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Head Movement in Syntax argues that verb movement is a narrow syntactic phenomenon that can affect locality constraints. The altered locality domains are detectable from the way certain phrasal elements such as a phrase containing a Wh are forced to undergo movement. The basic idea explored in the book dates back to Chomsky (1986) where the movement of a verb is proposed to be able to affect and alter a barrier. This idea is translated into contemporary minimalist apparatus to capture locality conditions with Wh movement in Malayalam a Dravidian language spoken in Southern India providing the necessary data. The book also points out that analysing Wh movement in Malayalam as a sub-case of Focus movement is untenable and offers a fresh perspective on Wh-in-situ versus Wh-movement. In addition the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the pronominal system in Malayalam a language that violates the canonical binding conditions.

Significant socio-political changes in China have had great impact on Chinese discourse. Changes to the discourse have become an increasing focus of scholarship. This book examines contemporary Chinese discourse and social practice in China with a focus on the role that language plays in the on-going transformation of Chinese society. With a view to producing new insights into the interdependence between discourse and social practice this volume explores how discourse has been changing in a context-dependent way; how social practice can lead to shifts in the use of discourse; and how identities and attitudes are constructed through language use. Largely based on empirical studies this book indicates that Chinese discourse has not only been an integral part of social change but also Chinese discourse itself is changing reflecting ideologies values attitudes identities and social practice. The book is a great resource for scholars in diverse disciplinary studies including linguistics communication education media and political studies concerning contemporary China.

Persuasive Games in Political and Professional Dialogue is about the rediscovery of humans as proficient users of language in the sense that – while involved in a dialogue – they listen observe discuss reason evaluate and conclude; in other words speakers are no longer interested in defeating the other and proving him/her wrong but in learning from the other.

The volume comprises 12 articles distributed in two sections – Persuasion in Political Dialogue and Persuasive Strategies in Professional Dialogue – which approach the topic of persuasion as it unfolds from political and professional communication. The articles in the proposed volume depict relevant theoretical and practical issues related to persuasion in two communication sites: politics and workplace and they are results of consistent research conducted by the contributors in various settings. The contributions provide critical valuable insights into the dynamic process of creating and maintaining relationships at an individual and at a professional level.

Do the notions of “World Lingua Franca” and “World Literature” now need to be firmly relegated to an imperialist-cum-colonialist past? Or can they be rehabilitated in a practical and equitable way that fully endorses a politics of recognition? For scholars in the field of languages and literatures this is the central dilemma to be faced in a world that is increasingly globalized. In this book the possible banes and benefits of globalization are illuminated from many different viewpoints by scholars based in Africa Asia Europe North America and Oceania. Among their more particular topics of discussion are: language spread language hegemony and language conservation; literary canons literature and identity and literary anthologies; and the bearing of the new communication technologies on languages and literatures alike. Throughout the book however the most frequently explored opposition is between languages or literatures perceived as “major” and others perceived as “minor” two terms which are sometimes qualitative in connotation sometimes quantitative and sometimes both at once depending on who is using them and with reference to what.

The human ability to understand and produce spoken words is fascinating in its complexity. People often vary in how they pronounce a word. They may need to recognize words spoken with an accent quite different from their own. And in order to understand a word of a second or foreign language they may need to identify words on the basis of sounds that are difficult to differentiate. This book brings together psycholinguistic research that addresses these topics and highlights how the study of spoken word processing can shed light on fundamental dynamics of language processing. It demonstrates how spoken word processing is affected by the specific characteristics of individual languages and their writing systems and how it grows and changes across the lifespan. The book offers new cutting-edge research on spoken word processing. It will benefit researchers and students interested in language processing as well as readers who wish to broaden their understanding of language in the mind. In particular this book underlines the value of conducting psycholinguistic research across languages and across the lifespan. Originally published in The Mental Lexicon Vol. 8:3 (2013).

The International Conference on Historical Linguistics is the main conference for specialists in language change and the 2013 conference in Oslo drew more than 300 participants with 182 papers presented in the general session. The 16 papers selected for inclusion in this volume from the general session of ICHL 2013 not only provide a clear picture of the state of the art in various subfields of historical linguistics but also present recent insights in diachronic phonology typology morphology and morphosyntax. The languages and families covered include English German Scandinavian French Occitan Portuguese Sardinian Spanish Ancient Greek Old Japanese and Austronesian. The volume will be useful to any linguist with an interest in diachronic matters as well as general linguistic theory.

Implicit learning is a fundamental feature of human cognition. Many essential skills including language comprehension and production intuitive decision making and social interaction are largely dependent on implicit (unconscious) knowledge. Given its relevance it is not surprising that the study of implicit learning plays a central role in the cognitive sciences. The present volume brings together eminent researchers from a variety of fields (e.g. cognitive psychology linguistics education cognitive neuroscience developmental psychology) in order to assess the progress made in the study of implicit and explicit learning to critically evaluate key concepts and methodologies and to determine future directions to take in this interdisciplinary enterprise. The eighteen chapters in this volume are written in an accessible and engaging fashion; together they provide the reader with a comprehensive snapshot of the exciting current work on the implicit and explicit learning of languages.

This innovative and provocative work introduces complexity theory and its application to both the study of language and the study of material culture. The book begins with a wide-ranging theoretical background covering the areas of dialect geography the anthropological study of material culture and a general introduction to the study of complex adaptive systems. Following this general introduction the principles of complexity theory are demonstrated in data drawn from linguistics and material culture studies. Language and Material Culture further highlights the principles of complexity through a series of case studies using data from the Linguistic Atlas colonial American inventories and the Historic American Building Survey. LMC shows that language and material culture are intertwined as they interact within the same cultural complex system. The book is designed for students in courses that focus on language variation American English and material culture in addition to general courses on applications of complex systems.

This volume presents an analysis of Russian case from a sign-oriented perspective. The study was inspired by William Diver’s analysis of Latin case and follows the spirit of the Columbia School of linguistics. The fundamental premise that underlies this volume is that language is a communicative tool shaped by human behavior.In this study case is viewed as a semantic entity. Each case is assigned an invariant meaning within a larger semantic system which is validated through numerous examples from spoken language and literary texts to illustrate that the distribution of cases is semantically motivated and defined by communicative principles that can be associated with human behavior.

As sign language linguistics has become an important and prodigious field of research in the last few decades it comes as no surprise that the repertoire of methodological approaches to the study of the communication of the Deaf has also expanded considerably. While earlier work on sign languages was often focused on providing arguments for them being full-fledged linguistic systems current debates do no longer center on whether visual-spatial grammars are worth being researched but on how this type of research should be conducted. This book contains a selection of papers that could be thought of as a good representative sample of current trends in formal approaches to the study of sign language syntax. It illustrates how generative research on the communication of the Deaf may contribute to our understanding of the syntax of natural languages in general and indicates to what extent it is possible to integrate advances in the analysis of visual-spatial grammar with current spoken language research.

Originally published in Sign Language & Linguistics 16:2 (2013).