conflict with Israel and the US spanning the years 2001 to 2009. Using rich examples from outspoken Arab media outlets the study explores ideological and language facts about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This book is compelling reading for students and researchers of media and cultural studies discourse analysis and sociolinguistics and translation. It is of equal interest to political analysts political speakers journalists and news editors who need to understand more about the ideological function of the language they use or the political-journalistic-linguistic nexus of power.

Metalanguage in Interaction is about the crystallization of metalanguage employed throughout interaction into the discourse markers which permeate talk. Based on close analysis of naturally-occurring Hebrew conversation it is a synchronic study of the grammaticization of discourse markers a phenomenon until now mostly studied from a diachronic perspective. It constitutes the first monograph in the fields of Hebrew interactional linguistics and Hebrew discourse markers. The book first presents what is unique to the present approach to discourse markers and gives them an operational definition. Discourse markers are explored as a system illuminating their patterning in terms of function structure and the moments in interaction at which they are employed. Next detailed analysis of four Hebrew discourse markers illuminates not only the functions and grammaticization patterns of these markers but also what they reveal about quintessential aspects of Israeli society identity and culture. The conclusion discusses commonalities and differences in the grammaticization patterns of the four markers and relates the grammaticization of discourse markers from interaction to projectability in discourse.

Pompeu Fabra (1868-1948) is renowned as the person who reformed and codified modern Catalan giving it the condition of a normativised language of culture that proved fit to meet all the challenges of the twentieth century. The context in which he worked was defined by the ideology and momentum of a dynamic Catalan nationalism emerging out of the nineteenth-century cultural revival movement energies which have continued to affect politics in the Spanish state through to the present. The imposing corpus of Fabra’s writings —newspaper articles lectures and papers various grammars and the redaction of the official dictionary of Catalan— covered all aspects of the normativisation and the social normalisation of a rejuvenated national language. His work was moreover abreast of the most advanced developments in the newly emerging discipline of modern linguistics.The present volume was conceived in response to expressions of disappointment that the figure and the intellectual contributions of Pompeu Fabra have remained virtually unrecognised internationally. Some rectification of this situation is offered by this first ever translation into English of a representative selection of his writings accompanied by the first substantial study on him in that language. In this way his work should be made much more accessible to the international community of linguists and of specialists in various branches of the social sciences for whom Fabra’s exclusive dedication to Catalan retains great relevance.

The aim of this monograph is to give impetus to research into one of the central questions in discourse studies: what makes a sequence of sentences or utterances a discourse? <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The theoretical framework for describing the possibilities of discourse continuation is delineated by two principles: the discursive and the dialogic principle. The ‘chord’ of discourse is unfolded in a tripartite ‘wire’: Conjunction Adjunction and Interjunction each containing three aspects leading to a Connectivity Model. This new three-by-three taxonomy of discourse relations incorporates findings from several theories and approaches that have evolved over the last three decades including Systemic Functional Linguistics and Rhetorical Structure Theory. In comparing this model to other models this book presents a state-of-the-art of discourse relation analysis combined with detailed accounts of many examples. This monograph furthermore proposes a new way of presenting discourse structures—in ‘connectivity graphs’—followed by eleven commandments for the segmentation and labeling of discourse and three procedures for disambiguation if more labels are applicable. This study can provide a base for corpus linguistic analysis on discourse structures computational approaches to discourse generation and cognitive experimental research of discourse competence.

Metrics is often defined as a discipline that concerns itself with the study of meters. In this volume the term is used in a broader sense that more or less coincides with the traditional notion of “versification”. Understood this way metrics is an eminently complex object that displays variation over time and in space that concerns forms of a great variety and with different statuses (meters rhymes stanzas prescribed forms syllabification rules nursery rhymes slogans musical textsetting ablaut reduplication etc.) and that as a cultural manifestation is performed in a variety of ways (sung chanted spoken read) that can have direct consequences on how it is structured. This profusion of forms is thought to correspond at the level of perception to a limited number of cognitive mechanisms that allow us to perceive and to represent regularly iterating forms. This volume proposes a relatively coherent overall vision by distinguishing four main families of metrical forms each clearly independent of the others and amenable to separate typologies.

Against the background of jargon-ridden and often obscure semiotic literature Sadowski’s book offers a reader-friendly yet rigorous account of human communication and its evolution from animal and primate behaviour. What is specifically human about the way we exchange information with other people and to what extent are our facial expressions body language and even emotive elements of speech still indebted to our pre-human ancestors? Why can the chimpanzees smart as they are not interpret animal tracks in the ground; why did religions often ban representational art; why is photography perceptually more powerful than painting; how have human syntactic speech and combinatorial grammar enabled the “explosion” of culture; and why do otherwise rational humans often strongly believe in the objective existence of unempirical virtual entities such as religious and philosophic concepts? These and many other fascinating questions are addressed in the book within the methodological framework of systems theory and evolutionary psychology.

This detailed study challenges the claim that syntax is arbitrary and autonomous as well as the assumption that Spanish clitic clusters constitute grammaticalized units. Diverse--apparently unrelated--restrictions on clitic clustering in both simplex VP's and Accusative cum Infinitive structures are shown to be cognitively motivated given the meaning of the individual clitics and the compositional/interpretative routines those meanings motivate. The analysis accounts in coherent and principled fashion for the absolute non-occurrence of some clusters and the interpretation-dependent acceptability of all remaining clitic combinations: cluster acceptability depends on the ease with which the given clitic combination can be processed to yield a congruent message; there is no point in combining clitics whose meanings preclude speedy processing of the cluster. The monograph goes beyond previous work on Spanish clitics in its wealth of data the range of syntactic phenomena discussed and its analytic scope.

This volume deals with issues on negation patterns in languages of West Africa and the adjacent north and east. The first aim is to provide data on various aspects of negation in African languages. Although the topics addressed here reflect a great diversity of negation patterns the following typological features have been identified to be prominent in our region: conflict or even incompatibility between negation and focus use of other indirect means of negating non-indicative mood (covered under the term ‘Prohibitive’) different negation patterns in different Tense-Aspect-Moods (e.g. Imperfective vs. Perfective) lack of negative indefinites and disjunctive negative marking (often referred to as ‘double negation’). The articles presented here show that areal factors have played a significant role in the development of negation strategies in the languages of West Africa and beyond. On the other hand genetic factors seem to be less prominent.

Within a new model of language acquisition this book discusses verb second (V2) word order in situations where there is variation in the input. While traditional generative accounts consider V2 to be a parameter this study shows that in many languages this word order is dependent on fine distinctions in syntax and information structure. Thus within a split-CP model of clause structure a number of micro-cues are formulated taking into account the specific context for V2 vs. non-V2 (clause type subcategory of the elements involved etc.). The micro-cues are produced in children’s I-language grammars on exposure to the relevant input. Focusing on a dialect of Norwegian the book shows that children generally produce target-consistent V2 and non-V2 from early on indicating that they are sensitive to the micro-cues. This includes contexts where word order is dependent on information structure. The children’s occasional non-target-consistent behavior is accounted for by economy principles.

The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While other volumes select philosophical cognitive cultural social variational interactional or discursive points of view this fifth volume looks at the field of linguistic pragmatics from a primarily grammatical angle. That is it asks in which particular sense a variety of older and more recent functional (rather than generative) models of grammar relate to the study of language in use: how this affects their general outlook on language structure whether issues of language use inform the very makeup of these models or are merely included as possible research themes and how far the actual integration of pragmatics ultimately goes (is it a module/layer or is the model truly “usage-based”?). Each of the authors presenting these models has taken systematic care to highlight the relevant problems and focus on the implications of considering pragmatic phenomena from the point of view of grammar. Furthermore a limited number of chapters deal with traditional topics in the grammatical literature and specifically those which are called pragmatic because they either are not strictly concerned with truth (semantics) or receive their (truth) value only from an interaction with context. In the introduction these theories and topics are set up against the historical background of a gradually changing attitude on the part of grammarians towards questions of linguistic knowledge and behavior and the role of learning in their relationship.

The studies in this collection address a topic that has recently become the focus of considerable interest in second language acquisition (SLA) research: the acquisition of articles. Languages appear to vary in whether they have articles (English German Norwegian do but Chinese Japanese Russian do not). Languages that have articles also appear to divide into those that realise definiteness (e.g. English) and those that realise specificity (e.g. Samoan). When speakers of one type of language learn an L2 of a different type issues of central concern to SLA research arise: the nature of L1 influence the time course of development ultimate attainment the relationship between performance and competence and the role of Universal Grammar. These issues are considered in nine studies written by researchers whose work is at the forefront of enquiry that offer new data new perspectives and new insights into the way L2 speakers acquire articles.

Linguistic Cycles are ever present in language change and involve a phrase or word that gradually disappears and is replaced by a new linguistic item. The most well-known cycles involve negatives where an initial single negative such as not is reinforced by another negative such as no thing and subjects where full pronouns are reanalyzed as endings on the verb. This book presents new data and insights on the well-known cyclical changes as well as on less well-known ones such as the preposition auxiliary copula modal and complementation cycles. Part I covers the negative cycle with chapters looking in great detail at the steps that are typical in this cycle. Part II focuses on pronouns auxiliaries and the left periphery. Part III includes work on modals prepositions and complementation. The book ends with a psycholinguistic chapter. This book brings together linguists from a variety of theoretical frameworks and contributes to new directions in work on language change.

This volume explores recent advancements in the Minimalist Program that adopt Stroik’s (1999 2009) Survive Principle as the principle means of accounting for displacement phenomena in earlier versions of generative theory. These contributions bring to light many advantages and challenges that beset the Survive-minimalist framework including topics such as the lexicon-syntax relationship coordinate symmetries scope ellipsis code-switching and probe-goal relations. Despite the diverse broad range of topics discussed in this volume the papers are connected by a renewed investigation of Frampton & Gutmann’s (2002) vision of a crash-proof syntax. This volume provides new and interesting perspectives on theoretical issues that have challenged the Minimalist Program since its inception and will provide ample food for thought for syntacticians working in the Minimalist tradition and beyond.

The product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics this book is focused on questions of grammatical change and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences strategies of definiteness the prepositional phrase or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax and syntax to morphology a central motif of this research has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.

The volume presents a selection of contributions by leading scholars in the field of code-switching. In the past the phenomenon of code-switching was studied within different subfields of linguistics and they all took their own perspectives on code-switching without taking into account findings from other subdisciplines. This book raises a question of a much broader multidisciplinary approach to studying the phenomenon of code-switching; calls for integration of disciplines; and illustrates how frameworks from one subfield can be applied to models in another. The volume includes survey chapters empirical studies contributions that use empirical data to test new hypotheses about code-switching or suggest new approaches and models for the study of code-switching and chapters that discuss principles and constraints of code-switching and code-switching vs. transfer. The book is easily accessible to anyone who is interested in the phenomenon of code-switching in bilinguals.

Named Entities provides critical information for many NLP applications. Named Entity recognition and classification (NERC) in text is recognized as one of the important sub-tasks of Information Extraction (IE). The seven papers in this volume cover various interesting and informative aspects of NERC research. Nadeau & Sekine provide an extensive survey of past NERC technologies which should be a very useful resource for new researchers in this field. Smith & Osborne describe a machine learning model which tries to solve the over-fitting problem. Mazur & Dale tackle a common problem of NE and conjunction; as conjunctions are often a part of NEs or appear close to NEs this is an important practical problem. A further three papers describe analyses and implementations of NERC for different languages: Spanish (Galicia-Haro & Gelbukh) Bengali (Ekbal Naskar & Bandyopadhyay) and Serbian (Vitas Krstev & Maurel). Finally Steinberger & Pouliquen report on a real WEB application where multilingual NERC technology is used to identify occurrences of people locations and organizations in newspapers in different languages.

The contributions to this volume were previously published in Lingvisticae Investigationes 30:1 (2007).

The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While other volumes select philosophical cognitive grammatical social variational interactional or discursive angles this second volume reviews basic topics and traditions that place language use in its cultural context. As emphasized in the introduction and as revealed in the choice of articles ‘culture’ is by no means to be seen as standing in opposition to society and cognition; on the contrary the notion cannot be understood without insight into the intricate interactions of social and cognitive structures and processes. In addition to the topical articles a number of contributions to this volume is devoted to aspects of methodology. Others highlight the role of eminent scholars who have made the study of cultural dimensions of language use into what it is today.

Nearly three decades since the publication of the seminal Metaphors We Live By Cognitive Linguistics is now a mature theoretical and empirical enterprise with a voluminous associated literature. It is arguably the most rapidly expanding ‘school’ in modern linguistics and one of the most exciting areas of research within the interdisciplinary project known as cognitive science. As such Cognitive Linguistics is increasingly attracting a broad readership both within linguistics as well as from neighbouring disciplines including other cognitive and social sciences and from disciplines within the humanities. This volume contains over 20 papers by leading experts in cognitive linguistics which survey the state of the art and new directions in cognitive linguistics. The volume is divided into 5 sections covering all the traditional areas of study in cognitive linguistics as well as newer areas including applications and extensions. Sections include: Approaches to semantics; Approaches to metaphor and blending; Approaches to grammar; Language embodiment and cognition; Extensions and applications of cognitive linguistics.

This volume brings together recent work in generative syntax on correlative relative constructions. Greatly expanding on the Hindi-oriented scope of previous studies it describes and analyzes correlative constructions in a range of languages such as Basque Dutch Hungarian Polish Sanskrit Serbo-Croatian and Tibetan in comparison to correlativization in Hindi. The articles zoom in on three areas of interest: firstly the similarities and differences between correlatives and other wh- and relative constructions; secondly the derivation of correlative constructions and the position correlative clauses occupy in the host clause and thirdly the matching effects that characterize the pairings between relative phrases and demonstrative phrases. The studies presented here will appeal to researchers and students with an interest in syntax in general and relativization strategies in particular.

Focus–background structure has taken center stage in much current theorizing about sentence prosody syntax and semantics. However both the inventory of focus expressions found cross-linguistically and the interpretive consequences associated with each of these continue to be insufficiently described. This volume aims at providing new observations on the availability and the use of focus markings in Romance languages. In doing so it documents the plurality of research on focus in Spanish Portuguese French Italian and Romanian. Topics covered include constituent fronting and clefting the position of subjects and focus particles clitic doubling of objects and information packaging in complex sentences. In addition some contributions explore focus–background structure from acquisitional and diachronic angles while others adopt a comparative perspective studying differences between individual Romance and Germanic languages. Therefore this volume is of interest to a broad audience within linguistics including syntacticians semanticists and historical linguists.

Examining Argumentation in Context: Fifteen studies on strategic maneuvering contains a selection of papers on strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse. Starting point of all of these contributions is that a satisfactory analysis and evaluation of strategic maneuvering is possible only if the argumentative discourse is first situated in the communicative and interactional context in which it occurs. While some of the contributions present general views with regard to strategic maneuvering other contributions report on the results of empirical studies examine strategic maneuvering in a particular legal or political context or highlight the presentational design of strategic maneuvering. Examining Argumentation in Context therefore provides an insightful view of recent developments in the research on strategic maneuvering which is currently prominent in the study of argumentation.

The image of the tightrope walker illustrates the interpreter’s balancing act. Compelled to move forward at a pace set by someone else interpreters compensate for pressures and surges that might push them into the void. The author starts from the observation that conference interpreters tend to see survival as being their primary objective. It is interpreters’ awareness of the essentially face-threatening nature of the profession that naturally induces them to seek what the author calls “dynamic equilibrium” a constantly evolving state in which problems are resolved in the interests of maintaining the integrity of the system as a whole. By taking as a starting point the more visible interventions interpreters make (comments on speed of delivery on exchanges between the chair and the floor) the author is able to explore the interpreter’s instinct for self-preservation in an inherently unstable environment. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>This volume is an insightful and refreshing account of interpreters’ behavior from the other side of the glass-fronted booth.

This book is the second of the two-volume collection of papers on formulaic language. The collection is among the first in the field. The authors of the papers in this volume represent a diverse group of international scholars in linguistics and psychology. The language data analyzed come from a variety of languages including Arabic Japanese Polish and Spanish and include analyses of styles and genres within these languages. While the first volume focuses on the very definition of linguistic formulae and on their grammatical semantic stylistic and historical aspects the second volume explores how formulae are acquired and lost by speakers of a language in what way they are psychologically real and what their functions in discourse are. Since most of the papers are readily accessible to readers with only basic familiarity with linguistics the book may be used in courses on discourse structure pragmatics semantics language acquisition and syntax as well as being a resource in linguistic research.

Discourse of Course comes after Jan Renkema’s Introduction to Discourse Studies (2004) for undergraduates. The new book is a collection of twenty short papers. It is a capita selecta course and meant for graduate programs. The aim of this book is threefold:

• to present material for advanced courses in discourse studies;

• to unfold a stimulating display of research projects to future PhD students;

• to give an overview of new developments after the 2004

Introduction to Discourse Studies.

This publication fulfills both the teacher's need for a state-of-the-art overview of the main topics in discourse and the student's need to acquire standards for developing research plans in theses and dissertations. It gives a combination of approaches from very different schools in discourse studies ranging from argumentation theory to genre theory from the study of multimodal metaphors to cognitive approaches to coherence analysis. This book is not only meant to serve as a textbook but also as a reference book for researchers who want an update for various main topics in the field.

Ioane Petritsi a twelfth-century Georgian philosopher translated from Greek into Georgian The Elements of Theology of the Neoplatonist Proclus (fifth century) and wrote a Commentary on the entire text with a preface and a postface. Petritsi tried to prove the priority of the Proclean One over all other ontological hypostases its transcendence and its omnipresence together with the thesis that all things depend on the One including even matter. In his Commentary Petritsi also referred to other works of Proclus besides The Elements of Theology as well as to many other ancient Greek philosophers. Although Petritsi’s Commentary is an important milestone in the history of the medieval Christian philosophical interpretations of ancient Platonism to date this text written in Old Georgian has remained almost unknown for western scholarship. This is the first time that the complete text of Petritsi’s Commentary is being published in a western language. The present book provides a German translation of the complete text with an introduction notes indices and bibliography. Der mittelalterliche georgische Philosoph Ioane Petrizi übersetzte im 12. Jahrhundert die Stoicheiosis theologike des Neuplatonikers Proclus (5. Jh.) ins Alt-Georgische und verfasste zu dem gesamten Text der Stoicheiosis einen umfangreichen Kommentar den er zusätzlich mit einem Prolog und einem Epilog versah. Petrizi versucht in seinem Kommentar die ontologische Vorrangigkeit des Proklischen Einen über alle anderen Hypostasen ebenso zu beweisen wie dessen Transzendenz bei gleichzeitiger Allanwesenheit im Seinskontinuum. Zudem vertritt er die These dass alle Dinge vom Einen abhängen sogar die Materie. Dabei berücksichtigt Petrizi neben der Stoicheiosis auch andere Werke Proclus’ ebenso wie zahlreiche weitere Texte antiker griechischer Philosophen. Damit wird Petrizis Kommentar zu einer bedeutenden Schrift für die Erforschung und das Verständnis der mittelalterlichen christlichen Philosophie und ihrer Aneignung des (spät-)antiken Platonismus. Trotz seiner Bedeutung ist Petrizis Text von der westlichen Forschung bisher kaum zur Kenntnis genommen worden. Die vorliegende Übersetzung ins Deutsche ist die erste komplette Übersetzung dieses Textes in eine westliche Sprache überhaupt. Neben der Übersetzung bietet diese Ausgabe eine Einleitung Anmerkungen Indices und eine Bibliografie.

Despite its potential influence on the standard language there is still relatively little written about the language of the young. This book gives new insight into some important areas of their language such as identity construction reflected for instance in prosodic patterns and language choice the use of discourse markers and slang in a contrastive perspective the pragmatics of fixed expressions and the impact of English on the teenage vernacular. Most of the articles are corpus-based and all represent naturally occurring spontaneous conversation. The book will be of interest to linguists university students and anyone interested in today’s adolescent language and language change.

Whereas Africa as a typological area is often associated with extensive verb morphology and verb serialization this collection of studies shows that there is tremendous typological diversity at the clausal level. Verb serialization in the Khoisan area contrasts with extensive case-marking in languages of northeastern Africa which also use converbs and light verb plus coverb constructions. Although the categorial distinction between nouns and verbs is generally clear in African languages a number of them nevertheless provide intricate analytical challenges in this respect. Whereas some languages are strongly head marking at the clausal level others manifest an interesting mixture of alternative strategies for the coding of participants. The analysis of information packaging and related issues such as split ergativity Differential Object Marking and discourse-configurational properties also play a role in several contributions. The collection contains not only innovative analyses for the respective language families these languages belong to but also material relevant for the current debate in theoretical linguistics concerning lexical specification as against construction-based approaches towards argument structure.

Oral History: The Challenges of Dialogue shows contemporary oral history at work in a variety of contexts levels and engagements. The issues developed in the book correspond to different stages of research: preparing and conducting the interview evaluating and analyzing the collected material publishing in the broad sense of speaking to different audiences and finally addressing the dilemmas and philosophical reflections with an emphasis on ethics. This book aims to address oral history from two perspectives. The first is the perspective of oral history as dialoguing the second is the presentation of concrete situations research persons and their own stories as built on the solid ground of discourse and within a concrete context. The chapters embody the experiences of the authors their efforts and successes as well as their failures in dialoguing with narrators. Unveiled in this book is the extensive breadth of contemporary oral history work bridging epistemological and methodological horizons.

Contemporary Indian English: Variation and Change offers the first comprehensive description of Indian English and its emerging regional standard in a corpus-linguistic framework. Drawing on a wealth of authentic spoken and written data from India (including the Kolhapur Corpus and the International Corpus of English) this book explores the dynamics of variation and change in the vocabulary and grammar of contemporary Indian English. The aims are to document the extent of lexical and grammatical nativization at the beginning of the twenty-first century and compare contemporary Indian English to other varieties around the world (for example British and American English). The results are relevant to sociolinguists variationists and lexicologists seeking to investigate ongoing language change in emerging standard varieties of English. With its strong empirical foundation and its comparative outlook the book is also of interest to anyone looking for an introduction to the corpus-based description of varieties of English.

The Language of Daily Life in England (1400–1800) is an important state-of-the art account of historical sociolinguistic and socio-pragmatic research. The volume contains nine studies and an introductory essay which discuss linguistic and social variation and change over four centuries. Each study tackles a linguistic or social phenomenon and approaches it with a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods always embedded in the socio-historical context. The volume presents new information on linguistic variation and change while evaluating and developing the relevant theoretical and methodological tools. The writers form one of the leading research teams in the field and as compilers of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence have an informed understanding of the data in all its depth. This volume will be of interest to scholars in historical linguistics sociolinguistics and socio-pragmatics but also e.g. social history. The approachable style of writing makes it also inviting for advanced students.

This book looks at mediaeval English drama using the theoretical frameworks of historical sociopragmatics and dialogue analysis. It focuses on the collection of cycle plays known as the N.Town Plays preserved in a manuscript from the fifteenth century. The book examines various linguistic markers that are important for the expression of social relations and pragmatic stance: pronouns and terms of address modal markers performatives and sequential structures such as question-answer imperative-compliance etc. These elements are examined separately and then brought together to arrive at a more integrated analysis of dramatic dialogue and of the dynamics of interaction it portrays. A separate chapter is devoted to tracing the same mechanisms on a different communication level i.e. in 'dialogue' with the audience which is particularly relevant to the instructional purposes of the plays. The book will be useful to students and scholars of pragmatics historical linguistics dialogue studies and drama studies.

Is creolization an abrupt or a gradual process? In this volume leading scholars provide both comparative and case studies that outline their working definitions and their views on the particular or average time depth or key processes necessary for contact language formation providing a state-of-the art assessment of the theory of gradual creolization. Authors scrutinize the roles of nativization demography initial settlement language composition koineization adstrate presence bilingualism as well as a variety of structural features in pidgins creoles and other contact languages world-wide. From Pacific to Atlantic French- English- Dutch- Portuguese- and other-lexified restructured varieties are covered. Syntactic lexical phonological historical and socio-cultural studies are grouped into Part 1 Linguistic analysis and Part 2 Social reconstruction. This volume provides the multi-faceted groundwork and expert discussion that will help formulate further a model of gradual creolization as called for by the work of the late Jacques Arends.