Compact EBA Collection 2025 (ca. 540 titles, starting 2020)

This is the first comprehensive volume to explore the tendency from ‘intersubjective’ to ‘textual’ functions in semantic-pragmatic change. It challenges the influential hypothesis based on the pioneering works by Traugott, i.e. the unidirectionality of change from objective to subjective and then to intersubjective meanings. In this framework, textual meanings precede (inter)subjective ones. Questioning this established trajectory, the contributions in this volume offer fresh perspectives on the development of intersubjective and textual functions. The chapters provide new empirical data about different constructions (modals, conditionals, discourse markers, non-lexical items, etc.), across a variety of largely unrelated languages (Ainu, Mandarin Chinese, English, German, Japanese, Italian, Sicilian, Spanish).

This book collects a multifaceted reflection for researchers interested in language change, especially at the interface of semantics and pragmatics, providing readers with an opportunity to better understand the crucial processes of textualization and intersubjectification.

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.

After a comprehensive description of the French and English tense, aspect, mood/modality (TAM) systems in Chapter 1, an overview of key theoretical perspective and applied perspectives from the morpheme-order studies to examples of internal and external interfaces in monolingual child acquisition is presented in Chapter 2. The literature review of L2 studies illustrates the subtleties of TAM properties in Chapter 3. It is followed by the rigorous methodology of a cross-sectional empirical study designed to test the L2 acquisition of the English TAM system along with pretest results in Chapter 4. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of data obtained from written production tasks, cloze tests and completion tasks completed by French EFL and ESL learners and a NS comparison group appear in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. The results discussed in Chapter 8 address the explanatory power of the Interface and Feature Reassembly hypotheses while directions for future research are offered in Chapter 9. Scholars will appreciate how new data carefully analyzed in its nuances and complexities bring us closer to better understanding the challenges L2 learners face.

Most Hungarian folksongs are about SEX – according to a widely accepted opinion of ethnographers. But what is SEX about? How is it connected to LOVE, and what does THE SACRED have to do with these?

Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory, this book reveals the profound connections between the three concepts, highlighting the spiritual roots of romantic love in a premodern, religious context. Within this framework, we can gain a better understanding of the true role of women in traditional religious societies – a role often misunderstood or perhaps misjudged by contemporary perspectives as unjust, oppressed, exploited, and pathetic. However, such perspectives might overlook valuable lessons that could still resonate today.

The volume cuts across linguistics, philosophy, cultural anthropology, and religious studies, by offering a compelling look at how metaphors in folk poetry serve as a window into a worldview where the concept of LOVE and SEXUALITY transcend the physical boundaries of life.

This volume presents state-of-the-art research in early foreign language (L2) education in instructed contexts with a special focus on primary school (ages 5-12). Over the past two decades, early language teaching has become an important factor in both academic inquiry and education policy. Studies have attested to the value of early L2 learning but also revealed specific features and challenges, which highlights the need for more high-quality empirical research. This book addresses this need by presenting current international research on early L2 teaching and learning in regular and CLIL contexts in the primary school setting. Uniting insights from 12 countries, the studies shed light on current issues such as teaching and assessment practice, emerging L2 literacy instruction, teaching materials, and teachers’, parents’ and learners’ perspectives. The volume thus contributes significantly to the advancement of early language education and is an essential resource for researchers and educators in the field.

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.

En todas las lenguas existen numerosos referentes y conceptos idiosincrásicos. Esas especificidades sociales, lingüísticas, gestuales, materiales, incluso ideológicas, sometidas a continuas reescrituras e interpretaciones a través de los tiempos, que no tienen a menudo equivalentes exactos o funcionales en otras lenguas y culturas, suponen inevitables dificultades para comprenderlas desde otros horizontes y, como no, para traducirlas.

En las últimas décadas, la importancia de los referentes culturales en el mundo de la traducción y la interpretación viene generando mucho interés, convirtiéndose en uno de los pilares teórico-prácticos fundamentales en traductología y dando origen, por consiguiente, a una inagotable, a la par que variada, producción científica. Este volumen pretende ser una aproximación a la traducción de referentes culturales en el ámbito audiovisual y literario.



There are numerous idiosyncratic references and concepts in every language. These social, linguistic, gestural, material, and even ideological specificities are subject to continuous rewriting and interpretations through time, which often do not have exact or functional equivalents in other languages and cultures. These specificities pose inevitable difficulties to understand these languages and cultures from other horizons, and of course to translate them.

The importance of cultural references in the world of translation and interpretation has generated much interest in recent decades. It has become one of the major theoretical-practical pillars in translation studies, giving rise therefore to an inexhaustible and varied scientific production. This volume aims to be an approach to the translation of cultural references in the audiovisual and literary fields.

This book serves as an introduction to corpus linguistics (CL) for graduate students and researchers in Applied Linguistics, especially in the domains of language learning and teaching. It provides a structured and accessible approach for those new to CL, equipping readers with the foundational concepts and tools required to analyse language corpora autonomously in research related to language learning and teaching. It also contextualises CL’s development over the past four decades, offering critical reflections on its practices and applications. Each chapter integrates recommended readings and highlights central concepts, guiding readers in applying CL methods to their own studies. By the end of the book, readers will have gained the knowledge and practical expertise needed to apply corpus linguistics methods in conducting robust and innovative research.

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.