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This book is about one of the most fundamental action sequences found across human societies and socio-cultural contexts: polar questions and their responses. Question–answer sequences are among the most basic building blocks for sequences of action in interaction and are ubiquitous among the languages of the world. Among different types of questions polar questions are the most common occurring with greater frequency in all studied languages. This volume presents a collection of conversation analytic studies into responses to polar questions across ten different typologically diverse languages in a range of action environments and social contexts. The studies explore different ways in which speakers can respond to polar questions and the relationships between response design the action implemented by the response and the context in which it occurs. Taken together the studies assembled in the volume present a nuanced view of polar responses as a situated social action.

Differential marking as applied to direct objects has long been discussed as one of the characterizing traits of many Romance languages. There is however wide consensus that a detailed investigation into the nature of this phenomenon raises numerous challenges both at the empirical and theoretical level. Many questions are still being raised regarding which precise morpho-syntactic strategies count as differential object marking whether the data can be unified and subsequently how they are to be unified formally and theoretically. Additionally a thorough investigation of this phenomenon is still needed for many Romance languages and especially at the micro-variation level. This volume brings together original papers addressing various aspects of differential object marking in Romance languages focusing on micro-variation from both a descriptive and formal perspective touching on diachrony language contact synchrony and using a large set of methodologies.

This volume addresses the issue of pragmatic meaning and interpretation in communication contexts regarding health and does so by combining a series of diverse and complementary approaches which together highlight the relevance of successfully shared understanding to achieve more accessible inclusive and sustainable healthcare systems.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The volume is divided into five thematic sections: 1) Analytical approaches to health communication 2) Intercultural and mediated communication 3) Negotiation and meaning construction 4) Expertise and common ground 5) Uncertainty and evasive answers bringing together a group of top scholars on the much-debated issue of shared understanding both at the micro-level of dialogues between professionals and patients and the macro-level of institutional communication. <br/>In the variety of its contributions it represents an ambitious attempt at setting pragmatics at the core of healthcare communication research and practice by combining conceptual reflections on core topics in the field of pragmatics (among which are speech acts common ground ambiguity implicitness) with discourse and linguistic analysis of real-world examples exploring various problems in health communication.

This book is a phonological investigation of place assimilation phenomena in two major Arabic dialects: Cairene Egyptian and Baghdadi Iraqi. The studied phenomena involve interactions between consonants (various types of local assimilation) between vowels (monophthongization) or between consonants and vowels (emphasis spread and labialization). Throughout the content chapters the patterns for each of these processes are carefully described and validated by ample data and then analyzed representationally using a minimalist model of feature geometry. The analysis follows a holistic approach as the representations are consistently used for all the segmental phenomena within a dialect. The first exclusive treatment of place assimilation in colloquial Arabic this book will be of particular interest to scholars and advanced students of Arabic linguistics and dialectology and to phonologists in general and can be a point of reference for researchers examining the details of such phenomena in other dialects of Arabic as well.

As the legislative bodies of democratic nations parliaments play a fundamental role in society. Consequently the linguistic practices observed in parliamentary discourse are of importance to everyone. This volume brings together leading researchers in areas of corpus linguistics big data parliamentary discourse and historical linguistics in a truly interdisciplinary exploration at the vanguard of big data and corpus methods with the aim to investigate the intersection between linguistic and social change. Making use of both quantitative and qualitative methods the studies included in this volume range from a focus on explicitly linguistic phenomena to topics that contribute to our understanding of language and society more generally. It breaks new ground in its critical reflection on the conceptual and methodological challenges of using large corpora of parliamentary discourse to study both the specialised language of parliamentary speech and the societies that the parliaments in question represent and govern.

Text and Wine: Approaches from terminology and translation collects part of the results of the research project WeinApp: Multilingual System of Information and Winegrowing-Resources (MINECO Ref. FFI2016-79785-R) carried out by researchers from the universities of Cordoba and Cadiz (Spain) on wine production the wine sector and its language and terminology in English French German and Spanish. The editors principal investigators of the project begin the volume which contains works on phytopathology lexical domains and subdomains wine tourism agro-legal texts Indo-European languages labelling tasting metaphors wine and literature interpretation wine and medicine oenological websites and lexical and morphosyntactic formation around the language of wine.

The genesis of this book was the 9th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies held in Stellenbosch South Africa in September 2019 – the first time the event took place outside Europe. “Living Translation – People Processes Products” was the Congress theme. A common thread whether as a methodological or analytical basis as a descriptive framework or as a subject in itself was that of “flows” and the “flowing” nature of translation.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/> The contributions included here draw on a productive framework of networks and flows and foreground the inherent spatial and temporal diversity of Translation Studies. Translation as a social practice is the golden thread throughout the volume – not just “translation” in the conventional sense between languages and cultures but over artificial borders into new spaces between non-traditional agents and actors and through various genres and mediums. Chapters are clustered loosely based on the temporality of the topic under discussion. Work on and from the Global North constitutes the first section and the second complements this by bringing the Global South into the picture as well.<br/>This state-of-the-art research will stimulate robust scholarly discussions as we map our way forward as a living discipline.

Recent years have seen a growing interest in grammatical variation a core explanandum of grammatical theory. The present volume explores questions that are fundamental to this line of research: First the question of whether variation can always and completely be explained by intra- or extra-linguistic predictors or whether there is a certain amount of unpredictable – or ‘free’ – grammatical variation. Second the question of what implications the (in-)existence of free variation would hold for our theoretical models and the empirical study of grammar. The volume provides the first dedicated book-length treatment of this long-standing topic. Following an introductory chapter by the editors it contains ten case studies on potentially free variation in morphology and syntax drawn from Germanic Romance Uralic and Mayan.

This e-book is made available as Open Access under the CC BY 4.0 license.

This encyclopaedia of one of the major fields of language studies is a continuously updated source of state-of-the-art information for anyone interested in language use. The IPrA Handbook of Pragmatics provides easy access – for scholars with widely divergent backgrounds but with convergent interests in the use and functioning of language – to the different topics traditions and methods which together make up the field of pragmatics broadly conceived as the cognitive social and cultural study of language and communication i.e. the science of language use.

The Handbook of Pragmatics is a unique reference work for researchers which has been expanded and updated continuously with annual installments since 1995.

Also available as Online Resource: https://benjamins.com/online/hop

While interpreting long remained unaffected by the technological progress that transformed the translation industry recent years have witnessed a paradigm shift such that interpreters increasingly interact with technological tools that the delivery of interpreting services becomes increasingly dependent on technologies and finally that technologies start to emerge that might some day compete with interpreters. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>This volume brings together a series of contributions on interpreting technologies focusing on each of these aspects. Its goal is to inform and to empower interpreters as well as to spark new reflections on the future of technology in the interpreting industry. With this volume we want to encourage interpreters to participate in that reflection and to become partners of technology rather than its victims. The next generation of technologies will need a next generation of interpreters!

Professor Albert Costa (1972-2018) was one of the most influential scholars in the fields of psycholinguistics and bilingualism. This book provides a faithful look at the most relevant lines of research in which he worked during his academic career. Written by some of his close collaborators and friends the book presents a coherent summary of the most relevant psycholinguistic theories on language processing and bilingualism including critical reviews to current models of lexical access the representation of cognate words neurolinguistic models of bilingualism cross-linguistic effects in bimodal bilinguals (sign language) prediction processes and linguistic alignment in bilinguals the influence of foreign-language effects in social cognition and the effects of bilingualism in emotion and decision making processing. This volume is a tribute to Prof. Costa and his work and is born from a deep love and respect for his way of approaching the science of multilingualism from a psycholinguistic perspective.

What would it mean to invite disability into dialogue? Disability in Dialogue attunes us to the dialogues of and about disability. In the pages of this book we ask readers to consider the dialogic constitution of disability and to imagine its reformulation. We find the voices bodies social norms visceral experiences discourses and acts of resistance that materialize disability in all its dialogic and enfleshed complexity: tensions contradictions provocations frustrations and desires. This volume makes a unique contribution bringing together authors from disciplines as diverse as communication dialogue studies psychology sociology design rhetoric and activism. Because we take dialogue seriously this book is designed to be brave as we examine the ways of being in the world that dialogic practices engender and allow as well as beckon to continue. By way of a variety of frameworks such as discourse analysis dialogue studies narrative analysis and critical approaches to discourse the chapters of this book take us through a polylogue of and about disability demanding that we consider our own roles in bringing forth disabled ways of being and how we might instead choose ways that enable our common existence.

Religious and Identity Conversions to Islam: A Transatlantic Study of Spaniards and US latinos examines how two groups with historical cultural and linguistic commonalities redefine their new religious identity and make sense of their conversion to Islam not only as national groups but also as Hispanos. In short converts examine how history culture and language are utilized to make sense of their new religious identity and to legitimize their religious choices. History is then examined one that is rooted in pre-colonized Spain and not in colonizing Spain; culture is transformed by adopting new practices and omitting others; and language is strategized to redefine the new religious identity which is carried out through loanwords code-switching transferences and other linguistic strategies. In short this book represents the first transatlantic study of conversions to Islam among Spaniards and US latinos through the study of history culture and language.

This volume presents innovative research on the interface between pragmatics and translation. Taking a broad understanding of translation papers are presented in four different parts. Part I focuses on interpreting; Part II centers on the translation of fictional and non-fictional texts and spaces; Part III discusses audiovisual translation; and Part IV explores translation in a wider context that includes transforming senses and action into language. The issues that transpire as worth exploring in these areas are mediality and multi-modality interpersonal pragmatics close and approximate renditions interpretese and translationese participation structures and the negotiation of discourses and power.

The present volume offers a fresh perspective on political top-down crisis communication across several countries during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes how leaders address the growing awareness of the dangerous impact of social restrictions along with the controversies surrounding the first vaccination campaigns. Not limited to the Western world it also offers insights from six East European countries Uganda India and Palestine. Topics discussed range from inconsistent communication patterns to populist xenophobic accents propagandistic campaigns on vaccines the impact of authoritarian systems on crisis communication the contrast between scientific and African folk medicine and the use of war metaphors.<br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>By adopting a comparative perspective this volume contributes to the growing body of literature on crisis communication during the pandemic while highlighting important issues and perspectives that have yet to be extensively explored. Moreover it aims to bridge the gap between linguistic and communication research on leadership communication during times of crisis stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue.

This book represents a detailed discussion and corpus analysis of Theme in English and German originals and translations. The empirical results are based on thousands of clauses from four different registers cover a variety of linguistic aspects including multiple Themes marked Themes participant roles agency and identifiability and are tested statistically using regression analyses. The book sheds light on one of the most elusive concepts of the systemic functional linguistics framework Theme by comparing it with different approaches related concepts and realizations in different languages and by examining empirically different Theme models contrastive differences and translation effects. Given that Theme in English and German is realized formally by being the first clause constituent and is thus effectively a syntactic phenomenon this monograph is not only relevant for functional linguists but any interested in English and German word order differences and their effects on translations.

The study departs from the observation that in expressing ideas some languages encode more details than others. It investigates whether languages encode events and/or objects at a coarse-grained (e.g. put glass) as opposed to a fine-grained (e.g. lay wine glass) level systematically. The level of detail is termed granularity which is viewed as a cline from fine-grained (semantic specificity) to coarse-grained meaning (semantic generality). Four languages are investigated: German English Greek and Turkish. The study draws on elicited data from a naming task. The verbalization of events is based on event and object descriptions in selected semantic domains. The results reveal significant granularity effects between languages and language types (satellite-framed vs. verb-framed). The study is relevant for scholars interested in linguistic typology lexical and semantic typology contrastive linguistics event representation psycholinguistics and cognitive semantics.

This volume brings together twelve empirical studies on ditransitive constructions in Germanic languages and their varieties past and present. Specifically the volume includes contributions on a wide variety of Germanic languages including English Dutch and German but also Danish Swedish and Norwegian as well as lesser-studied ones such as Faroese. While the first part of the volume focuses on diachronic aspects the second part showcases a variety of synchronic aspects relating to ditransitive patterns. Methodologically the volume covers both experimental and corpus-based studies. Questions addressed by the papers in the volume are among others issues like the cross-linguistic pervasiveness and cognitive reality of factors involved in the choice between different ditransitive constructions or differences and similarities in the diachronic development of ditransitives. The volume’s broad scope and comparative perspective offers comprehensive insights into well-known phenomena and furthers our understanding of variation across languages of the same family.

This e-book is made available as Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

Children’s Cultures after Childhood introduces theoretical concepts from new materialist and posthumanist childhood studies into research on children’s literature film and media texts with attention to the entanglements of which they are part. Thirteen chapters by international contributors from diverse disciplinary fields (literary studies cultural studies media studies education and childhood studies) offer a cross-section of empirical and theoretical approaches sharing an inspiration in the notion of “after childhoods” proposed by Peter Kraftl a children’s geographer to conceptualize theoretical and methodological orientations in research on children’s lives and on past present and future childhoods. This interdisciplinary collection will be of interest to scholars working in children’s literature and culture studies education and childhood studies.

This e-book is made available as Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

This is a book in the classical Quaestiones genre like the Tusculanae Quaestiones (“Tusculan questions”) of Cicero (around 45 BCE) and the Quæstiones disputatæ de Veritate (“disputed questions on truth”) of St. Thomas Aquinas (1256-1259). It seeks to ask seven series of questions about key theoretical approaches to the study of translation: three on equivalence theories (semantic equivalence dynamic equivalence and deverbalization) three on Descriptive Translation Studies (norms Toury’s laws and the translator’s narratoriality) and one on the translator’s visibility. Each “Question” (chapter) charts a circuitous course through past answers to new questions and new answers drawing especially on the theoretical traditions of hermeneutics phenomenology and 4EA cognitive science. The book will guide both veteran and novice scholars of translation deep into the complexities besetting the seven keywords.

Extraordinary advances in machine translation over the last three quarters of a century have profoundly affected many aspects of the translation profession. The widespread integration of adaptive “artificially intelligent” technologies has radically changed the way many translators think and work. In turn groundbreaking empirical research has yielded new perspectives on the cognitive basis of the human translation process. Translation is in the throes of radical transition on both professional and academic levels. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>The game-changing introduction of neural machine translation engines almost a decade ago accelerated these transitions. This volume takes stock of the depth and breadth of resulting developments highlighting the emerging rivalry of human and machine intelligence. The gathering and analysis of big data is a common thread that has given access to new insights in widely divergent areas from literary translation to movie subtitling to consecutive interpreting to development of flexible and powerful new cognitive models of translation.

In this volume the emergence of English in Saipan is examined in the complex context of its colonial past. The focus lies on the influence of the American era on the linguistic outcomes in Saipan. Sociolinguistic interviews with indigenous Chamorros and Saipan Carolinians were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods. A general overview of the English spoken in Saipan and detailed analyses of selected morphosyntactic features are presented. The English spoken by the local people presents an interesting transitional phase of English becoming a first language with unique local ‘island’ features. Results shed light on linguistic constraints globally and on social constraints in Saipan that motivate language variation and change locally. This volume contributes to the literature of language variation and change lesser-known varieties of English and the description and categorization of emerging English varieties within the canon of World Englishes.

This volume reflects the centrality of the existential construction in current linguistic research and offers studies that both consolidate and challenge established research agendas. It addresses (i) a variety of constructions related to ‘prototypical’ existentials (including the have-possessive construction) and investigates (ii) the relationships between locative existential and information structure (iii) the quantification of the pivot and (iv) the issue of negative existentials. It brings together different and complementary approaches (functional cognitive pragmatic typological comparative diachronic philosophical) based on a wide variety of data sources. The contributions illustrate how the so-called existential construction can take a variety of forms – more or less grammaticalized – and functions – ranging from the expression of literal existence to that of localization and discursive focus – in a wide range of languages. The book will be valuable for linguists researchers or students interested in the cross-linguistic manifestations of existential constructions at the interface between syntax semantics and information structure.

English Complex Words is a lively essential companion for multilingual explorations of word-formation processes both in English and across 40 other languages. It offers today’s broadest available coverage of English prefixation suffixation and compounding. Comprising a treasury of real language items this book offers students a unique chance to conduct their own research and analyses using a goldmine of carefully-selected authentic examples and corpus data. Readers will become familiar with 96 affixes and 13 compound types by working through thought-provoking morphological cases and their construction patterns. Through these challenging and hands-on activities junior researchers identify morphological nuances among multiple languages. Instructors in multilingual classrooms can find satisfying activities to address the needs of international students. This academically stimulating coursebook can serve as a core text for Word Formation and Morphology courses. As a supplemental source it may suit a range of Linguistics courses directed at both graduate and undergraduate students.