Subject collection: Linguistics (2,773 titles, 1967–2015)

This volume suggests a novel treatment of context in the analysis of everyday interaction. On a theoretical level, it advocates a switch of focus from 'context' as a preestablished, monolithic category which constringes co-participants' verbal and nonverbal behaviour, to an active notion of 'contextualization': in order to make oneself understood, participants have to establish and maintain those shared contextual frames which in turn are relevant to the local interpretation of their verbal and nonverbal activities. On an empirical level, the volume contains exemplary analyses that show how participants employ 'contextualization cues' of prosodic (rhythm, intonation, tempo, etc.) or nonverbal (gaze, gesture, etc.) nature in order to 'achieve context'.The volume is also an appraisal of the theory of contextualization developed by John Gumperz. In their contributions, researchers from various schools of research, such as conversation analysis, micro-ethnography, phonetics/phonology and metapragmatics, relate their work to this theory.

Today, computer-mediated communication spans a range of activities from interactive messages to word processing. Researchers interested in this new technology have concentrated on its effects in the workplace for knowledge production and dissemination or on its word processing function. The study reported here examines communication events in which the computer is the medium and views such computer-mediated communication from the perspective of language use. Its goal is to understand, through data collected from an anthropological perspective, the ways of communicating used by members of an established community of computer users. In particular, it answers the questions: (i) How do computer communicators choose among the available media and modes of communication? (ii) What are the basic and recurring discourse patterns across media and modes through which this community achieves its institutional goals of innovation and product development? (iii) How do the answers to the previous two questions inform our understanding of language use in general?

The subject of this two part work is the acquisition of language structure in which the development of syntax and morphology is examined by investigations on children without language problems and on children with developmental dysphasia. The author uses a comparative acquisition study to provide insights into the structure and development of the language acquisition device, which cannot be obtained by isolated analysis of only one type of learning. The theoretical framework used for the investigations is the learnability theory, in which acquisition models are proposed which are heavily influenced by theoretical linguistics. Part I shows how child grammar acquisition can be explained in the framework of learnability theory and Part II deals with deficiencies in normal grammar acquisition using the learnability theory.

The term “crosscurrent” is defined as “a current flowing counter to another.” This volume represents crosscurrents in second language acquisition and linguistic theory in several respects. First, although the main currents running between linguistics and second language acquisition have traditionally flowed from theory to application, equally important contributions can be made in the other direction as well. Second, although there is a strong tendency in the field of linguistics to see “theorists” working within formal models of syntax, SLA research can contribute to linguistic theory more broadly defined to include various functional as well as formal models of syntax, theories of phonology, variationist theories of sociolinguists, etc. These assumptions formed the basis for a conference held at Stanford University during the Linguistic Institute there in the summer of 1987. The conference was organized to update the relation between second language acquisition and linguistic theory. This book contains a selection of (mostly revised and updated) papers of this conference and two newly written papers.

This volume contains selected contributions to the interdisciplinary symposium on 'Models of Meaning' held in Varna, September 25-28, 1988, under the auspices of the Institute of the Bulgarian Language of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The aim of the meeting was to broaden the horizons of meaning research and the modeling of linguistic semantics, with contributions centering on the appropriate modeling of lexical, syntactic, and textual-semantic representations. The papers challenge some basic notions of semantics and reveal two main avenues of development in contemporary investigations. One is toward broadening the scope of investigativeness, the second is toward a greater domain-specificity as expressed in a greater sensitivity to pragmatics and meta-pragmatic concerns.

This work is the intellectual biography of the greatest of American philosophers. Peirce was not only a pioneer in logic and the creator of a philosophical movement pragmatism he also proposed a phenomenological theory, quite different from that of Husserl, but equal in profundity; and long before Saussure, and in a totally different spirit, a semiotic theory whose present interest owes nothing to passing fashion and everything to its fecundity. Throughout his life Peirce wrote continually about sign and phenomenon (or phaneron). Consequently his writings must be studied chronologically if they are not to appear incomprehensible or contradictory. One of the merits of this book is to clarify Peirce's thought by analysing its development chronologically. We follow the evolution of Peirce's thought from his critique of Kantian logic and Cartesianism (Chap. I, “Leaving the Cave”: 1851-1870) to his discovery of modern logic and pragmatism (Chap. II, “The Eclipse of the Sun”: 1870-1887) and finally to a semiotic founded on a phenomenology the base of which is the logic of relations and the crowning-point scientific metaphysics (Chap. III, “The Sun Set Free”: 1887-1914). The book includes a detailed chronology, a general bibliography, and an index.

This book is devoted to the mathematical foundations of categorial grammar including type-theoretic foundations of mathematics, grammatical categories and other topics related to categorial grammar and to philosophical and linguistic applications of this framework. The volume consists of three parts. The first, introductory part, contains the editor's addresses and two survey chapters concerning the history (W. Marciszewski) and current trends of the discipline (J.van Benthem). The second part consists of 10 chapters devoted to categorial grammar proper, and the third part 7 chapters devoted to areas close to categorial grammar. Most of the contributions are original papers, but five of them are reprints of classics (M.J. Cresswell, P.T. Geach, H. Hiz, J. Lambek, T. Potts).

Over the past fifteen years, descriptions of Australian Aboriginal languages have provided important data for the typological study of morpho-syntactic phenomena. The present volume presents descriptions of complex sentence phenomena in ten Australian languages and provides important new material in this area of current concern in linguistics. Complex sentences are described either from a syntactic or from a semantic (discourse-functional) point of view. The papers draw on data from widely distributed and, in some instances, previously undescribed languages. Among others descriptions of the (so-far) poorly known non-Pama-Nyungan languages of northern Australia, as well as Pama-Nyungan languages central and northern Australia are included in this volume.

Le présent ouvrage est la première introduction française à une lecture systématique de Peirce.

Par une reconstruction chronologique qui tente à supprimer quelques-uns des pseudo-problèmes que l’édition thématique des écrits de Peirce ont soulevés, cet ouvrage tente à donner une idée aussi exacte et complète que possible de la pensée de l’un des philosophes le plus original et universel de l’Amérique.