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This book discusses patterns of predication and their grammatical and semantic implications in a variety of African languages. It covers several prominent topics about predication in the languages including locative predication expressions of tense aspect and mood in relation to verbal complexes and verb serialisation verb semantics and nominalization of predicates. The chapters take inspiration from Felix Ameka’s approach to the study of language according to which the main task of a linguist is to collaborate with language users to understand communicative practices in different contexts and to uncover how these practices impact grammatical and semantic aspects of the language. Accordingly the descriptions and analyses in this book serve to understand language variation in different ecologies rather than to impose pre-established descriptive frames on less described languages. Together the chapters in the book represent a bird’s eye view of predication strategies in various African languages and can therefore serve as readings for both introductory and advanced level courses on predication from a typological or comparative perspective.

It is intriguing and challenging to learn a language by diving into the worlds of Virtual Reality (3-D environments avatars games) and Artificial Intelligence (chatbots agents). What are the issues and benefits of these technological innovations? Taking readers on a journey through the brain this book explains how VR and AI may foster and sustain connectivity between language faculties the senses/emotions working and long-term memory and attention. With the speed of technological innovation increasing cognitive demand as well as aspects of intrinsic motivation are analyzed charted and discussed as these may become essential for future development of language learning experiences. This volume should be of interest to instructors researchers and students of languages and linguistics cognitive psychology and computer science.

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/>

This volume celebrates Robert B. Howell's wide-ranging contribution as a scholar mentor collaborator and colleague in the field of Germanic linguistics. In addition to investigating present-day or past varieties of Afrikaans Dutch English Flemish German and Pennsylvania Dutch each of the thirteen contributions in this volume explores one or more of the topics found in Howell’s work: (1) Linguistic structure and change (Page Sundquist Fagan De Vaan); (2) Migration contact and change (Fertig Louden Roberge); (3) Vernacular sources and change (Auer & Gordon Hendriks Van der Wal); (4) Historical sociolinguistics: past present and future (Van Bree Crombez Vandenbussche & Vosters Lauersdorf & Salmons).

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 volume collects research on language cognition and communication in multilingualism. Apart from theoretical concerns including grammatical description language-specific analyses and modeling of multilingualism different fields of study and research interests center around three core themes: The Early Years (aspects of language acquisition and development including vernaculars or minority languages reading writing and cognition and multilingual extensions) Issues in Everyday Life (the role of multilingualism in and for speech–language–communication difficulties including diagnosis provisions of services and later language breakdown) and From the Past to the Future (aspects of multilingualism beyond acquisition education or pathology with a focus on heritage languages and translanguaging). Specialists from each of these areas introduce state-of-the-art research novel experimental studies and/or quantitative as well as qualitative data bearing on ‘multifaceted multilingualism’. There is a broad spectrum for take-home messages ranging from new theoretical analyses or approaches to assess multilingual speakers all the way to recommendations for policy-makers.

This volume brings together contributions selected from papers delivered at the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL Leiden 2021). The contributions deal with various aspects of English language across time and geographical space shedding light on both long-term developments and singular documents of particular linguistic interest. A wide range of methodologies are represented including corpus linguistics acoustic phonetics and philology. Chapters showcase work on syntax and word order (parataxis and hypotaxis from Old to Late Modern English; left-dislocation in Old English; do-support in Scots) diachronic linguistic change (phonological developments of lateral /l/ in English; modality in noun clauses from Old to Early Modern English; editorial practices of Middle English punctuation across time) and lexicography and lexis (Old English glosses of the Durham Ritual; Old English lexicographers from 17th-century Germany; lexical differences between Old and Middle English; Yiddish loanwords in English). This volume will be of interest to those working on morphology syntax and lexicography of English historical linguistics language change history of linguistics computational historical linguistics and related sub-disciplines.

This is the first book that presents a complete description and analysis of the Spanish suffixes that alter the grammatical behaviour of nouns and adjectives without changing their grammatical category supporting a fine-grained decomposition of the syntactic area where these word classes are defined. <br xmlns="http://pub2web.metastore.ingenta.com/ns/"/>In this monograph the reader will find a detailed empirical description of suffixes for gender mereological properties of nouns scalar properties of adjectives and a variety of nominal suffixes expressing actions measures or locations as well as an integral Neo-Constructionist analysis of the syntactic structure of the resulting formations. Framed within a Nanosyntactic-oriented framework this book sheds light on the nature of lexical categories and the components of the low syntactic structure of nouns and adjectives. The book will be useful both to researchers in Spanish linguistics or theoretical morphology and to advanced students of Spanish interested in learning more about the expressive devices that nouns and adjectives allow.<br/>

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.

The book presents two fundamental theories that characterize the cultural-historical perspective in cognitive semantics: the Four-Level Theory of Cognitive Development (FLTCD) and the Sociocultural Theory of Lexical Complexes (STLC) as well as their application to the analysis of specific material. In particular the book analyzes the sociocultural history of the MACHINE metaphor specifically its use in the texts of René Descartes and Francis Bacon. The practical embodiment of STLC is demonstrated through the analysis of lexical complexes such as otkryvat' ‘to open’ kamen' ‘stone’ and intelligencija ‘intelligentsia.’ In the final chapter of the monograph FLTCD and STLC are used for the diachronic analysis of semantic change. The monograph will be of interest to a wide range of linguists psychologists cultural anthropologists and philosophers who consider language as a sociocultural phenomenon.