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Information on Forthcoming Books can be found on the benjamins.com website.
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Corpus-based Research in Applied Linguistics : Studies in Honor of Doug Biber
Jan 2015
Book
This volume comprises nine contributions that were written by up-and-coming corpus-based researchers with varied areas of expertise who were all disciples of Douglas Biber sometime in the past two decades. These papers cover a wide variety of linguistic analyses and describe the principles of the Flagstaff school: a careful procedure for language corpora collection with special consideration for corpus size representativeness sampling and systematic analysis; the use of computer programming abilities that allow the posing of corpus-based research questions never asked before; and a strong emphasis on the combination of quantitative methods based on sound and innovative statistical procedures complemented with comprehensive qualitative functional analyses of the language. This volume has been edited in honor of Douglas Biber a pioneer of the American school of corpus-based research.
Causation, Permission, and Transfer : Argument realisation in GET, TAKE, PUT, GIVE and LET verbs
Jan 2015
Book
This book offers a comprehensive investigative study of the argument realisation of the concepts of causative purpose permit let/allow and transfer in a broad cross-linguistic typologically diverse mix of languages with GIVE GET TAKE PUT and LET verbs. This volume stands as the first systematic exploration of these verbs and concepts as they occur in complex events and clauses. This book brings together scholars and researchers from a variety of functionally inspired theoretical backgrounds that have worked on these verbs within one language or from a cross-linguistic perspective. The objective is to understand the linguistic behaviour of the verbs and their inter-relationships within a contemporary cognitive-functional linguistic perspective. The languages represented include Irish German Slavic (West Slavic: Polish Czech Slovak and Sorbian and Western South Slavic: Slovenian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) Germanic Romance Gan Chinese Yichun dialect Māori Bohairic Coptic Shaowu Chinese Hebrew English Lithuanian Estonian the Australian dialects Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Italian and Persian. Topics discussed include argument structure and the encoding of arguments under causation permission and transferverbs their lexical semantics and event structure.
The Mighty Child : Time and power in children's literature
Jan 2015
Book
The Mighty Child offers an existentialist approach to the theorization and criticism of children’s literature nuancing the academic claim that children’s literature specifically defined as ‘didactic’ alienates childhood from adulthood and disempowers its implied child reader. This volume recentres the theoretical debate around the constructions of time and power which characterize conceptions of childhood and adulthood in children’s literature. The ‘hidden’ didactic adult of children’s literature this volume argues is not solely the dictatorial planner of the child’s future but also a disempowered entity yearning for unpredictability in the semi-educational semi-aesthetic endeavor of the children’s book. Leaning on current work in the field of children’s literature theory on French phenomenological existentialism and on the philosophy and sociology of childhood The Mighty Child is addressed to contemporary theorists and critics of children’s literature.
The Semantics of Chinese Music : Analysing selected Chinese musical concepts
Jan 2015
Book
Music is a widely enjoyed human experience. It is therefore natural that we have wanted to describe document analyse and somehow grasp it in language. This book surveys a representative selection of musical concepts in Chinese language i.e. words that describe or refer to aspects of Chinese music. Important as these musical concepts are in the language they have been in wide circulation since ancient times without being subjected to any serious semantic analysis. The current study is the first known attempt at analysing these Chinese musical concepts linguistically adopting the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to formulate semantically and cognitively rigorous explications. Readers will be able to better understand not only these musical concepts but also significant aspects of the Chinese culture which many of these musical concepts represent. This volume contributes to the fields of cognitive linguistics semantics music musicology and Chinese studies offering readers a fresh account of Chinese ways of thinking not least Chinese ways of viewing or appreciating music. Ultimately this study represents trailblazing research on the relationship between language culture and cognition. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>
Impersonals and other Agent Defocusing Constructions in French
Jan 2015
Book
This book investigates French impersonals as a functional category. Any structure whose agent is defocused and whose predicate describes a situation stable enough to be generally available should be considered impersonal. In addition to il impersonals the category also includes demonstrative (ce/ça) middle (se) and indefinite (on) structures. These different forms belong to the same functional category because they systematically code general and predictable events that cannot be imputed to a specific cause. Because generality and predictability are gradual notions impersonals can only be identified within the context of specific constructional islands which therefore constitute the organizing principle of the French impersonal category.
Conducted in Cognitive Grammar the analysis follows the functional tradition in expanding the scope of French impersonals beyond il constructions but also proposes a way of precisely delineating the category. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in impersonal constructions and French linguistics.
Conducted in Cognitive Grammar the analysis follows the functional tradition in expanding the scope of French impersonals beyond il constructions but also proposes a way of precisely delineating the category. This book will be of interest to anyone interested in impersonal constructions and French linguistics.
Subjects in Constructions – Canonical and Non-Canonical
Jan 2015
Book
This volume analyzes constructions with non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically drawing on insights from cognitive and discourse-functional linguistics. Prototypical subjects have often been characterized in terms of their semantic syntactic and discourse features such as animacy agentivity topicality referentiality definiteness and autonomy of existence of the subject referent. A non-canonical subject is one that lacks some of these features. This may be reflected in its meaning grammatical coding and/or discourse function. In discussing non-canonical subjects in individual languages and cross-linguistically the chapters in the volume address the following more general topics: What kinds of grammatical semantic and discourse criteria can be used to distinguish subjects from non-subjects? To what extent are subject criteria construction-specific? What kinds of constructions have non-canonical subjects? What are the semantic and discourse functions of constructions with non-canonical subjects? Are subjects which are grammatically non-canonical also atypical in terms of their discourse features?
The Semantics of German Verb Prefixes
Jan 2015
Book
The Semantics of German Verb Prefixes is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken in this area of German grammar. Using an extensive collection of naturally occurring data the author proposes an image-schematic interpretation for each of the productive prefixes be- ver- er- ent- zer- um- über- unter- and durch-. These abstract semantic patterns underlie a remarkable range of particular meanings and they consistently account for subtle contrasts between prefixed verbs and alternative constructions such as simple verbs particle verbs and verbs with other prefixes. Furthermore the author develops a schematic meaning for the prefixed verb construction itself. This grammatical meaning reflects the interpreter’s perspective and attentional focus as the objective event is imagined to unfold. Underlying all of these proposals is a novel conception of meaning as a dynamic and flexible process with a constantly active role for the interpreter. This volume will be of great value to cognitive linguists as well as scholars and students of German who want to gain insights into a central and puzzling part of the morphosyntax and semantics of the German language.
Semantics : From meaning to text. Volume 3
Jan 2015
Book
This book presents an innovative and novel approach to linguistic semantics starting from the idea that language can be described as a mechanism for the expression of linguistic Meanings as particular surface forms or Texts. Semantics is specifically that system of rules that ensures a transition from a Semantic Representation of the Meaning of a family of synonymous sentences to the Deep-Syntactic Representation of a particular sentence. Framed in the terms of Meaning-Text linguistics the present volume closes the publication of the three volume series. It discusses in detail several linguistic notions crucial to the development of Meaning-Text models of natural languages: semantic and syntactic actants government pattern lexical functions linguistic connotations phrasemes the meaning of grammatical cases and linguistic dependencies. The notions under analysis are illustrated from a variety of languages. Reflecting the author’s life-long dedication to the study of the semantics and syntax of natural language this book is a paradigm-shifting contribution to the language sciences whose originality and daring will make it essential reading for linguists anthropologists semioticians and computational linguists.