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The articles in this edited volume represent a range of approaches to studying the role of verbal aspect in grammatical variation. Issues addressed include: defining the variable context; operationalizing aspectual distinctions as factors conditioning linguistic variation; and the appropriate number of aspectual distinctions and levels. Apart from bringing to light various methodological and analytical issues this volume gathers together a unique collection of original research based on spoken- and written-language corpora of an array of languages and linguistic varieties: African American Vernacular English Caribbean English and English-based creole Indian English Newfoundland English Canadian French Brazilian Portuguese Ecuadorian Spanish Mexican Spanish and Peninsular Spanish. This volume should not only benefit research on grammatical variation but also be of interest more generally to the study of verbal aspect.

What happens when a canonically transitive form meets a canonically transitive meaning and what happens when this doesn’t happen? How do dyadic forms relate to monadic ones and what are the entailments of the operations that the grammar uses to relate one to the other? Collecting original expert work from acquisition processing typological and theoretical syntax-semantics research this volume provides a state of the art as well as cutting edge discussion of central issues in the realm of Transitivity. These include the definition and role of "Natural Transitivity" the interpretation and repercussions of valency changing operations and differential case marking and the interactions between (in)transitive Gestalts in different categories and at different levels of representation.

This is corpus linguistics with a text linguistic focus. The volume concerns lexical inequality the fact that some words and phrases share the quality of being key – and thereby reflect or promote important themes – in some textual contexts while others do not. The patterning of words which differ in their centrality to text meaning is of increasing interest to corpus linguistics. At the same time software resources are yielding increasingly more detailed ways of identifying and studying the linkages between key words and phrases in text databases. This volume brings together work from some of the leading researchers in this field. It presents thirteen studies organized in three sections the first containing a series of studies exploring the nature of keyness itself then a set of five studies looking at keyness in specific discourse contexts and then three studies with an educational focus.

The ten volumes of the 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 the other volumes select specific philosophical cognitive grammatical cultural interactional or discursive angles this sixth volume focuses on the dynamic aspects of language and reviews the relevant developments in variationist and diachronic scholarship. The areas explored in the volume concern several general themes: specific methodological approaches from comparative reconstruction to evolutionary pragmatics; issues in intra-lingual variation in terms of standard and non-standard varieties; cross-linguistic variation including its cross-cultural dimension; and the study of diachronic relations across linguistic patterns including changes in all areas of pragmatic patterns and categories. The contributions document two prominent and interrelated trends that shape contemporary variationist and diachronic research. One it has moved from situating change within context-independent systems toward incorporating patterns of language use and the speaker’s role in language change. And two it has reoriented its focus away from cataloguing instances of variation and toward seeking theoretically informed accounts that aim at explaining variation and change. On the whole the volume argues for accepting and developing actively a systematic connection between research in diachrony synchronic variation and typology while also incorporating the socio-cognitive perspective in linguistic analysis as a particularly promising source of useful methodology and explanatory models.

Based on the analysis of conversations between French and Australian English speakers discussing various topics including their experiences as non-native speakers in France or Australia this book combines subjective personal testimonies with an objective linguistic analysis of the expression of opinion in discourse.

It offers a new perspective on French and Australian English interactional style by examining the discourse markers I think je pense je crois and je trouve. It is shown that the prosody intonation unit position and the surrounding context of these markers are all fundamental to their function and meaning in interaction. In addition this book offers the first detailed comparative semantic study of the three comparative French expressions in interaction.

The book will appeal to all those interested in linguistics French and Australian English interactional style cross-cultural communication and discourse analysis. Students and teachers of French will be interested in the semantic analysis of the French expressions the authentic interactional data and the personal testimonies of the participants.

The fourteen studies selected for this volume – all of them peer-reviewed versions of papers presented at the 15th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics 2008 (23–30 August) at the University of Munich – investigate syntactic variation and change in the history of English from two perspectives that are crucial to explaining language change namely the analysis of usage patterns and the social motivations of language change. Documenting the way syntactic elements have changed their combinatory preferences in fine-grained corpus studies renders the opportunity to catch language change in actu. A majority of studies in this book investigate syntactic change in the history of English from this viewpoint using a corpus-based approach focusing on verbal constructions modality and developments in the English noun phrase.

The book is of primary interest to linguists interested in current research in the history of English syntax. Its empirical richness is an excellent source for teaching English Historical Syntax.

Volume II to be announced soon.

A fascinating cornucopia of new ideas based on fundamentals of neurobiology psychology psychiatry and therapy this book extends boundaries of current concepts of consciousness. Its eclectic mix will simulate and challenge not only neuroscientists and psychologists but entice others interested in exploring consciousness. Contributions from top researchers in consciousness and related fields project diverse ideas focused mainly on conscious nonconscious interactions: <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>1. Paving the way for new research on basic scientific - physiological pharmacological or neurochemical - mechanisms underpinning conscious experience (‘bottom up’ approach); <br/>2. Providing directions on how psychological processes are involved in consciousness (‘top down’ approach); <br/>3. Indicating how including consciousness could lead to new understanding of mental disorders such as schizophrenia depression dementia and addiction;<br/> 4. More provocatively but still based on scientific evidence exploring consciousness beyond conventional boundaries indicating the potential for radical new thinking or ‘quantum leaps’ in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. (Series B)

Experimental Methods in Language Acquisition Research provides students and researchers interested in language acquisition with comprehensible and practical information on the most frequently used methods in language acquisition research. It includes contributions on first and child/adult second language learners language-impaired children and on the acquisition of both spoken and signed language. Part I discusses specific experimental methods explaining the rationale behind each one and providing an overview of potential participants the procedure and data-analysis as well as advantages and disadvantages and dos and don’ts. Part II focuses on comparisons across groups addressing the theoretical applied and methodological issues involved in such comparative work. This book will not only be of use to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students but also to any scholars wishing to learn more about a particular research method. It is suitable as a textbook in postgraduate programs in the fields of linguistics education and psychology.

First published as a Special Issue of Interpreting (10:1 2008) and complemented with two articles published in Interpreting (12:1 2010) this volume provides a panoramic view of the complex and uniquely constrained practice of court interpreting. In an array of empirical papers the nine authors explore the potential of court interpreters to make or break the proceedings from the perspectives of the minority language speaker and of the other participants. The volume offers thoughtful overviews of the tensions and conflicts typically associated with the practice of court interpreting. It looks at the attitudes of judicial authorities towards interpreting and of interpreters towards the concept of a code of ethics. With further themes such as the interplay of different groups of "linguists" at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and the language rights of indigenous communities it opens novel perspectives on the study of interpreting at the interface between the letter of the law and its implementation.

This book investigates how Japanese participants accommodate to and make use of genre-specific characteristics to make stories tellable create interpersonal involvement negotiate responsibility and show their personal selves. The analyses of storytelling in casual conversation animation narratives television talk shows survey interviews and large university lectures focus on participation/participatory framework topical coherence involvement knowledge the story recipient’s role prosody and nonverbal behavior. Story tellers across genre are shown to use linguistic/paralinguistic (prosody reported speech style shifting demonstratives repetition ellipsis co-construction connectives final particles onomatopoeia) and nonverbal (gesture gaze head nodding) devices to involve their recipients and recipients also use a multiple of devices (laughter repetition responsive forms posture changes) to shape the development of the stories. Nonverbal behavior proves to be a rich resource and constitutive feature of storytelling across genre. The analyses also shed new light on grammar across genre (ellipsis demonstratives clause combining) and illustrate a variety of methods for studying genre.