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"Although standardly recognized by linguists of many diverse theoretical persuasions finiteness continues to figure among [...] the most poorly understood concepts of linguistic theory”. This was eloquently stated by Ledgeway (2000 2007) and remains true even today. The present volume thus aims to shed some much needed light on this area of linguistic theorizing with eleven chapters approaching finiteness phenomena from the fields of syntax semantics language acquisition and Creole studies and providing data from a range of different languages. Traditionally approaches to finiteness within the Principles and Parameters framework have seen as their main aim to understand the relation between the morphological exponents of finiteness and the syntactic operations seemingly depending on these exponents. The papers in this volume mostly take their point of departure from this more traditional view on finiteness before elaborating on modifying and diverging from this tradition in novel and interesting ways.

Die Philosophie des Barockscotismus war einerseits durch die rückwärtsgewandte Anknüpfung an den mittelalterlichen Denker Johannes Duns Scotus andererseits durch die Anknüpfung an die Entwicklung in der zeitgenössischen Scholastik vor allem der Jesuitenscholastik geprägt. Welche Art von Metaphysik hat diese besondere philosophiehistorische Konstellation hervorgebracht? Um diese Frage zu beantworten analysiert die vorliegende Arbeit das Metaphysikwerk des wichtigsten Repräsentanten des frühneuzeitlichen Scotismus Bartholomaeus Mastrius (1602-1673); sie erschließt außerdem eine Vielzahl von kaum bis gar nicht erforschten Metaphysikwerken aus der Franziskanerscholastik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Das eigenartige erstaunliche Vielfalt einschließende Profil einer in Vergessenheit geratenen philosophischen Tradition wird deutlich. Durch den Fokus auf ein philosophiehistorisches Phänomen außerhalb des Mainstreams leistet die Arbeit einen Beitrag zu einer differenzierteren Sichtweise der intellektuellen Kultur der europäischen Frühmoderne.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Baroque-age Scotist philosophy was on the one hand characterised by recourse to the Medieval thinker John Duns Scotus and on the other hand by an adaptation to trends in contemporary scholasticism first of all that of the Jesuits. What kind of metaphysics did this particular constellation within the history of philosophy produce? In order to answer this question the present book analyses the work on metaphysics by the most important representative of early modern Scotism Bartolomeo Mastri (1602-1673). In addition the book investigates a multitude of scarcely or never studied works on metaphysics from the Franciscan scholastic tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries. The peculiar profile of a forgotten philosophical tradition with its astonishing plurality becomes apparent. By focusing on a phenomenon from the history of philosophy outside the mainstream this work contributes to a more differentiated view on the intellectual culture in early modern Europe.

The volume addresses developing knowledge and use of Hebrew from the dual perspective of typologically specific factors and of shared cross-linguistic trends aimed at providing an overview of acquisition in a single language from infancy to adolescence while also shedding light on key issues in the field as a whole. Essentially non-partisan in approach the collection includes distinct approaches to language and language acquisition (formal-universalist pragmatic-usage based cognitive-constructivist) and deals with a range of topics not often addressed within a single volume (phonological perception and production inflectional and derivational morphology simple-clause structure and complex syntax early and later literacy writing systems) with data deriving from varied research methodologies (interactive conversations and extended discourse adult input and child output longitudinal and cross-sectional corpora structured elicitations). Each chapter provides background information on Hebrew-specific facets of the topic of concern but typically avoids ethno-centricity by relating to more general issues in the domain. The book should thus prove interesting and instructive for linguists psychologists and educators and for members of the child language research community both within and beyond the confines of Hebrew-language expertise.

This book represents the first in-depth comparative investigation of linguistic purism in modern French. It investigates the relative prevalence of purist ideology in France and Quebec. Both experience influence from English and have similar language legislation but they differ in their social political and economic history. Three different levels of society are examined (official group and individual) allowing a comparison of the ‘voice from above’ and the ‘voice from below’. This is a key element in recent discussions of language planning but is rarely provided in studies of French. The study is also the first to apply to empirical data Thomas’s widely cited theoretical framework for describing linguistic purism (1991) and has evaluated and refined this enhancing the theoretical underpinnings of the field. The book will be of interest not only to French scholars and sociolinguists but also to scholars of language planning language policy and language ideologies in all languages.

Bringing together contributions from some of the leading experts in the field of Spanish as a Heritage Language this volume aims to provide an in-depth understanding of current and emerging trends in research and praxis. To this end the volume is divided into three thematic units. The first unit surveys the study of Spanish heritage speaker bilingualism from a formal/theoretical linguistic point of view. The second unit focuses on issues shaping the current state of affairs in heritage language education. Finally the third unit maps out future lines of development within heritage language instruction. The wide topical scope within this single volume will undoubtedly provide a valuable resource for researchers students and professionals working in different areas of Spanish as a heritage language.

Discourse Reflexivity in Linear Unit Grammar: The case of IMDb message boards represents a significant landmark. Not only is it the first in-depth corpus-based study to be based on Linear Unit Grammar it is also the first study to present a unified model of both Linear Unit Grammar and Linear Unit Discourse Analysis. To illustrate this model the book focuses on the role of discourse reflexivity in the linear structure of online message board discourse from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) webpage. It is shown that discourse reflexivity plays a central role in the linear structure and antagonism characteristic of this type of discourse. This book will particularly appeal to those who have an interest in carrying forward the innovations in the description of grammar lexis and discourse proposed by John Sinclair in his lifetime as well as to those with a specific interest in discourse reflexivity and computer-mediated communication.

Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments is not just about what takes place in literary classrooms. Settings do have a strong influence on student learning both directly and indirectly. These spaces may include the home the workplace science centers libraries that is contexts that entail diverse social physical psychological and pedagogical variables that facilitate learning for example by grouping desks in specific ways utilizing audio visual and digital technologies. Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments puts together a series of empirical research studies on the different locations of teaching and learning. These studies represent literary learning environment throughout the world including Brazil the USA China Canada Japan and several European countries such as the Netherlands Ukraine the UK and Malta. The studies reported describe quantitative and/or qualitative research and cover pre-primary primary high school college university and lifelong learning environments. They refresh the enigmatic ambience that often surrounds the teaching and learning that goes on in literary studies and offer transparent useful and replicable research and practice. Students and teachers alike are encouraged to take them and own them.

This volume contributes to filling a gap in corpus-based research by investigating the ways in which linguistic features vary across genres/registers cross-linguistically. It brings together insightful chapters by leading scholars in the field fruitfully exploiting genre- or register-controlled multilingual parallel and comparable corpora to: (i) problematize cross-register variation in a multilingual perspective (ii) address methodological and theoretical issues raised by register-oriented contrastive and translation studies (iii) investigate the cross-linguistic and cross-genre variation of specific linguistic features such as lexical bundles sentence-initial adverbials and tag questions (iv) identify cross-cultural and cross-linguistic dissimilarities in expressing a functional category viz. Appraisal in the field of opinion mining. The book offers new cutting-edge research that should be of interest to specialists in contrastive linguistics translation studies and cross-cultural studies. Originally published as a special issue of Languages in Contrast 14:1 (2014).

In the fast-growing fields of happiness studies and pain research which have attracted scholars from diverse disciplines including psychology philosophy medicine and economics this volume provides a much-needed cross-linguistic perspective. It centres on the question of how much ways of talking and thinking about happiness and pain vary across cultures and seeks to answer this question by empirically examining the core vocabulary pertaining to “happiness” and “pain” in many languages and in different religious and cultural traditions. The authors not only probe the precise meanings of the expressions in question but also provide extensive cultural contextualization showing how these meanings are truly cultural. Methodologically while in full agreement with the view of many social scientists and economists that self-reports are the bedrock of happiness research the volume presents a body of evidence highlighting the problem of translation and showing how local concepts of “happiness” and “pain” can be understood without an Anglo bias. The languages examined include (Mandarin) Chinese Danish English French German Japanese Koromu (a Papua New Guinean language) and Latin American Spanish.

Originally published in International Journal of Language and Culture Vol. 1:2 (2014).

This extensive well-researched and clearly formatted lexicon of a wide variety of linguistic terms is a long overdue. It is an extremely welcome addition to the bookshelves of sign language teachers interpreters linguists learners and other sign language users and of course of the Deaf themselves.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>Unique to this lexicon is not only the inclusion of many terms that are used especially for sign languages but also the fact that for the terms there are not only examples from spoken languages but there are also glossed and translated examples from several different sign languages.<br/>There are many interesting features to this lexicon. There is an immediate temptation to find examples of terms in the sign language one is studying as well as determining how many of the most used concepts would be signed in the local language. As there are to date still almost no reference grammars of sign languages the definitions of many of these concepts would be extremely helpful for those linguists planning to make a reference grammar of their sign language.