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Research into complexity accuracy and fluency (CAF) as basic dimensions of second language performance proficiency and development has received increased attention in SLA. However the larger picture in this field of research is often obscured by the breadth of scope multiple objectives and lack of clarity as to how complexity accuracy and fluency should be defined operationalized and measured. The present volume showcases current research on CAF by bringing together eleven contributions from renowned international researchers in the field. These contributions not only add to the body of empirical knowledge about L2 use and L2 development by bringing new research findings to light but they also address fundamental theoretical and methodological issues by responding to questions about the nature manifestation development and assessment of CAF as multifaceted constructs. Collectively the chapters in this book illustrate the converging and sometimes diverging approaches that different disciplines bring to CAF research.

Quantitative methods in linguistics which the protean American structuralist linguist Morris Swadesh introduced in the 1950s have become increasingly popular and have opened the world of languages to interdisciplinary approaches. The papers collected here are the work not only of descriptive and historical linguists but also statisticians physicists and computer scientists. They demonstrate the application of quantitative methods to the elucidation of linguistic prehistory on an unprecedented world-wide scale providing cutting-edge insights into issues of the linguistic correlates of subsistence strategies rates of birth and extinction of languages lexical borrowability the identification of language family homelands the assessment of genealogical relationships and the development of new phylogenetic methods appropriate for linguistic data.

Originally published in Diachronica 27:2 (2010).

Patterns of relative clause formation tend to vary according to the typological properties of a language. Highly polysynthetic languages tend to have fully nominalized relative clauses and no relative pronouns while other typologically diverse languages tend to have relative clauses which are similar to main or independent clauses. Languages of the Americas with their rich genetic diversity have all been under the influence of European languages whether Spanish English or Portuguese a situation that may be expected to have influenced their grammatical patterns. The present volume focuses on two tasks: The first deals with the discussion of functional principles related to relative clause formation: diachrony and paths of grammaticalization simplicity vs. complexity and formalization of rules to capture semantic-syntactic correlations. The second provides a typological overview of relative clauses in nine different languages going from north to south in the Americas.

This book describes and analyzes the passive voice system in Japanese within the framework of generative grammar. By unifying different types of passives conventionally distinguished within the literature the book advances a simple minimalist account where various passive characteristics emerge from the lexical properties of a single passive morpheme interacting with independently-supported syntactic principles and general properties of Japanese. The book both reevaluates numerous properties previously discussed within the literature and introduces interesting new data collected through experiments. This novel analysis also benefits from considering the important issue of interspeaker variability in terms of grammaticality judgments and context requirements and its implications for individual grammar. The book will be of interest not only to students and scholars working on passive constructions but more generally to scholars working on generative grammar experimental syntax language acquisition and sentence processing.

This comprehensive state-of-the-art bibliography documents the most recent research activity in the vibrant field of language gender and sexuality. It provides experts in the field and students in tertiary education with access to language-centred resources on gender and sexuality and is therefore an ideal research companion. The main part of the bibliography lists 3454 relevant publications (monographs edited volumes journal articles and contributions to edited volumes) that have been published within the period from 2000 to 2011. It unites work done in linguistics with that of neighbouring disciplines covering studies dealing with a broad range of languages and cultures around the globe. Alphabetical listing and a keyword index facilitate finding relevant work by author and subject matter. The e-book version additionally enables users to search the entire document for specific terms. Sections on earlier bibliographies and general reference works on language gender and sexuality complete the compilation.

In the early twentieth century Ferdinand de Saussure envisioned "a science which studies the role of signs as part of social life". About a century later a science has emerged that is very much in the spirit of that envisioned by de Saussure. Researchers who are developing this science which has been labeled Experimental Semiotics conduct controlled studies in which human adults develop novel communication systems or impose novel structure on systems provided to them. This volume offers a primer to Experimental Semiotics and presents a set of studies conducted within this new discipline. The volume is an ideal text complement for an advanced graduate seminar and it will be of interest to anyone who wonders how humans assemble and develop new ways to communicate with one another.

Originally published in Interaction Studies 11:1 (2010).

The theoretical proposals brought forward in this book as well as the results from the reported experimental studies present genuine contributions to the biolinguistic program. The papers contribute to our understanding of the properties of the computations and the representations derived by the language faculty viewed as an organism of human biological. Towards a Biolinguistic Understanding of Grammar: Essays on Interfaces adds to the usual notion of interfaces which is generally understood as the connection between syntax and the semantic system between phonology and the sensorimotor system. It raises novel interface questions about how these connections are at all possible within the biolinguistic program. It anchors the formal properties of grammar at the interfaces between language and biology language and experience bringing about language acquisition and language variation and it also explores the interaction of grammar with the factors reducing complexity. This book aims to bring about further understanding of the interfaces of the grammar in a broader biolinguistic sense. Written in a language accessible to a wide audience this book will appeal to scholars and students of linguistics cognitive science biology and natural language processing.

Spaces of Polyphony covers a lot of ground. It echoes the voices of researchers and their informants from many different places and backgrounds. Among the variety of languages under study and methodological approaches there is also a common ground and narrative thread underpinning the polyphonic chorus of the contributors. From a shared starting point of discourse analysis and inspiration from Bakhtin the various authors span from East to West from Moscow to Texas from Romania and Czech Republic to Mexico. They look into all ages starting from early childhood and many walks of life ranging from casual chatting among relatives to parliamentary speeches and TV shows including formal education literary inner monologue and translation. Irony humour and self-awareness are recurrent themes. The array of voices and dialogism studied in this book is such that it even includes the silent (silenced) voices of people forced to express their heritage by weaving their discourse.

Public information messages are an important means of state-citizen communication in today’s societies. Using this genre citizens are directed to “never ever drink and drive” to “slow down” and to “learn to say no”. Yet this book presents the first in-depth analysis of public information messages from a linguistic perspective and indeed also from a cross-cultural perspective. Specifically the study adopting genre analysis contrasts a corpus of state-run national public information campaigns in Germany and Ireland. A taxonomy of moves is developed inductively and the interactional features of the genre are analysed and related to the context of use. The comprehensive discussion of theoretical and methodological issues the in-depth analysis and the extensive bibliography make this book of interest to researchers and students in (contrastive) discourse analysis (cross-cultural) pragmatics contrastive rhetoric advertising social psychology mass communication and media studies. Copy-writers will also profit from the insights gained particularly within the context of an increase in Europe-wide public information campaigns.

The 25 contributions of this volume represent a selection from the more than 120 papers originally presented at the International Conference on “Multilingual Individuals and Multilingual Societies” (MIMS) held in Hamburg (October 2010) and organized by the Collaborative Research Center “Multilingualism” after twelve years of successful research. It presents a panorama of contemporary research in multilingualism covering three fields of investigation: (1) the simultaneous and successive acquisition of more than one language including language attrition in multilingual settings (2) historical aspects of multilingualism and variance and (3) multilingual communication. The papers cover a vast variety of linguistic phenomena including morphology syntax segmental and prosodic phonology as well as discourse production and language use taking both individual and societal aspects of multilingualism into account. The languages addressed include numerous Romance Slavic and Germanic varieties as well as Welsh Hungarian Turkish and several South African autochthonous languages.