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In recent years ethnic ways of speaking by young people with migrant background have become an important research object in sociolinguistics; work on these ways of speaking has been prospering in many European countries. This work is continued in the present volume with the aim of bringing together various research designs which explore the phenomenon from different perspectives: correlational methodology of sociolinguistic research conversation analytical and interactional linguistic methodology and an ethnographic perspective on language use and the construction of social identities and social relations. The aim of the volume is to explore the scope of these different methodologies and to provide a basis for the discussion and evaluation of the theories of language variation associated with them. All papers focus on the description of the linguistic characteristics that constitute the non-standard structures of ethnic styles of speaking and look into their various functions in discourse.

Brought together in this volume are fourteen studies using a range of modern instrumental methods – acoustic and articulatory – to investigate the phonetics of several North African and Middle Eastern varieties of Arabic. Topics covered include syllable structure quantity assimilation guttural and emphatic consonants and their pharyngeal and laryngeal mechanisms intonation and language acquisition. In addition to presenting new data and new descriptions and interpretations a key aim of the volume is to demonstrate the depth of objective analysis that instrumental methods can enable researchers to achieve. A special feature of many chapters is the use of more than one type of instrumentation to give different perspectives on phonetic properties of Arabic speech which have fascinated scholars since medieval times. The volume will be of interest to phoneticians phonologists and Arabic dialectologists and provides a link between traditional qualitative accounts of spoken Arabic and modern quantitative methods of instrumental phonetic analysis.

Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) considers how people can interact with robots in order to enable robots to best interact with people. HRI presents many challenges with solutions requiring a unique combination of skills from many fields including computer science artificial intelligence social sciences ethology and engineering. We have specifically aimed this work to appeal to such a multi-disciplinary audience. This volume presents new and exciting material from HRI researchers who discuss research at the frontiers of HRI. The chapters address the human aspects of interaction such as how a robot may understand provide feedback and act as a social being in interaction with a human to experimental studies and field implementations of human–robot collaboration ranging from joint action robots practically and safely helping people in real world situations robots helping people via rehabilitation and robots acquiring concepts from communication. This volume reflects current trends in this exciting research field.

This monograph presents a view on grammaticalisation radically different from standard views centering around the cline of grammaticality. Grammar is seen as a complex sign system and as a consequence grammatical change always comprises semantic change. What unites morphology topology (word order) constructional syntax and other grammatical subsystems is their paradigmatic organisation. The traditional concept of an inflexional paradigm is generalised as the structuring principle of grammar. Grammatical change involves paradigmatic restructuring and in the process of grammatical change morphological topological and constructional paradigms often connect to form complex paradigms. The book introduces the concept of connecting grammaticalisation to describe the formation restructuring and dismantling of such complex paradigms. Drawing primarily on data from Germanic Romance and Slavic languages the book offers both a broad general discussion of theoretical issues (part one) and three case studies (part two).

As of March 2017 this e-book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. It is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. 

The studies in Language Change in Contact Languages showcase the contributions that the study of contact language varieties make to the understanding of phenomena such as relexification transfer reanalysis grammaticalization prosodic variation and the development of prosodic systems. Four of the studies deal with morphosyntactic issues while the other three address questions of prosody. The studies include data from the Atlantic creoles (Saramaccan Sranan Haitian Creole Jamaican Creole Trinidadian Creole Papiamentu) as well as Singapore English. This volume originally published as special issue of Studies in Language 33:2 (2009) aims to make the work of several language contact experts available to a wider audience. The studies will be of use to any student or scholar interested in different approaches to contact-induced language processes particularly as they relate to morphosyntax and prosody.

The ten volumes of Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics thereby attempting to divide up its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While the other volumes select specific philosophical cognitive grammatical social cultural discursive variational or interactional angles this 9th volume focuses on what pragmatics is good for – beyond the very discipline of pragmatics as such. The chapters in the volume thus address the importance of taking a pragmatic perspective on traditional fields of applied linguistics (contrastive and error analysis translation) and they address the core of pragmatics as the study of language use (with phenomena ranging from irony and emphasis to literacy and mass media and with approaches to the function of language like rhetoric stylistics corpus analysis and general semantics). The volume contains chapters not only on the spoken and written modes of communication but also on signed language pragmatics and on computer-mediated communication. The impact and usefulness of taking a pragmatic perspective on language for a deeper understanding of clinical and rehabilitation practices has recently received ever more focus; in this volume aspects of this direction of research are dealt with in the chapter on clinical pragmatics. In most of the chapters in the volume ethics has a core role to play not only in issues of authenticity in general in relation to research on language use but also in issues that have a direct influence on the (linguistic) culture and society we live in irrespective of whether we are part of a (linguistic) majority or a minority or a minority within a minority: language policy and language planning language ecology and language in relation to legal matters. In all of these fields we see the importance of research within pragmatics as a discipline dealing with how language influences our everyday lives. All in all the volume presents different perspectives on how research in pragmatics not only can be put to practice but how pragmatics is used as a tool to gain a better understanding of the world we live in.

This volume which was originally published in Terminology 15:1 (2009) presents and reflects on experiences dealing with terminology training from a theoretical practical and professional perspective. Terminology is part of the programmes of several (post)graduate courses such as Translating and Interpreting Applied Languages Information Science and other disciplines. Especially terminology practice has changed drastically over the years and training in terminology must adapt to this new reality. Drawing on years of experience in teaching this subject at various academic levels and in diverse ways we explore what to teach about terminology how to teach it how it is learned what experiences are put into practice with what result and how to connect the knowledge taught at universities and other institutions to the practical skills that are required from professionals in different areas e.g. translators information scientists knowledge engineers with respect to their knowledge of terminology.

When a reader picks up a book the essence of the text has been translated into the visual space of the cover. Using Umberto Eco’s bestseller The Name of the Rose as a case study this is the first study of book cover design as a form of intersemiotic translation based on the purposeful selection of visual signs to represent verbal signs. As an act of translation the cover of a book ought to be an ‘equivalent representation’ of the text. But in the absence of any established interpretive criteria how can equivalence between the visual and the verbal be determined and interpreted? Re-Covered Rose tackles this question in an original and creative way laying the foundation for a new research trend in Translation Studies.

Marco Sonzogni is Senior Lecturer in Italian School of Languages and Cultures Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand. A widely published academic and an award-winning editor poet and literary translator he is the Director of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation/Te Tumu Whakawhiti Tuhinga.

Construction Grammar is enthusiastically embraced by a growing group of linguists who find it a natural way to formulate their analyses. But so far there is no widespread formalization of construction grammar with a solid computational implementation. Fluid Construction Grammar attempts to fill this gap. It is a fully operational computational framework capturing many key concepts in construction grammar. The present book is the first extensive publication describing this framework. In addition to general introductions it gives a number of concrete examples through a series of linguistically challenging case studies including phrase structure case grammar and modality. The book is suited both for linguists who want to know what Fluid Construction Grammar looks like and for computational linguists who may want to use this computational framework for their own experiments or applications.

From the beginning of the Scientific Revolution around the late sixteenth century to its final crystallization in the early eighteenth century hardly an observational result an experimental technique a theory a mathematical proof a methodological principle or the award of recognition and reputation remained unquestioned for long. The essays collected in this book examine the rich texture of debates that comprised the Scientific Revolution from which the modern conception of science emerged. Were controversies marginal episodes restricted to certain fields or were they the rule in the majority of scientific domains? To what extent did scientific controversies share a typical pattern which distinguished them from debates in other fields? Answers to these historical and philosophical questions are sought through a close attention to specific controversies within and across the changing scientific disciplines as well as across the borders of the natural and the human sciences philosophy theology and technology.

The annual Going Romance conference has developed into the major European discussion forum for theoretically relevant research on Romance languages where current ideas about language in general and about Romance languages in particular are tested. The twenty-third Going Romance conference was a very special one: for the first time it was not hosted by one of the Dutch universities but was co-organized by the Radboud University Nijmegen and the Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis and held in France at the Maison du Séminaire in Nice from 3–5 December 2009.

The present volume contains a broad range of peer-reviewed articles dealing with syntax phonology morphology semantics and acquisition of the Romance languages as well as selected papers from the special workshop dealing with linguistic change in relation to linguistic theory.

From the 16th century onwards Europeans encountered languages in the Americas Africa and Asia which were radically different from any of the languages of the Old World. Missionaries were in the forefront of this encounter: in order to speak to potential converts they needed to learn local languages. A great wealth of missionary grammars survives from the 16th century onwards. Some of these are precious records of the languages they document and all of them witness their authors’ attempts to develop the methods of grammatical description with which they were familiar to accommodate dramatically new linguistic features.This book is the first monograph covering the whole Portuguese grammatical tradition outside Portugal. Its aim is to provide an integrated description analysis and evaluation of the missionary grammars which were written in Portuguese. Between them these grammars covered a huge range of languages: in Asia Tamil four Indo-Aryan languages and Japanese; in Brazil Kipeá and Tupinambá; in Africa and the African diaspora Kimbundu and Sena (from the modern Angola and Mozambique respectively).Each text is placed in its historical context and its linguistic context is analyzed with particular attention to orthography the parts of speech system morphology and syntax. Whenever possible pedagogical features of the grammars are discussed together with their treatment of language variation and pragmatics and the evidence they provide for the missionaries’ attitude towards the languages they studied.

The articles assembled in Semblance and Signification explore linguistic and literary structures from a range of theoretical perspectives with a view to understanding the extent prevalence productivity and limitations of iconically grounded forms of semiosis. With the complementary examination of large theoretical issues extensive corpus analysis in several modern languages such as Italian Japanese Sign Language and English and applied close studies across a range of artistic media this volume brings a fresh understanding of the cognitive underpinnings of iconicity. If primary and secondary modelling systems are rarely studied in tandem it is clear from this volume that their fruitful juxtaposition yields striking insight into the cognitive concerns that pervade current semiotic research.

Jiří Levý’s seminal work The Art of Translation considered a timeless classic in Translation Studies is now available in English. Having drawn on adjacent disciplines the methodology of Czech functional sociosemiotic structuralism and the state-of-the art in the West Levý synthesized his findings and experience in the field presenting them in a reader-friendly book which combines the approaches of a theoretician systemic analyst historian critic teacher practitioner and populariser. Although focused on literary translation from theoretical descriptive and historical perspectives it presents a conceptualization of a general theory addressing a number of issues discussed today. The ‘practical’ mission of the book as a theory extending to practice is based on the same historical-dialectic affinity of methods norms functions and values accounting for the translator’s agency and other contextual agents involved in the communication process. The book will be useful to translators researchers students and teachers in Translation and Literary Studies.

The emergence of symbolic culture classically identified with the European cave paintings of the Ice Age is now seen in the light of recent groundbreaking discoveries as a complex nonlinear process taking root in a remote past and in different regions of the planet. In this book the archaeologists responsible for some of these new discoveries flanked by ethologists interested in primate cognition and cultural transmission evolutionary psychologists modelling the emergence of metarepresentations as well as biologists philosophers neuro-scientists and an astronomer combine their research findings. Their results call into question our very conception of human nature and animal behaviour and they create epistemological bridges between disciplines that build the foundations for a novel vision of our lineage's cultural trajectory and the processes that have led to the emergence of human societies as we know them.

If politics is a serious matter and humour a funny one this volume investigates how and why the boundaries between the two are blurred: politics can be represented in a humorous manner and humour can have a serious intent. Political humour conveys criticism against the political status quo and/or recycles and reinforces dominant views on politics. The data analysed comes from European states with different sociopolitical histories and traditions and the methodologies adopted originate in different fields (discourse analysis folklore and cultural studies media studies sociolinguistics sociology theatre semiotics). The first part of the volume is dedicated to politicians’ humour as a means of public positioning deliberation and eventually attack against political adversaries while the second one involves political satire as realised in different genres: animation impersonation and cartoons. Last but not least the third part shows how political humour can be manipulated in public debates or become an integral part of postmodern art.

In most subtitling countries those lines at the bottom of the screen are the most read medium of all for which reason they deserve all the academic attention they can get. This monograph represents a large-scale attempt to provide such attention by exploring the norms of subtitling for television. It does so by empirically investigating a large corpus of television subtitles from Scandinavia one of the bastions of subtitling along with other European data.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The aim of the book is twofold: first to provide an advanced and comprehensive model for investigating translation problems in the form of Extralinguistic Cultural References (ECRs). Second to empirically explore current European television subtitling norms and to look into future developments in this area.<br/>This book will be of interest to anyone interested in gaining access to state-of-the-art tools for translation analysis or in learning more about the norms of subtitling based on empirically reliable and current material.

Summarizing her pioneering work on the semiotic analysis of gestures in conversational settings Geneviève Calbris offers a comprehensive account of her unique perspective on the relationship between gesture speech and thought. She highlights the various functions of gesture and especially shows how various gestural signs can be created in the same gesture by analogical links between physical and semantic elements. Originating in our world experience via mimetic and metonymic processes these analogical links are activated by contexts of use and thus lead to a diverse range of semantic constructions rather as from the components of a Meccano kit many different objects can be assembled. By (re)presenting perceptual schemata that mediate between the concrete and the abstract gesture may frequently anticipate verbal formulation. Arguing for gesture as a symbolic system in its own right that interfaces with thought and speech production Calbris’ book brings a challenging new perspective to gesture studies and will be seminal for generations of gesture researchers.

It has become commonplace to employ dialogue-based approaches in producing and communicating knowledge in diverse fields. Here “dialogue” has become a buzzword that promises democratic participatory processes of mutual learning and knowledge co-production. But what does “dialogue” actually entail in the fields in which it is practised and how can we analyse those practices in ways that take account of their complexities?

The Promise of Dialogue presents a novel theoretical framework for analysing the dialogic turn in the production and communication of knowledge that builds bridges across three research traditions - dialogic communication theory action research and science and technology studies.

It also provides an empirically rich account of the dialogic turn through case studies of how dialogue is enacted in the fields of planned communication public engagement with science and collaborative research. A critical reflexive approach is taken that interrogates the complexities tensions and dilemmas inherent in the enactment of “dialogue” and is oriented towards further developing dialogic practices from a position normatively supportive of the dialogic turn.

This monograph sets out to derive the effects of standard constraints on displacement like the Minimal Link Condition (MLC) and the Condition on Extraction Domain (CED) from more basic principles in a minimalist approach. Assuming that movement via phase edges is possible only in the presence of edge features on phase heads simple restrictions can be introduced on when such edge features can be inserted derivationally. The resulting system is shown to correctly predict MLC/CED effects (including certain exceptions like intervention without c-command and melting). In addition it derives operator-island effects a restriction on extraction from verb-second clauses and island repair by ellipsis. The approach presupposes that syntactic operations apply in a fixed order: Timing emerges as crucial. Thus the book provides new arguments for a strictly derivational organization of syntax. Accordingly it should be of interest not only to all syntacticians working on islands but more generally to all scholars interested in the overall organization of grammar.

This edited volume constitutes the first serious sustained examination of the study of children’s books for children aged from 0 to 3 with contributions by scholars working in different domains and attempting to assess the recognition of the role and influence of children’s literature on the cognitive linguistic psychological and aesthetic development of young children. This collection achieves a balance between theoretical empirical historical and cross-cultural approaches by examining the broad range of children’s books for children under three years of age ranging from early-concept books through wimmelbooks and ABC books for small children to picture books that support the young child’s acquisition of behavioral norms. Most importantly the chapters proffer new insights into the strong relationship between children’s books for young children and emergent literacy drawing on current research in children’s literature research visual literacy cognitive psychology language acquisition picture theory and pedagogy.

Over the past three decades translation has evolved from a profession practiced largely by individuals to a cottage industry model and finally to a formally recognized industrial sector that is project-based heavily outsourced and that encompasses a wide range of services in addition to translation. As projects have grown in size scope and complexity and as project teams have become increasingly distributed across geographies time zones languages and cultures formalized project management has emerged as both a business requirement and a critical success factor for language service providers. In recognition of these developments this volume examines the application of project management concepts tools and techniques to translation and localization projects. The contributors are seasoned practitioners and scholars who offer insights into the central role of project management in the language industry today and discuss best-practice approaches to the adaptation of generic project management knowledge skills tools and techniques for translation and localization projects.

This volume contributes to the emerging research on the social formation of translators and interpreters as specific occupational groups. Despite the rising academic interest in sociological perspectives in Translation Studies relatively little research has so far been devoted to translators’ social background status struggles and sense of self. The articles assembled here zoom in on the “groups of individuals” who perform the complex translating and/or interpreting tasks thereby creating their own space of cultural production. Cutting across varied translatorial and geographical arenas they reflect a view of the interrelatedness between the macro-level question of professional status and micro-level aspects of practitioners’ identity. Addressing central theoretical issues relating to translators’ habitus and role perception as well as methodological challenges of using qualitative and quantitative measures this endeavor also contributes to the critical discourse on translators’ agency and ethics and to questions of reformulating their social role.The contributions to this volume were originally published in Translation and Interpreting Studies 4:2 (2009) and 5:1 (2010).

The volume presents language as fully integrated with human existence. On this view language is not essentially ‘symbolic’ not represented inside minds or brains and most certainly not determined by micro-social rules and norms. Rather language is part of our ecology. It emerges when bodies co-ordinate vocal and visible gesture to integrate events with different histories. Enacting feeling expression and wordings language permeates the collective individual and affective life of living beings. It is a profoundly distributed multi-centric activity that binds people together as they go about their lives. Distributed Language pursues this perspective both theoretically and in relation to empirical work. Empirically it reports studies on the anticipatory dynamics of reading its socio-cognitive consequences Shakespearean theatre what images evoke (in brain and word) and solving insight problems. Theoretically the volume challenges linguistic autonomy from overlapping theoretical positions. First it is argued that language exploits a species specific form of semiotic cognition. Second it is suggested that the central function of language lies in realizing values that derive from our ecosystemic existence. Third this is ascribed to how cultural and biological symbols co-regulate the dynamics that shape human activity. Fourth it is argued that language far from being organism-centred gives us an extended ecology in which our co-ordination is saturated by values and norms that are derived from our sociocultural environment. The contributions to this volume expand on those originally published in Pragmatics & Cognition 17:3 (2009).

Cambodian is in many respects a typical Southeast Asian language whose syntax at least on first acquaintance seems to approximate that of any SVO pidgin. On closer acquaintance however because of the richness of its idioms the language seems to be a forbiddingly alien form of “Desesperanto” – a language of which one can read a page and understand every word individually and have no inkling of what the page was all about. Like many of the languages of its genetic (Austroasiatic) family its basic root vocabulary seems to consist largely of sesquisyllabic or iambic words although there are an enormous number of unassimilated borrowings from Indic languages (which seem to play the same role in Cambodian that Latinate borrowings do in English). Morphologically Cambodian has a fairly elaborate system of derivational affixes and it is possible that the genesis of many of the most common of these affixes is related to (and undoes) the constant reduction of unstressed initial syllables in sesquisyllabic words. Again like many of the languages of Southeast Asia Cambodian exhibits in its lexicon a penchant for symmetrical decorative compounding a phenomenon which is so marginally attested in Western languages that the phenomenon has received little attention in the typological literature.