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This book addresses the topic of cognitive task complexity as it has been investigated in second language (L2) task-based research. This interest is premised on the notion that communication tasks may differ systematically in the types and amounts of cognitive complexity they present to L2 learners and these differences may have predictable effects on L2 performance learning and other outcomes. Adopting a research synthetic approach the authors pursued the first ever comprehensive review of experimental and quasi-experimental studies published over the first 30 years of relevant research that drew comparisons between tasks designed to differ in levels and types of cognitive complexity. Findings from included studies (N = 296) illuminated critical patterns and gaps in the tasks cognitive complexity operationalizations outcome measures and moderating variables investigated. Meta-analytic comparisons of the most replicated variables identified substantial beneficial as well as detrimental effects between a few task designs and certain measures of performance uncovering heretofore unknown patterns of cause and effect. The book concludes with a detailed consideration of what is now known about L2 cognitive task complexity as well as the ways in which research should be improved providing an essential interpretive benchmark and a foundation for future investigations.

The volume Null Objects from a Cross-Linguistic and Developmental Perspective brings together theoretical and empirical contributions on missing object constructions revealing a nuanced and multifaceted phenomenon that poses challenges to current theories of null objects. The selected papers highlight the significance of the interplay between formal constraints and semantic properties (namely definiteness and animacy) in the licensing of null objects cross-linguistically. The formally oriented papers contribute to ongoing discussions on the mechanisms underlying the derivation of null objects. The differences between null objects that are licensed by rich agreement and those that are agreement independent are also addressed. From a developmental perspective the papers on null objects in language acquisition including second language learning further provide valuable insights into the intricate processes underlying the acquisition of referential expressions. The role of animacy emerges as a central question particularly in the context of Portuguese varieties where differences in pronominal systems contribute to variation in null object distribution.

This volume celebrates Hans Frede Nielsen’s contribution to the field of Germanic studies and his work as founding editor of the journal and book series North-Western European Language Evolution. Twenty peer-reviewed articles explore a broad range of topics involving North and West Germanic languages. Some studies focus on early runic inscriptions others deal with features of modern varieties. All align in one way or another with Nielsen’s fields of interest especially historical linguistics and cover aspects of phonology syntax morphology etymology toponyms ethnonyms dialectology text linguistics linguistic historiography and language contact.

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.

This book offers a peer-reviewed selection of the best and most original contributions to the twenty-fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics. They faithfully reflect the spirit of the Conference in that they all display a shared passion for the diachronic study of language but also an exciting diversity of research questions theoretical approaches linguistic phenomena and languages explored. Data are drawn from Algonquian Arandic Bantu Cushitic Edoid Indo-European Manchu Tangkic Tungusic and Uralic—among other languages and language-families. In addition to addressing always with new insights more traditional concerns of historical linguistics such as reconstruction classification the effects of contact and borrowing the determinants of morphological syntactic phonological and semantic change this book presents studies on less conventional topics for example the diachrony of ideophones.

The book investigates the development of ‘speaker-oriented adverbs’ (SOAs) such as frankly surprisingly and apparently in standard written English. SOAs take propositional scope i.e. they modify clauses or sentences. It is generally assumed that they have developed from historically prior narrow-scope adverbs e.g. adverbs modifying VPs. There is however disagreement about the mechanisms that brought the change about. Based on quantitative data the book tests various hypotheses involving reanalysis of potentially ambiguous narrow-scope adverbs (often referred to as grammaticalization) ellipsis lexicalization and analogy. The data provide no clear evidence in favour of any of the hypotheses tested but suggest that different mechanisms may have been at work for different lexemes and subsets of SOAs. The book should appeal to researchers interested in the development and licensing of SOAs but also to those with an interest in diachronic and syntactic change in general or in grammaticalization reanalysis or subjectification in particular.

This edited collection engages with the contentious debate surrounding standard varieties and their distribution. For the past three decades these arguments have coalesced around two camps: pluricentricity (the idea that standard varieties are intimately associated with nation states with more powerful national standard varieties affecting the less powerful) and pluriareality (the idea that standard varieties are not limited by national borders and instead overlap significantly across dialect boundaries). With chapters focused on English German and Dutch this book offers fresh perspectives on these theoretical constructs drawing on data from a variety of standards and a range of methodological approaches to their analysis. Researchers at all levels interested in standard language variation will find these discussions valuable especially due to the volume’s integrative approach to pluricentricity and pluriareality which seeks to demonstrate that these models heavily overlap rather than being in strict opposition.

Language isolates provide unique insights into human history and linguistic diversity. Nevertheless isolates have been studied less exhaustively than non-isolates. The eleven papers gathered in this volume provide new methodological tools in order to better understand isolates including a detailed in-depth up-to-date discussion of what it means to be a language isolate and the criteria by which languages should be classified as isolate. The book also provides a series of techniques some refined on the basis of former literature and others new in order to recover the histories of language isolates. In addition the papers in this volume advance our knowledge about each of the individual languages studied here which are for the most part endangered and under-documented. This book will appeal to a broad audience spanning typologists historical linguists descriptive linguists and teachers of linguistics.

The present book is the English translation of Louis Hjelmslev’s lectures on glossematics the theory of language developed in the forties by him and Hans Jørgen Uldall and taught at the University of Copenhagen in 1942-43 thoroughly taken down in shorthand by his student Harry Wett Frederiksen. The document unpublished so far is one-of-a-kind in its pedagogical dimension as it aims to introduce students and now readers to the glossematician’s workshop informally discussing its theoretical framework the operations employed in description and the reasons why such operations were devised via a concrete analysis of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy-tale “The Sweethearts”. Overall the document offers a unique glimpse into the machinery of one of the most epistemologically aware and rigorous theories of language developed in the 20th century.

This volume comprises studies and keynote addresses presented at the 16th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference hosted by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU in Trondheim in 2022. The selection of cutting-edge studies presented covers a wide array of topics within generative linguistics including the acquisition of grammatical features challenges of functional morphology the impact of the native language on subsequently acquired languages and interfaces between linguistic domains. Other chapters address how non-native language processing differs from native processing while the volume also highlights internal and external factors affecting bi- and multilingual development and points to important avenues for further generative research on second language acquisition.