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Prototypical Argumentative Patterns reports about a research project started at the University of Amsterdam in 2012. In this project distinctive argumentative patterns have been identified in argumentative discourse in the political the legal and the medical domain. These patterns consist of constellations of argumentative moves in which in order to deal with a particular kind of difference of opinion in defence of a particular type of standpoint a particular argument scheme or combination of argument schemes is used in a particular kind of argumentation structure. The composition of these prototypical argumentative patterns can be explained by referring to the institutional characteristics of the communicative activity types in which they occur. By exploring the relationship between argumentative discourse and the institutional context Frans van Eemeren Bart Garssen Corina Andone Eveline Feteris and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans have provided a new and illuminating perspective on the context-dependency of argumentative discourse.

This book addresses term variation which has been a very important topic in terminology computational terminology and natural language processing for up to twenty years. This book presents the first complete inventory of term variants and the linguistic procedures that lead to their formation. It also takes into account issues raised by multilingual applications and presents ways to detect variants in five different languages: French English German Spanish and Russian.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The book provides insights into the following issues: What is a variant? What are the main linguistic mechanisms involved in the transformation of base terms into variants? How can variants be automatically detected in texts? Should variation be taken into account in natural language processing applications?<br/>This book is targeted at terminologists and linguists interested in term variation as well as researchers in natural language processing and computer science that must handle term variants in different kinds of applications.

Since its onset the Greek crisis has given rise to an abundance of relevant text and talk. This volume offers an insider’s view of the discursive manifestations of the crisis focusing on discourses in the Greek language and by Greek social actors. The contributions investigate the diverse ways in which the crisis has been communicated to the public by domestic policymakers or debated by elite non-elite and resistant participants. Crisis discourses are also examined in the light of the rise of neo-nationalism and the extreme Right in both Greece and Cyprus. All contributions seek to meaningfully combine critical discourse and corpus linguistics perspectives for a better understanding of the Greek crisis as a socio-economic episode and as a discourse construct. Discourse-driven quantification and corpus-driven quantification complement each other in the critical examination of textual data as diverse as official government communications party leader speeches newspaper articles public assembly resolutions song lyrics social media commentary and terrorist proclamations.

This posthumous work by Jacques Arends offers new insights into the emergence of the creole languages of Suriname including Sranantongo or Suriname Plantation Creole Ndyuka and Saramaccan and the sociohistorical context in which they developed. Drawing on a wealth of sources including little known historical texts the author points out the relevance of European settlements prior to colonization by the English in 1651 and concludes that the formation of the Surinamese creoles goes back further than generally assumed. He provides an all-encompassing sociolinguistic overview of the colony up to the mid-19th century and shows how ethnicity language attitude religion and location had an effect on which languages were spoken by whom. The author discusses creole data gleaned from the earliest sources and interprets the attested variation. The book is completed by annotated textual data both oral and written and representing different genres and stages of the Surinamese creoles. It will be of interest to linguists historians anthropologists literary scholars and anyone interested in Suriname.

Among emotions surprise has been extensively studied in psychology. In linguistics surprise like other emotions has mainly been studied through the syntactic patterns involving surprise lexemes. However little has been done so far to correlate the reaction of surprise investigated in psychological approaches and the effects of surprise on language. This cross-disciplinary volume aims to bridge the gap between emotion cognition and language by bringing together nine contributions on surprise from different backgrounds – psychology human-agent interaction linguistics. Using different methods at different levels of analysis all contributors concur in defining surprise as a cognitive operation and as a component of emotion rather than as a pure emotion. Surprise results from expectations not being met and is therefore related to epistemicity. Linguistically there does not exist an unequivocal marker of surprise. Surprise may be either described by surprise lexemes which are often associated with figurative language or it may be expressed by grammatical and syntactic constructions. Originally published as a special issue of Review of Cognitive Linguistics 13:2 (2015)

This book presents the latest research on the syntax of the “Insular Scandinavian” languages (Faroese and Icelandic) with contributions from thirteen experts and a significant introductory chapter by the four editors. The topics covered include some that have figured extensively in recent literature on Scandinavian syntax and its implications for syntactic theory: case agreement embedded clause word order stylistic fronting and the nature of “expletive” constructions. The volume is conceived around the topic of variation both within and between the two languages studied—as well as more generally—and stands out for the wealth of new empirical detail from both Faroese and Icelandic relating to each of the topics and theoretical issues discussed. Each chapter is written in a way to make it accessible to a wide audience within linguistics; the book will be essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in the syntax of the Germanic languages.

The proposed framework of concept linking combines insights of construction grammar with those of traditional functional descriptions to explain particularly challenging but often neglected areas of English grammar such as negation modality adverbials and non-finite constructions. To reach this goal the idea of a unified network of constructions is replaced by the triad of verb-mediated constructions attribution and scope-based perspectivizing each of them understood as a syntactically effective concept-linking mechanism in its own right but involved in interfaces with the other mechanisms.

In addition concept linking supplies a novel approach to early child language. It casts fresh light on widely accepted descriptions of early two-word utterances and verb islands in usage-based models of language acquisition and encourages a new view of children’s ‘mistakes’.

Intended readership: Constructionist and cognitive linguists; linguists and psychologists interested in language acquisition; teachers and students of English grammar and grammar in general.

Within Construction Grammar this volume moves away from a compartmentalized view of constructions with the aim of providing a more holistic description of grammar. Thus the book brings together analyses that look at constructional families within the “constructicon” of such languages as English Spanish German Polish Croatian and Hungarian. Part 1 focuses on how different analytical perspectives may be applied to comparable and/or connected constructions with a view to enhancing our understanding of their similarities differences and relations. Part 2 contributes to the state of the art in Construction Grammar in three ways: (i) by reconciling aspects of various constructionist analyses; (ii) by determining to what extent competing constructionist perspectives can offer more adequate approaches to specific analytical needs; and (iii) by challenging central assumptions within Construction Grammar. This book is expected to encourage further research into the anatomy of constructional families and their interrelations in all domains of constructional organization.

Language Contact in Africa and the African Diaspora in the Americas brings together the original research of nineteen leading scholars on language contact and pidgin/creole genesis. In recent decades increasing attention has been paid to the role of historical cultural and demographic factors in language contact situations. John Victor Singler’s body of work a model of what such a research paradigm should look like strikes a careful balance between sociohistorical and linguistic analysis. The case studies in this volume present investigations into the sociohistorical matrix of language contact and critical insights into the sociolinguistic consequences of language contact within Africa and the African Diaspora. Additionally they contribute to ongoing debates about pidgin/creole genesis and language contact by examining and comparing analyses and linguistic outcomes of particular sociohistorical and cultural contexts and considering less-studied factors such as speaker agency and identity in the emergence nativization and stabilization of contact varieties.

Language-contact phenomena in Mesoamerica and adjacent regions present an exciting field for research that has the potential to significantly contribute to our understanding of language contact and the role that it plays in language change. This volume presents and analyzes fresh empirical data from living and/or extinct Mesoamerican languages (from the Mayan Uto-Aztecan Totonac-Tepehuan and Otomanguean groups) neighboring non-Mesoamerican languages (Apachean Arawakan Andean languages) as well as Spanish. Language-contact effects in these diverse languages and language groups are typically analyzed by different subfields of linguistics that do not necessarily interact with one another. It is hoped that this volume which contains works from different scholarly traditions that represent a variety of approaches to the study of language contact will contribute to the lessening of this compartmentalization. The volume is relevant to researchers of language contact and contact-induced change and to anyone interested both in the historical development and present features of indigenous languages of the Americas and Latin American Spanish.