2025 collection (published to date)
/content/collections/jbe-2025
2025 collection (published to date)
OK
Cancel
Collection Contents
1 - 20 of 75 results
-
-
The Ziggurat of Grammar
More LessWhat is the extent to which various grammatical levels – from features through subjecthood through cleft layers – reuse and reemploy certain structure-building operations? In this volume, organized in terms of successively expanding domains, leading contributors report research into the complex edifice of grammatical structure of human language that one might liken to the terraced layers of a ziggurat. Following the heuristics of reverse-engineering, the chapters in this collection draw on theoretical and experimental analyses from Taqbaylit Berber to the sign language Cena, from the Romance language family to the Semitic family, in a kind to ‘reverse-architecture’ effort to understand the modes that compose multiple planes of morphosyntax. The volume, presented to honor the work and influence of Ur Shlonsky within linguistics, is aimed at a readership accessible to advanced undergraduates as well as specialists placed at distinct vantage points.
This ebook is Open Access under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
-
-
-
The Diachrony of Word Class Peripheries
More LessWord classes of a language are usually not homogeneous groups of lexemes that share the same morphological and syntactic properties completely. Rather, lexemes are usually grouped together that have some basic commonalities but may differ in detail, e.g., regarding their inflectional behaviour. In many cases, one can identify within a word class a large number of lexemes that conform to a certain morphological or syntactic pattern (often referred to as “core members”) whilst there is only a comparatively small number of deviants (“peripheral members”). Examples abound: borrowings (in several word classes) may differ grammatically from native words, some complex verbs evade certain syntactic slots (such as verb-second position in German), mass and proper nouns differ grammatically from (other) nouns, and so on. In this volume, we focus on the diachrony of such phenomena. We consider that the study of change and stability can be particularly helpful in furthering our understanding of the diversity within word classes concerning, for example, the motivation for divergent grammatical properties.
This ebook is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Possibility and Necessity
More LessResearchers in the fields of logic, philosophy and linguistics have for many years been pondering over the elusive nature of modality and grappled with ways of capturing it. This book provides a broad overview of issues relevant to the study of modality and reflects the diversity of theoretical frameworks and the heterogeneity of linguistic phenomena included under the general heading of modality, a concept which, in one of its most frequent definitions, corresponds to the fields of possibility and necessity. The key concepts dealt with are the structure of the semantic notion of modality and of modal subcategories, force dynamics, evidentiality, mirativity, modal auxiliaries and verbs, modal uses of verbs and constructions (hedged performatives, capacitive structures, conditional constructions) and modal polyfunctionality across languages. Articles deal with observations taken from a variety of languages, including Danish, English, French, Italian, Latin and Slovak. The wealth of data and the critical evaluation of existing analyses of modality will be of interest for researchers and graduate students alike.
-
-
-
Variation in Language Acquisition
More LessThis volume, resulting from the fifth edition of the conference series Variation in Language Acquisition (ViLA), brings together research at the intersection of language acquisition and sociolinguistics. Work within the ViLA tradition explores how learners—from preschoolers to adult second-language users— produce, perceive, and evaluate socially meaningful language variation. Divided in two main parts, the contributions to this volume highlight a rich diversity of linguistic settings, methodological approaches, and learner profiles. Where Part I focuses on the acquisition of variation in children from age three to adolescence, Part II shifts the focus to the role of linguistic input and exposure in the acquisition process. Both parts showcase a broad methodological spectrum, from observational and experimental studies to qualitative and mixed-methods research. By deepening our understanding of the interplay between social context and linguistic development, the chapters in this volume both consolidate and inspire the growing research field of developmental sociolinguistics.
-
-
-
Framing in Interaction
More LessThis volume invites its readers to rethink the linguistic basis for framing analysis by problematizing the existing foundation and presenting eight new pragmatically based framing analyses.
The book challenges the assumption that there is a unilateral, one-to-one relationship between words and frames, such that framing occurs when a language user is exposed to a word that activates a frame.
Conversely, it is assumed that framing emerges in social interaction through a complex interplay between the participants, the semiotic resources employed, the circumstances, and the multiple frames of interaction. This assumption calls for the relationship between words and frames to be analyzed in pragmatics, including in cross-fertilization with other disciplines such as discourse analysis, interaction analysis, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and social psychology.
The assumption is operationalized in eight different exemplary framing analyses. Each analysis has its own focus, drawing on its own disciplines, and utilizing its own concepts, tools, and methods.
The results of the analyses are noteworthy and demonstrate how a pragmatic approach to framing analysis can enhance the validity and reliability of the analysis.
-
-
-
What makes a Figure
More LessThis volume presents works seeking to re-think the very nature and scope of figurativity, calling into attention some of the received tenets in accounts of figurativity, both as a holistic category and for individual types and families of figures, but also attempting to expand upon the current scope of figurative theorizing. The works presented here investigate a wider array of figures then the typically-studied tropes of metaphor, irony, and metonymy, and address broad issues such as figurativity writ large (what figurativity actually is and does, including how embodied it is), multimodality, contiguity in figurative forms and furthering our consideration of the ingredients of irony. It should appeal to any scholar interested in figurativity in all its expansive guises.
-
-
-
Technology and Instructed Second Language Acquisition
More LessThis book brings together a team of leading international scholars to explore the rich intersection of technology and second language (L2) learning and teaching. This innovative volume offers a unique blend of cutting-edge empirical research, pedagogy-informed perspectives, and practical applications for educators, administrators, and researchers alike. From digital games, interactive fiction, and chatbots, to multimedia input, online collaboration, and vocabulary tools, each chapter shows how technology can foster more effective, equitable, and purposeful L2 learning. Importantly, the contributors avoid framing technology as a collection of isolated tools; instead, they view technology as a set of adaptable resources for designing rich, multimodal, and socially-informed instructional practices. This forward-thinking, comprehensive volume aims to empower L2 educators and researchers to leverage technology’s full potential in a way that resonates with pedagogy, context, and the growing need for justice, equity, and inclusion in L2 education; thereby preparing them to successfully navigate the ever-increasing array of technology for L2 teaching and learning.
-
-
-
The Making of Multi-Unit Turns
More LessThe Making of Multi-Unit Turns is the first book-length treatment to comprehensively describe extended turns produced by a single speaker. It draws on multiparty everyday conversations in English, using the methods of Conversation Analysis. It brings together the currently scattered literature on MUTs, and goes on to expand our understanding of the ‘natural history’ of MUTs by showing how speakers and recipients deploy linguistic and embodied behaviours in intricate ways, from the launch of an extended turn of talk to beyond the end of the MUT. The chapters report on the diverse ways in which speakers secure a second turn-constructional unit, and show how grammatical, prosodic, gestural, and postural resources, as well as gaze direction, are deployed to extend the speaker’s floor in a long MUT. Further investigating how speakers and their recipients transition out of the MUT and return to turn-by-turn talk, and how recipients sometimes disrupt an extended MUT, this book aims to provide a fresh understanding of the orderliness which underlies our everyday interactions.
-
-
-
The Grammar of Interaction
More LessThis volume deals with the relations between grammar and interaction from different perspectives, with the aim of unraveling the way in which a language — through the different forms of discourse from which it emerges — reflects certain social and community-based schemas; that is, how language originates within the space shared by the speaker and the addressee(s). The first part (“Grammar and Interaction”) concerns how interaction may intervene in grammar; the second part (“The Grammar of Interaction”) approaches both notions and linguistic structures which are anchored in interaction while revolving around epistemicity, evidentiality and modality. The third part (“Interaction as a Model for Discourse”) concerns how certain constructions emerge from interaction and are further used to model discourse. Finally, the fourth and last part of the book (“Interaction as a Driver for Change”) focuses on how interaction may help to delimit linguistic categories.
-
-
-
Constructions in Contact 3
More LessOver the last decade, Construction Grammar has become increasingly popular in the study of language contact and multilingualism. Indeed, constructional approaches, including Diasystematic Construction Grammar, not only offer a useful theoretical framework for empirical studies, but also provide a fresh look at fundamental questions in contact linguistics. This volume continues the series of works on Constructions in Contact (the first two volumes were published in 2018 and 2021). It presents new research on the constructionist modelling of language contact phenomena, the impact of multilingualism on argument structure constructions and the role of phonological units in language contact. The volume thus combines classical areas of constructional research with innovative ones, demonstrating the broad applicability of Construction Grammar for contact linguistics.
-
-
-
First Language Acquisition in Finno-Ugric Languages
More LessThis book is the first comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of the first language acquisition of four Finno-Ugric languages: Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, and North Saami. Ten chapters review research on phonological, lexical, and grammatical development, bringing the research within the language family into one source, enabling easy access to topics touching upon acquisition of the key linguistic domains, cross-linguistic comparisons between the languages, and discussion of the ways in which Finno-Ugric languages contribute to theory in the field of first language acquisition. The volume will appeal to students and scholars of language acquisition, linguists, psychologists, clinicians, and educational professionals.
-
-
-
Mathematical Modelling in Linguistics and Text Analysis
More LessThis book is a panorama of contemporary quantitative linguistics, as developed over decades. It highlights the main topics of QL: statistical laws of language, taxonomy of linguistic phenomena, authorial attribution, quantitative analysis of syntax (e.g., dependency grammar), measurement of text difficulty, and other phenomena at the intersection of linguistics, literary studies, semiotics, and information science. It also reflects on the relevance of these time-honoured approaches in our new reality increasingly dominated by AI – both in terms of text material and methodology. Before our very eyes, computers are achieving human-level linguistic competence. The era of LLMs and the growing dominance of machine-generated text is becoming reality. The scale of these changes, initiated by the replacement of print with the digital universe, is enormous. Today, linguistics is closer than ever to mathematics and computer science, and thus quantitatively-oriented linguists are particularly well-suited to address questions about the boundary between humans and machines in scientific research.
-
-
-
COVID-19
More LessThe COVID-19 pandemic set off a maelstrom of social, cultural, and political changes—as well as some surprising linguistic ones. This volume explores these dramatic changes through the lens of Cognitive Linguistics, analysing noteworthy examples of pandemic discourse to reveal correspondences and contrasts between different cultures’ conceptions of the illness and its aftermath. The contributions examine a variety of genres, including newspaper articles, storefront signs, artistic creations, personal interviews, social media comments, and political speeches. They look at communication in various domains—business, media, politics, economics, art, and psychiatry. And they compare past and present, showing how the modern pandemic both continued and interrupted previous patterns of discourse around illness and disease. These diverse analyses show how Cognitive Linguistics, on the cutting edge of quantitative, sociocultural, and interdisciplinary turns in linguistics, can be a powerful theoretical tool in uncovering parallels and variations in how different cultures communicate in times of crisis.
-
-
-
Footprints of Phrase Structure
More LessThis volume presents a collection of state-of-the-art studies that illustrate recent advances in the understanding of human language, grammar design and linguistic categories. The title of the volume aims at highlighting the mark that the work of Tim Stowell has had on the field of Linguistics since his dissertation, Origins of Phrase Structure, defended at the MIT in 1981. Stowell’s work established the principles that replaced individual phrase structure rules from previous generative models with general universal constraints, setting off the articulation of formal grammars on a new journey. The papers gathered here demonstrate how that principled approach runs in the field today. The empirical evidence discussed in the papers comes from 15 different languages, which makes the volume a point of reference for cross-linguistic analyses and testimony to the wealth of descriptive knowledge brought to the scientific community.
A wide array of linguistic generations contributed to this volume, ranging from legendary ones who established the field as we’ve known it, to some who have only recently received their doctorates. This plainly demonstrates the time spanning impact of Stowell’s work and the deep footprint he has left in the field and in our lives.
-
-
-
Handbook of Terminology
More LessThis book aims to provide an overview of the various methods adopted for terminology planning in the languages under examination. Collectively, the authors will attempt to establish an overall understanding of terminology planning in Europe, starting from an examination of the organizations engaged in terminology planning in different European linguistic contexts. Each chapter will focus on a specific language or language landscape, focusing on issues such as:
- the defining features of these terminology planning institutions, including their size, structure, funding sources, specialization, public recognition, publication methods, and collaborations with other organizations;
- the responsibilities and operational procedures, for example as regards standardization, description, evaluation, quantification of results, dissemination, and terminometry;
- terminology planning versus general language planning;
- the historical development of these institutions and the future prospects for terminology planning in each language or language landscape.The individual authors will provide an independent overview of one language landscape. Overall, the book tells a fascinating story about how each language handles terminology as an essential linguistic factor in everyday society.
-
-
-
English across Borders
More LessThis book presents an account of English in the communicative repertoires of anglophone West-Africans living in Southwestern Germany. Adopting an ethnographically grounded perspective, it analyzes how participants perceive and utilize English as well as other linguistic resources at their disposal in an environment where linguistic competence is routinely under scrutiny. The book traces how linguistic practices participate in the construction of socially meaningful spaces and images of personhood and how discourse about language enables participants to position themselves in relation to these constructions. In the process, notions of languages and varieties themselves are used in surprising and sometimes conflicting ways. While these are at odds with descriptive linguistic terminology, the book takes them seriously as expressing local understandings of the relationship among ways of speaking and social positions. At the theoretical level, the book advances a shift in World Englishes research towards a reflexive approach grounded in linguistic anthropological perspectives.
-
-
-
Handbook of Pragmatics
More LessThis 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
-
-
-
Cultural Conceptualizations of the SELF in Hong Kong English
More LessThis monograph offers a cultural-cognitive approach to the study of identity construction at a cultural group level and how it patterns language, exemplified with Hong Kong English. For this, cultural values, political ideology, language models, and reported self- and other-perception as constitutive elements of the speech community’s cultural cognition are explored for the understanding of the cultural model of the SELF. Rooted in the disciplinary synthesis of Cultural Linguistics and World Englishes and its corpus-based approach, this book offers new applications and methodological extensions in the study of the acculturation processes of Englishes around the world and the cognitive substrates that inform them. The present study showcases that human experience is fundamentally cultural. Hence, this book will enlighten anyone interested in the workings of cognition as connected to language and culture, i.e., researchers and students working in the fields of Cultural Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, World Englishes, (linguistic) anthropology, critical discourse analysis, social science, sociolinguistics, cultural studies, and political science.
-
-
-
Cultural models of GENDER and HOMOSEXUALITY in Indian and Nigerian English
More LessThe study presented in this book explores the cultural models of GENDER and HOMOSEXUALITY in Indian and Nigerian English, drawing on the research fields of Cultural Linguistics, Cognitive Sociolinguistics and World Englishes. With the help of different methodologies and empirical data in the form of sociolinguistic interviews, multimodal film material and an online survey, the study scrutinises cultural conceptualisations such as culture-specific conceptual metaphors or schemas and shows how they combine to larger, interconnected cultural models, which provide speakers with a conceptual logic for understanding and interpreting gender and homosexuality. The book further provides visualizations of these cultural models in the form of complex network representations. This scholarly work caters to readers interested in the culturally oriented strands of Cognitive Linguistics, in sociolinguistics, in World Englishes research and in questions on language, gender and homosexuality. It offers valuable insights into the intricate connections between language, culture and cognition.
-
-
-
The Progressive Revisited
More LessThis volume consists of corpus-based analyses of progressive aspect constructions in Germanic and Romance. By adopting a variety of methodologies and theoretical frameworks, these studies provide valuable insights into the development, grammaticalization and use of various progressive structures across two subgroups of the Indo-European family. The progressive constructions under scrutiny range from widely studied and seemingly well understood constructions to relatively infrequent and obscure ones. Most chapters investigate a specific function of a particular progressive structure, or a change affecting it. Some chapters cast new light on the pragmatic, non-aspectual functions fulfilled by the progressive. All the chapters present a substantial amount of new empirical work. This collection thus provides a unique opportunity for linguists working on Romance languages to get an instant insight into similar phenomena in Germanic languages and vice versa. At the same time, the volume addresses contemporary theoretical and methodological issues in corpus, contact and historical linguistics, showing that research on the progressive remains today as relevant and inspiring as ever.
-