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Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction investigates the possibility of writing comprehensive grammars of languages based on analyses of interaction. The volume combines two traditions in language studies that have hitherto been separate: Interactional Linguistics which analyzes instances of language use in naturally occurring interactions and Descriptive Grammars which describe the grammatical regularities of languages. The authors are skilled researchers in Interactional Linguistics. They analyze interactional phenomena in Danish English Finnish French German Italian and Swedish making concrete proposals about how grammatical phenomena might be described in a comprehensive interactional grammar. The volume also proposes solutions to problems that an interactional grammar faces for instance the written language bias the role of prosody and the body in the grammar how to approach different target audiences and how a web-based grammar could be useful for rendering the complexities of grammar in interaction.

This book weaves together constructions imperatives dialogicity and discourse units. How can that be? This is precisely the question it sets out to answer by working at the crossroads of Construction Grammar (CxG) Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Interactional Linguistics (IL). Profiting from this cross-fertilising synergy the book singles out BELIEVE (YOU) ME BELIEVE IT OR NOT THINK AGAIN and MIND YOU as its objects of study offers an empirical analysis of their properties and situates them within an entrenched and far-reaching yet conveniently ‘camouflaged’ network of dialogic perspectivisation. In so doing the book provides novel insights into the mental state verbal fillers of the constructions alongside their imperative-induced non-compositionality and dialogicity which motivate their function as discourse unit framing agents and per extension discourse operators. The book thus makes a case for CxG’s ability to go beyond its word- or phrase-based ‘comfort zone’ and address phenomena at a micro- meso- and macro-discourse level with across-the-board benefits.

All linguists recognize that competence in a natural language involves knowledge of a lexicon or dictionary; most assume that it also involves knowledge of a grammatical system. Just where the boundary between the lexicon and the grammar lies however is a question on which there is little consensus. This problem arises in particular with regard to the field of morphology with many morphologists taking all morpheme combinations to result from the operation of the syntactic computational system and many others assuming that morphological units like stems and words are either lexically listed or created by nonsyntactic means. The present study using Japanese and Ryukyuan verbal morphology as its primary database argues that evidence from the syntactic branch of the grammar and evidence from the phonological branch of the grammar converge on the conclusion that while inflectional morphology is fully syntactic derivational morphology has properties that militate against a syntactic treatment. The boundary between grammar and lexicon then falls at the boundary between inflection and derivation rendering morphology “split” between syntactic and nonsyntactic subparts. The book should be of interest not only to morphologists but to all concerned with the distinction between grammatical and lexical competence.

This book investigates the interaction between new English lexis and metaphor/metonymy – figures meticulously defined and contrasted in terms of similarity/contiguity. It advances three main hypotheses: (i) derived lexis is more likely to be figurative in meaning and usage than the bases from which it is derived; (ii) derivation obscures the figurative origins of this lexis to varying degrees depending on differing processing strategies; (iii) lexicalisation is determined by Relevance (in Sperber and Wilson’s sense) to the needs of a culture or its powerful interest groups where culture following Norman Fairclough is characterised as an ensemble of recognised action/discourse genres. This volume is distinctive in exploring the relations between grammar and metonymy and providing numerous examples of metaphorical and metonymic lexis as it reflects society's changing needs and (contested) ideologies.

The present book provides an introduction to the linguistic model of Construction Grammar offering a full analysis of the grammar of the English language. It covers all levels of morpho-syntactic form-meaning units: including sentence types tense and aspect argument structure phrases idioms word and morphological constructions. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>In line with its usage-based approach all constructions are discussed using authentic corpus examples. In order to illustrate how constructions can be learnt the book draws on authentic data from child language. Furthermore corpus analysis is used to show which lexical items typically occur in the slots of constructions and make up their ‘collo-profile’.<br/>A key feature of the book is that it develops a systematic method for showing how constructions combine to form actual utterances. For this purpose so-called ‘construction grids’ are developed which contain all the constructions that make up even the most complex sentences and show points of overlap between them. <br/>

Speakers and learners based on memory and experience implicitly know that certain language elements naturally pair together. However they also understand through abstract and frequency-independent categories why some combinations are possible and others are not. The frequency-grammar interface (FGI) bridges these two types of information in human cognition. Due to this interface the sediment of statistical calculations over the order distribution and associations of items (the regularities) and the computation over the abstract principles that allow these items to join together (the rules) are brought together in a speaker’s competence feeding into one another and eventually becoming superposed. In this volume it is argued that a specific subset of both first and second language grammar (termed ‘combinatorial grammar’) is both innate and learned. While not derived from language usage combinatorial grammar is continuously recalibrated by usage throughout a speaker’s life. In the domain of combinatorial grammar both generative and usage-based theories are correct each shedding light on just one component of the two that are necessary for any language to function: rules and regularities.

This book offers a fresh perspective on how natural languages encode grammatical relations by delving into the interplay between oblique cases adpositions serial verbs and applicatives. This book reveals through a series of case studies the pervasive role of the 'inclusion' relator across diverse linguistic contexts. Departing from traditional views that obliques lack interpretive content this work presents a unified conceptual framework of relations in grammar. Drawing on minimalist principles the book posits a preeminence of the lexicon in syntactic projection shedding light on the underlying ontology of language. By exploring cross-categorial variation and syncretism it outlines an inventory of primitives shaping morpho-syntactic derivations.

The volume presents an innovative set of researches featuring theoretical and practical discussions of the proverb in cognition and culture. To date there seems to be a need for state-of-the-art research into this subject matter. This volume aims at responding to this need. The chapters contribute from a Cognitive Linguistics interdisciplinary perspective to the existing body of literature on the proverb. The book begins with a first part containing three chapters concerned with theoretical discussions of proverbs in cognition and culture. The three chapters in the second part ponder proverbs within a cognitive-cross-cultural perspective. The third part of the volume includes three chapters that deal with the proverbs of individual languages and cultures. The three chapters in the fourth part study proverbs and/or related phenomena from a cognitive and cultural perspective: snowclones idioms and proverbial phrases. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>This book will be of interest to academics interested in proverbs within a cognitive linguistic framework and to scholars in the areas of language studies applied linguistics language teaching and learning and Cognitive Linguistics in general and to those researchers who wish to refine their knowledge about the cognitive activities featuring proverb use and their interaction with sociocultural contextual variables.<br/>

Displacement (of linguistic expressions) is a ubiquitous phenomenon in natural language. In the generative tradition displacement is modelled in terms of transformation or more precisely movement which establishes dependencies among syntactic constituents in a phrase structure. This book probes the question regarding to what extent movement theories can be unified. Specifically I address issues surrounding the debate of the distinction between head movement and phrasal movement over the past few decades. The distinction presupposes that structural complexity of the moving element is correlated with its movement properties. The goal of this book is to show that this is an unwarranted assumption. Based on a number of case studies on verb displacement phenomena in Cantonese I attempt a unified theory of movement by abandoning the head/phrase distinction in movement theories. These case studies converge on the conclusion that the phrase structure status of syntactic constituents bears a minimal role in theorizing displacement phenomena in natural language. This volume represents a minimalist pursuit of a unified theory of movement.

This book examines three controversial generalizations concerning wh-island effects in Chinese: argument and adjunct asymmetry subject and object asymmetry and D-linked and non-D-linked asymmetry. Experiments under the factorial definition of island effects reveal that: (1) both argument and adjunct wh-in-situ are sensitive to the wh-island displaying no asymmetry; (2) subject wh-in-situ manifests a larger magnitude of island effects whereas object wh-in-situ shows a smaller size due to the confounding of double name penalty exhibiting a special pattern of asymmetry; (3) D-linked and non-D-linked who-in-situ evince no asymmetry while D-linked and non-D-linked what-in-situ demonstrate a marginal asymmetry. Findings support the theory of covert wh-movement on the interpretation of Chinese wh-in-situ. The pattern of wh-island effects can be attributed to the violation of locality principles during wh-feature movement. This book is primarily tailored for researchers interested in the study of Chinese wh-questions and generative linguistics in the broad sense.