Open Access Books (ca. 80 titles)
Collection Contents
1 - 50 of 85 results
-
-
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.
-
-
-
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.
-
-
-
Early Language Education in Instructed Contexts
More LessThis 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.
-
-
-
Field Research on Translation and Interpreting
More LessThis volume constitutes a significant step in establishing field research as a central methodological approach in translation and interpreting studies. Following an integrative approach, it addresses both translation and interpreting across professional, paraprofessional, and non-professional settings. The chapters in this volume focus on lived experiences in diverse, real-world contexts—including refugee centres, UN missions, NGOs, virtual environments, and the workplaces of specialised translators. They offer rich insights into the situated and dynamic nature of translation and interpreting practices and discuss common aspects and challenges such as the researchers’ reflexivity, ethical considerations, and the role of materiality in fieldwork. By shedding light on underexplored areas and offering critical reflections on field research methodology, the volume contributes to expanding the boundaries of translation and interpreting studies and deepening our understanding of translation and interpreting in their social and material contexts.
Published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
-
-
-
Mobile Eye Tracking
More LessSituated within the flourishing domain of pragmatics, this volume explores the crucial role of gaze in human interaction, with a particular focus on the potential of mobile eye tracking to advance our methodology and understanding of multimodal communication. Readers will find a comprehensive, balanced exploration of the benefits and challenges associated with taking eye tracking out of the lab to record authentic interaction in real-life settings. By integrating insights from pragmatics, the contributions highlight the function of gaze as a resource for coordination, cooperation and joint sense-making in human interaction. The chapters are written by leading scholars in the field as well as younger researchers. They offer in-depth methodological discussions alongside detailed case studies from static and mobile interaction settings. The book makes a strong case for the use of mobile eye tracking in addition to video cameras. It provides researchers with a solid and state-of-the-art foundation on which to make informed choices about recording technologies for their own work. The volume is a must-read for scholars in multimodal conversation analysis, interactional linguistics, as well as cognitive linguists, linguistic anthropologists, and psychologists with a strong interest in new ways of studying gaze in social interaction.<.p>
This ebook is Open Access under the CC BY 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Germanic Interrelations
More LessThis 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.
-
-
-
World Englishes in their Local Multilingual Ecologies
More LessWorld Englishes coexist and interact with local languages in multilingual ecologies. Multilingual speakers use the languages in their ecologies for different functions, with different interlocutors, and at different proficiency levels. Attitudinal responses to the languages vary. Speaker groups are heterogenous manifesting only partial overlap regarding language repertoires, use, proficiencies, and attitudes. The languages in multilingual ecologies may shift in status over time. Some languages may be lost while new languages appear. Strong regional languages and English typically persist. The volume explores multilingual ecologies around the globe and the position of English within them. Case studies are drawn from Africa, East, South, and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, all written by distinguished scholars in the field who consider both standardized and non-standardized forms of English. The volume argues for a more inclusive study of World Englishes incorporating speakers’ social backgrounds as well as the other languages in their repertoires.
This ebook is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
A Comparative History of the Literary Draft in Europe
More LessLiterary drafts are a constant in literatures of all ages and linguistic areas, and yet their role in writing processes in various traditions has seldom been the subject of systematic comparative scrutiny. In 38 chapters written by leading experts in many different fields, this book charts a comparative history of the literary draft in Europe and beyond. It is organised according to eight categories of comparison distributed over the volume’s two parts, devoted respectively to ‘Text’ (i.e. the textual aspects of creative processes) and ‘Beyond Text’ (i.e. aspects of creative processes that are not necessarily textual). Across geographical, temporal, linguistic, generic and media boundaries, to name but a few, this book uncovers idiosyncrasies and parallels in the surviving traces of human creativity while drawing the reader’s attention to the materiality of literary drafts and the ephemerality of the writing process they capture.
This e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Ruptured Commons
More LessAt a time when we have all lived through profound and unexpected disruptions to our shared spaces, routines, economies, societies, and work-lives, this book considers the nature and implications of rupture, the commons, and their conjoining. Addressing rupture and disruption through the lens of literary and cultural studies, this volume traverses genres — film, fiction, theatre, poetry, and the graphic novel — and continents, and addresses histories and identities as ecologies. The focus is resolutely contemporary, with nearly all of the texts being analyzed produced within the last decade. Beginning with the history of, and debates about, Garrett Hardin’s famous “tragedy of the commons,” Ruptured Commons engages with texts and cultures of disaster wherein artistic expression becomes a form of protest and a path to change. This collection both critically examines our arrival at and understanding of this moment, and explores diverse, and hopeful, visions for the future embedded within contemporary culture.
-
-
-
New Perspectives in Interactional Linguistic Research
More LessThis collection of original papers illustrates recent trends and new perspectives for future research in Interactional Linguistics (IL). Since the research program was started around the turn of the century, it has prospered internationally. Recently, however, new developments have opened up new perspectives for interactional linguistic research.
IL continues to study the details of talk in social interaction, with a focus on linguistic resources and structures of verbal and vocal interaction in bodily-visible interactional settings. Increasingly, though, it embraces methods supported by new technology and broadens its data and research questions to applications in teaching, therapy, etc.
The volume comprises three parts with 14 contributions: (1) Studying linguistic resources in social interaction; (2) Studying linguistic resources in embodied social interaction; and (3) Studying social interaction in institutional contexts and involving speakers with specific proficiencies.This e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Using Tonal Data to Recover Japanese Language History
More LessThis book challenges several assumptions commonly encountered in Japanese dialectology: that the pitch-accent analysis of modern Tōkyō Japanese is an appropriate basis for describing the suprasegmental phonology of other dialects and earlier stages of Japanese; that the Kyōto-type dialects have been more conservative than dialects to their east and west; that the first split in proto-Japanese was the separation of proto-Ryūkyūan; and so on. De Boer brings together evidence from recent fieldwork, premodern texts, and other sources to establish a theory of dialect divergence that avoids the problems these assumptions entail. Building on De Boer 2010, this book brings the author’s theory up to date with research published in the interim, explains why Japanese is best understood as a restricted tone language, and why mergers in the large tone classes of nouns and verbs are especially reliable markers of dialect divergence.
This e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Anthropological Linguistics
More LessThis collection presents new research on key topics in anthropological linguistics, with a focus on African languages. While Africanist linguists have long been concerned with sociocultural aspects of language structure and use, no comprehensive volume dedicated to the anthropological linguistics of Africa has yet been published. This volume seeks to fill this gap. The chapters address a broad range of topics in anthropological linguistics, including classic themes such as spatial reference, color, kin terms, and emotion, as well as emerging interests in the linguistic expression of personhood, sociality, and language ideology. All contributions are based on original empirical research and present insights into African language practices from a sociocultural perspective. The volume showcases research on dozens of African languages spoken across the continent, with particular emphasis on languages of East Africa. This book will be of interest to areal specialists as well as to anthropological linguists worldwide.
This e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Handbook of Terminology
More LessAs a core component of legal language used to draft, enforce and practice law, legal terms have fascinated lawyers, linguists, terminologists and other scholars for centuries. Third in the series, this Handbook offers a comprehensive compendium of the current state of knowledge on legal terminology. It is the first attempt to bring together perspectives from the domains of Terminology, Translation Studies, Linguistics, Law and Information Technology in a single place. This interdisciplinary endeavour comprises systematic reviews, case studies and research papers which overview key properties of legal terms and concepts, terminological tools and resources, training aspects, as well as translation in national contexts and multilingual organizations. The Handbook attests to the complex multifaceted nature of legal terminology and showcases its cultural, communicative, cognitive and social contexts in diverse legal systems. It is a rich resource for scholars, practitioners, trainers and students, presenting vibrant research and practice in this area.
This e-book is made available as Open Access under the CC BY-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Free Variation in Grammar
More LessRecent years have seen a growing interest in grammatical variation, a core explanandum of grammatical theory. The present volume explores questions that are fundamental to this line of research: First, the question of whether variation can always and completely be explained by intra- or extra-linguistic predictors, or whether there is a certain amount of unpredictable – or ‘free’ – grammatical variation. Second, the question of what implications the (in-)existence of free variation would hold for our theoretical models and the empirical study of grammar. The volume provides the first dedicated book-length treatment of this long-standing topic. Following an introductory chapter by the editors, it contains ten case studies on potentially free variation in morphology and syntax drawn from Germanic, Romance, Uralic and Mayan.
This e-book is made available as Open Access under the CC BY 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Children's Cultures after Childhood
More LessChildren’s Cultures after Childhood introduces theoretical concepts from new materialist and posthumanist childhood studies into research on children’s literature, film, and media texts with attention to the entanglements of which they are part. Thirteen chapters by international contributors from diverse disciplinary fields (literary studies, cultural studies, media studies, education, and childhood studies) offer a cross-section of empirical and theoretical approaches sharing an inspiration in the notion of “after childhoods”, proposed by Peter Kraftl, a children’s geographer, to conceptualize theoretical and methodological orientations in research on children’s lives and on past, present, and future childhoods. This interdisciplinary collection will be of interest to scholars working in children’s literature and culture studies, education, and childhood studies.
This e-book is made available as Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Ditransitives in Germanic Languages
More LessThis volume brings together twelve empirical studies on ditransitive constructions in Germanic languages and their varieties, past and present. Specifically, the volume includes contributions on a wide variety of Germanic languages, including English, Dutch, and German, but also Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, as well as lesser-studied ones such as Faroese. While the first part of the volume focuses on diachronic aspects, the second part showcases a variety of synchronic aspects relating to ditransitive patterns. Methodologically, the volume covers both experimental and corpus-based studies. Questions addressed by the papers in the volume are, among others, issues like the cross-linguistic pervasiveness and cognitive reality of factors involved in the choice between different ditransitive constructions, or differences and similarities in the diachronic development of ditransitives. The volume’s broad scope and comparative perspective offers comprehensive insights into well-known phenomena and furthers our understanding of variation across languages of the same family.
This e-book is made available as Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
-
-
-
The Sociophonetics of Dublin English
More LessThe Sociophonetics of Dublin English shows how social inequalities and language are connected by the stances speakers take in interaction. It is based on an instrumental phonetic analysis of recorded interviews and broadcasting data and a detailed qualitative account of the same data as well as the socio-cultural context in Ireland. The analysis not only considers macro-social categories but also pragmatic norms and situational, more fluid aspects of communication. Contemporary social meanings and associated phonetic realisations are described and explained as the result of diachronic developments. Since the independence of Ireland local pronunciations have been re-evaluated and realisations connected with the former coloniser have fallen out of use even in formal and powerful domains. This investigation thus highlights the importance of diachronic data to understand contemporary sociolinguistic variation.
This e-book is made available as Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
Esperanto – Lingua Franca and Language Community
More LessThis book addresses a fascinating topic – a constructed language that has turned from a project into a fully-fledged language used by some of its speakers on a daily basis. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book provides rare and profound insights into the use of Esperanto in a large number of communicative areas. It studies the speakers’ use of code-switching, phraseology and metaphors, techniques they employ to enhance understanding, such as metacommunication and repair strategies, as well as their predilection for humour. The study also contributes to a comparison between the communication in Esperanto and in the language that is now predominantly used as a lingua franca – English – and allows conclusions to be drawn on the question of what a lingua franca is all about.
-
-
-
Understanding L2 Proficiency
More LessThis edited volume is a collection of theoretical and empirical overviews of second language (L2) proficiency based on four skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Each skill is reviewed in terms of how it has been conceptualized, measured, and studied over the years in relation to relevant (sub-) constructs of the language skill under discussion. This is followed by meta-analyses of correlation coefficients that examine the relationship between the L2 skill in question and its component variables. Unlike most meta-analyses that have a limited range of variables under investigation, our meta-analyses are much larger in scope to better clarify such relationships. By combining theoretical and empirical approaches, the book is helpful in deepening the understanding of how subcomponents or various variables are related to a particular L2 skill.
-
-
-
From West to North Frisia
More LessThis volume contains 25 articles covering a wide array of subjects, reflecting the breadth of scholarship of one of today’s leading experts in the field of Frisian Studies. The articles, written mostly in English and German, encompass a temporal range from Old Frisian to Modern Frisian and a geographical range from West Frisian in the Netherlands to Sater and North Frisian in Germany, and include Low German. Some articles initiate new fields of enquiry, e.g. uncharted areas of dialectology, others give comprehensive reviews of certain domains, e.g. the provenance of Old Frisian law texts, while a third category focusses on specific topics ranging from phonology, grammar and etymology to aspects of Frisian literature and a medieval Frisian ballad.
-
-
-
Pedagogical Realities of Implementing Task-Based Language Teaching
More LessThis book documents how teachers, working in school foreign language learning contexts and teaching beginner learners of languages other than English, learn about and use tasks. It first presents a pedagogically researched account of how teachers learn about, design and evaluate tasks, after being introduced to TBLT during an in-service programme. The authors then go into classrooms to explore ways in which teachers continue to use tasks, as part of their regular ongoing classroom language programmes, following their in-service education. The book documents how the teachers use tasks to open up opportunities for language learning for students and investigates how teachers understand and position tasks and TBLT as relevant and of value to their teaching contexts. The challenges that teachers face in incorporating TBLT into their practice are also explored. The book suggests how the use of the task as a pedagogic tool may contribute to ongoing understanding about TBLT.
-
-
-
Urban Matters
More LessThe city as a complex socio-cultural structure plays a central role, economically, administratively as well as culturally. Factors such as higher population density, a more expansive infrastructure, and larger social and cultural diversity compared to rural areas have a substantial impact on urban society and urban communication.
Focusing on the latter, the contributions to this volume discuss the characteristics and dynamics of urban language use, considering aspects such as contact, variation and change, as well as identity, indexicality, and attitudes, but also spatial factors including mobility, urbanisation/counterurbanisation, and diffusion processes.
The collected articles provide an update of ‘first wave’ approaches of variationist sociolinguistics, but also establish a connection to ‘third wave’ research for readers from a broad range of fields, especially sociolinguistics, variationist linguistics, and dialectology. The book presents modern methodological and conceptual ideas and a wealth of new findings but also serves as a reference work, combining theoretical discussions with results from recent empirical studies.
-
-
-
The Swedish FrameNet++
More LessLarge computational lexicons are central NLP resources. Swedish FrameNet++ aims to be a versatile full-scale lexical resource for NLP containing many kinds of linguistic information. Although focused on Swedish, this ongoing effort, which includes building a new Swedish framenet and recycling existing lexicons, has offered valuable insights into general aspects of lexical-resource building for NLP, which are discussed in this book: computational and linguistic problems of lexical semantics and lexical typology, the nature of lexical items (words and multiword expressions), achieving interoperability among heterogeneous lexical content, NLP methods for extending and interlinking existing lexicons, and deploying the new resource in practical NLP applications. This book is targeted at everyone with an interest in lexicography, computational lexicography, lexical typology, lexical semantics, linguistics, computational linguistics and related fields. We believe it should be of particular interest to those who are or have been involved in language resource creation, development and evaluation.
-
-
-
Non-canonical Control in a Cross-linguistic Perspective
More LessControl, typically defined as a specific referential dependency between the null-subject of a non-finite embedded clause and a co-dependent of the matrix predicate, has been subject to extensive research in the last 50 years. While there is a broad consensus that a distinction between Obligatory Control (OC), Non-Obligatory Control (NOC) and No Control (NC) is useful and necessary to cover the range of relevant empirical phenomena, there is still less agreement regarding their proper analyses. In light of this ongoing discussion, the articles collected in this volume provide a cross-linguistic perspective on central questions in the study of control, with a focus on non-canonical control phenomena. This includes cases which show NOC or NC in complement clauses or OC in adjunct clauses, cases in which the controlled subject is not in an infinitival clause, or in which there is no unique controller in OC (i.e. partial control, split control, or other types of controllers). Based on empirical generalizations from a wide range of languages, this volume provides insights into cross-linguistic variation in the interplay of different components of control such as the properties of the constituent hosting the controlled subject, the syntactic and lexical properties of the matrix predicate as well as restrictions on the controller, thereby furthering our empirical and theoretical understanding of control in grammar.
-
-
-
Language Variation – European Perspectives VIII
More LessThis volume contains a selection of papers from the 10th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE 10), which was organized by the Fryske Akademy and held in Leeuwarden/Ljouwert (the Netherlands) in June 2019. The editors have selected thirteen papers on a wide range of language varieties, geographically ranging from Dutch-Frisian contact varieties in Leeuwarden to English in Sydney, Australia. The selection includes traditional quantitative and qualitative approaches to different types of linguistic variables, as well as state-of-the-art techniques for the analysis of speech sounds, new dialectometrical methods, covariation analysis, and a range of statistical methods. The papers are based on data from traditional sources such as sociolinguistic interviews, speech corpora and newspapers, but also on hip hop lyrics, historical private letters and administrative documents, as well as re-analyses of dialect atlas data and older dialect recordings. The reader will enjoy the vibrant diversity of language variation studies presented in this volume.
-
-
-
East and West of The Pentacrest
More LessThis book is a collection of contemporary essays and squibs exploring the mental representation of Spanish and other languages in the Romance family. Although largely formal in orientation, they incorporate experimental and corpus data to inform questions of synchronic and diachronic importance. As a whole, these contributions explore two areas of particular interest to linguistic theorizing. The first is linguistic interfaces with chapters on syntax-information structure, syntax-prosody, syntax-semantics, and lexicon-phonology. The second consists of explorations of noun phrases of all sizes—from clitics to nominalized clauses. The results and conclusions of these studies encourage researchers to continue to explore individual languages in particular in order to gain insight on human language in general. This edited volume in honor of Dr. Paula Kempchinsky is reflective of the diversity of approaches that inspired her teaching, research, and mentoring for over thirty years at the University of Iowa and beyond.
-
-
-
Scientia Media
More LessMolinismus ist heute ein Kapitel Philosophie. Das Thema dieses Buchs ist jedoch nicht die Renaissance der Scientia Media-Hypothese in der modernen angloamerikanischen Religionsphilosophie, sondern ihre scholastische Ausgestaltung in dem auf Molina folgenden Jahrhundert: Ohne den Kalkül mit den möglichen Welten z.B. kein Leibniz mit seinem Optimismus. Die vorliegende Studie bahnt sich den Weg durch die Gnadenstreitigkeiten zur Metaphysik des Faktenwissens. Hier zeigt sich die Grundlagenkrise des Molinismus.
Das molinistische Faktum hat drei Merkmale: Es ist kontingent, es ist Teil einer möglichen Welt, es ist vom Allwissenden notwendig gewußt. Traditionell beruht die Lehre von Gottes Faktenwissen auf dem Dogma vom Vorsprung der göttlichen Willensaktivität. Dieses Dogma ist durch die Scientia Media-Hypothese erschüttert. Worauf beruht es aber dann, daß Gott A vorherweiß, nicht nonA?
Der Streit der Schulrichtungen wird zusätzlich durch eine lateinische Textedition illustriert. Von dem Jesuiten Luke Wadding (1593-1651), dem Autor dieses schwierigen Texts, ist bisher nur bekannt, daß er der Lehrer des Scientia Media-Historikers Gabriel de Henao gewesen ist.
Molinism, formerly an invective, is nowadays a topic of philosophy. This book, however, does not deal with the modern renaissance of Middle Knowledge, rather, it explores its proliferation during the 17th and 18th centuries. The focus shifts from reviewing current trends in Church History to rehearsing the metaphysics that backed up Middle Knowledge.
Fact, in Molinism, is threefold: It could have been otherwise, it belongs to some possible world, it is necessarily known by the Omniscient. Whereas the classical account of God’s foreknowledge rests on its being postvolitional, the Molinist qualification of this account denies that it applies to the counterfactuals. On what else then does it prevolitionally depend that God knows for sure something to happen rather than not to happen?
The Salmantine Treatise on God’s foreknowledge edited here provides some additional piece of evidence of a deep Molinist disagreement. Though the manuscript was ready for print in 1653, this business failed and the manuscript fell into oblivion along with its author. The Jesuit Luke Wadding (1593-1651) belongs to a number of men from Waterford who at a time, when intolerance forced Catholics into large scale emigration, hopefully turned towards Spain. He must not be confounded with his famous namesake, the Franciscan friar, who was his cousin.
-
-
-
Grammatical and Sociolinguistic Aspects of Ethiopian Languages
More LessThe focus of this unique publication is on Ethiopian languages and linguistics. Not only major languages such as Amharic and Oromo receive attention, but also lesser studied ones like Sezo and Nuer are dealt with. The Gurage languages, that often present a descriptive and sociolinguistic puzzle to researchers, have received ample coverage. And for the first time in the history of Ethiopian linguistics, two chapters are dedicated to descriptive studies of Ethiopian Sign Language, as well as two studies on acoustic phonetics. Topics range over a wide spectrum of issues covering the lexicon, sociolinguistics, socio-cultural aspects and micro-linguistic studies on the phonology, morphology and syntax of Ethiopian languages.
-
-
-
Literary Translation in Periodicals
More LessWhile translation history, literary translation, and periodical publications have been extensively analyzed within the fields of Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, and Communication Sciences, the relationship between these three topics remains underexplored. Literary Translation in Periodicals argues that there is a pressing need for an analytical focus on translation in periodicals, a collaborative network of researchers, and a transnational and interdisciplinary approach. The book pursues two goals: (1) to highlight the innovative theoretical and methodological issues intrinsic to analyzing literary translation in periodical publications on a small and large scale, and (2) to contribute to a developing field by providing several case studies on translation in periodicals over a wide range of areas and periods (Europe, Latin America, and Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries) that go beyond the more traditional focus on national and European periodicals and translations. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis, as well as hermeneutical and sociological approaches, this book reviews conceptual and methodological tools and proposes innovative techniques, such as social network analysis, big data, and large-scale analysis, for tracing the history and evolution of literary translation in periodical publications.
-
-
-
How Metaphors Guide, Teach and Popularize Science
More LessMetaphors are essential to scientists themselves and strongly influence science communication. Through careful analyses of metaphors actually used in science texts, recordings, and videos, this book explores the essential functions of conceptual metaphor in the conduct of science, teaching of science, and how scientific ideas are promoted and popularized. With an accessible introduction to theory and method this book prepares scientists, science teachers, and science writers to take advantage of recent shifts in metaphor theories and methods. Metaphor specialists will find theoretical issues explored in studies of bacteriology, cell reproduction, marine biology, physics, brain function and social psychology. We see the degree of conscious or intentional use of metaphor in shaping our conceptual systems and constraining inferences. Metaphor sources include social structure, embodied experience, abstract or mathematical formulations. The results are sometimes innovative hypotheses and robust conclusions; other times pedagogically useful, if inaccurate, stepping stones or, at worst, misleading fictions.
As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
-
-
-
Approaches to Hungarian
More LessThis volume contains selected papers from the 13th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian (Budapest, 2017).The contributions address current issues in Hungarian linguistics, including comparisons with other languages (e.g., English, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish).
Specifically, the phonetics and phonology papers present experimental and corpus studies of /h/ voicing, the acoustics of Hungarian word stress, and vowel harmony in harmonically mixed stems. The papers on syntax and semantics discuss object agreement and its locality restrictions, equative markers in German and Hungarian diachronically and synchronically, anaphoric possessor strategies and definite article distribution, and the semantics of various aspectual adverbs. Experimental studies of information structure examine the linear placement of textually given topical constituents post-verbally, exhaustivity inferences with focus partitioning in German, English and Hungarian, and contextual factors licensing Hungarian structural focus.
The broad range of topics ensures that this volume will interest scholars of Hungarian and theoretical linguists more generally.
-
-
-
“Self” in Language, Culture, and Cognition
More LessThis book explores socio-cultural meanings of ‘self’ in the Chinese language through analysing a range of conversations among Chinese immigrants to Australia qualitatively on the topics of individuality, social relationships and collective identity. If language, culture and cognition are major roads, this book is the junction that unites them by arguing that selfhood occurs at their interface. It provides an interdisciplinary approach to unpack manifestations and perceptions of ‘self’ in the contemporary Chinese diaspora discourse from the perspectives of Sociolinguistics, Cognitive Linguistics and the newly developed Cultural Linguistics. This book not only discusses empirical and theoretical issues on the conceptualisation and communication of social identity in a cross-cultural context, it also reveals how traditional and modern ideas in Chinese culture are interacting with those of other world cultures. Considering the power of language, enduring and emerging beliefs and stances that permeate these speakers’ views on their social being and outlooks on life impart their significance in cross-cultural communication and pragmatics.
As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
-
-
-
Imagining the Peoples of Europe
More LessThe political landscape in Europe is currently going through a phase of rapid change. New actors and movements that claim to represent 'the will of the people' are attracting considerable public attention, with dramatic consequences for election outcomes. This volume explores the new political order with a particular focus on discursive constructions of 'the people' and the category of populism across the spectrum. It shows how a unitary representation of 'the people' is a central element in a vast range of very diverse political discourses today, acting to anchor identities and project antagonisms in a multitude of settings. The chapters in this book explore commonality and contrast in representations of ‘the people’ in both radical and mainstream political movements, looking in depth at recent political discourses in the European sphere. The authors draw on approaches ranging from Essex-style discourse theory over critical discourse studies, corpus analysis and linguistic pragmatics, to investigate how historically situated categories such as the people and populism become fixed through local linguistic, textual and narrative practices as well as through wider ideological and discursive patterns.
As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
-
-
-
Skyping the Family
More LessThis collection is one of the first in-depth studies of video calling in family and domestic life. It explores the reasons that people themselves provide to explain their video calling, investigates how these reasons make that calling accountable and how, in turn, these reasons come to be things talked about in the calls themselves. The research shows how video calling is part of the currency of contemporary family affection: such calls are not just about keeping in touch, they are a way of loving too; and they are sometimes a way of fighting as well. 'Skyping' or 'Facetiming' might be frequent and can seem mundane – just a question of routine – but what they entail is a measure of important things to families. This makes this collection of interest to anyone concerned with family life and the evolving ways in which technology has a role in it.
Originally published as a special issue of Pragmatics 27:3 (2017).
-
-
-
Atypical Language Development in Romance Languages
More LessThis book presents a range of ongoing studies on atypical language development in Romance languages. Despite the steady increase in the number of studies on typical language development, there is still little research about atypical language development, especially in Romance languages. This book covers four main conditions causing atypical language development. Part I explores the linguistic and communicative characteristics of preterm children learning Romance languages. The focus of Part II centers on children with Specific Language Impairment. Hearing Loss in Part III is another relevant factor leading to atypical language development. The final part IV zeroes in on genetic syndromes coupled to cognitive impairment with special attention to language development. This book presents a much needed overview of the most recent findings in all relevant fields dealing with atypical language development in children speaking Romance languages.
-
-
-
Migration and Media
More LessThe socio-discursive landscape surrounding the migration debate is characterised by a growing sense of crisis in both personal and collective identities. From this viewpoint, discourses about immigration are also always attempts at reconstructing the threatened ‘home identity’ of the respective host society. It is such attempts at reasserting identity-in-crisis (due to migration) that are the focus of the volume Migration and Media: Discourses about identities in crisis. This four-part book explores the representational strategies used to frame current migration debates as crises of identity, collective and individual. It features fourteen case-studies of varying sets of data including print media texts, TV broadcasts, online forums, politicians’ speeches, legal and administrative texts, and oral narratives, drawn from discourses in a range of languages – Croatian, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Ukrainian – , and it employs different discourse-analytical methods, such as Argumentation and Metaphor Analysis, Gendered Language Studies, Corpus-assisted Semantics and Pragmatics, and Proximization Theory. Such a diverse range of sources, languages, and approaches provides innovative methodological and theoretical analysis on migration and identity which will be of interest to scholars, students, and policy makers working in the fields of migration studies, media studies, identity studies, and social and public policy.
As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
-
-
-
Language Planning as Nation Building
More LessThe decades around 1800 constitute the seminal period of European nationalism. The linguistic corollary of this was the rise of standard language ideology, from Finland to Spain, and from Iceland to the Habsburg Empire. Amidst these international events, the case of Dutch in the Netherlands offers a unique example. After the rise of the ideology from the 1750s onwards, the new discourse of one language–one nation was swiftly transformed into concrete top-down policies aimed at the dissemination of the newly devised standard language across the entire population of the newly established Dutch nation-state. Thus, the Dutch case offers an exciting perspective on the concomitant rise of cultural nationalism, national language planning and standard language ideology.
This study offers a comprehensive yet detailed analysis of these phenomena by focussing on the ideology underpinning the new language policy, the institutionalisation of this ideology in metalinguistic discourse, the implementation of the policy in education, and the effects of the policy on actual language use.
-
-
-
The Portuguese Language Continuum in Africa and Brazil
More LessThe Portuguese Language Continuum in Africa and Brazil is the first publication in English to offer studies on a whole set of varieties of Portuguese in Africa as well as Brazilian Portuguese. Authored by specialists on varieties of Portuguese in Africa and Brazil, the eleven chapters and the epilogue promote a dialogue between researchers interested in their genesis, sociohistories and linguistic properties. Most chapters directly address the idea of a continuum of Portuguese derived from parallel sociohistorical and linguistic factors in Africa and Brazil, due to the colonial expansion of the language to new multilingual settings. The volume contributes to the understanding of structural properties that are often shared by several varieties in this continuum, and describes the various situations and domains of language use as well as sociocultural contexts where they have emerged and where they are being used.
As of 26 July 2021, the ebook edition is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
-
-
-
A Comparative Grammar of the Early Germanic Languages
More LessFulk’s Comparative Grammar offers an overview of and bibliographical guide to the study of the phonology and the inflectional morphology of the earliest Germanic languages, with particular attention to Gothic, Old Norse / Icelandic, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Old High German, along with some attention to the more sparsely attested languages. The sounds and inflections of the oldest Germanic languages are compared, with a view to reconstructing the forms they took in Proto-Germanic and comparing those reconstructed forms with what is known of the Indo-European protolanguage. Students will find the book an informative introduction and a bibliographically instructive point of departure for intensive research in the numerous issues that remain profoundly contested in early Germanic language history.
-
-
-
Patterns of Change in 18th-century English
More LessEighteenth-century English is often associated with normative grammar. But to what extent did prescriptivism impact ongoing processes of linguistic change? The authors of this volume examine a variety of linguistic changes in a corpus of personal correspondence, including the auxiliary do, verbal -s and the progressive aspect, and they conclude that direct normative influence on them must have been minimal.
The studies are contextualized by discussions of the normative tradition and the correspondence corpus, and of eighteenth-century English society and culture. Basing their work on a variationist sociolinguistic approach, the authors introduce the models and methods they have used to trace the progress of linguistic changes in the “long” eighteenth century, 1680–1800. Aggregate findings are balanced by analysing individuals and their varying participation in these processes. The final chapter places these results in a wider context and considers them in relation to past sociolinguistic work.
One of the major findings of the studies is that in most cases the overall pace of change was slow. Factors retarding change include speaker evaluation and repurposing outgoing features, in particular, for certain styles and registers.
-
-
-
Persuasion in Public Discourse
More LessThis book approaches persuasion in public discourse as a rhetorical phenomenon that enables the persuader to appeal to the addressee’s intellectual and emotional capacities in a competing public environment. The aim is to investigate persuasive strategies from the overlapping perspectives of cognitive and functional linguistics. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses of authentic data (including English, Czech, Spanish, Slovene, Russian, and Hungarian) are grounded in the frameworks of functional grammar, facework and rapport management, classical rhetoric studies and multimodal discourse analysis and are linked to the constructs of (re)framing, conceptual metaphor and blending, mental space and viewpoint. In addition to traditional genres such as political speeches, news reporting, and advertising, the book also studies texts that examine book reviews, medieval medical recipes, public complaints or anonymous viral videos. Apart from discourse analysts, pragmaticians and cognitive linguists, this book will appeal to cognitive musicologists, semioticians, historical linguists and scholars of related disciplines.
-
-
-
The Discursive Construction of Identities On- and Offline
More LessThis volume explores linguistic identity construction across online and offline contexts. The contributors focus on ‘clusivity’ as an overarching aspect and offer a multifaceted operationalisation of the linguistic processes of identity construction. The studies address three major strands of human identity, each of which can be thought of as an aggregative abstraction with its own complexities: personal identity, group identity and collective identity. The contributions pay special attention to the interplay between the public and private dimensions of the interactions and audiences, as well as the potential impact of social and technical affordances of different communicative settings and online and offline modes of identity construction. The volume is aimed at all researchers concerned with the complex notion of identity, both in linguistics and in neighbouring disciplines.
-
-
-
Constructicography
More LessIn constructionist theory, a constructicon is an inventory of constructions making up the full set of linguistic units in a language. In applied practice, it is a set of construction descriptions – a “dictionary of constructions”. The development of constructicons in the latter sense typically means combining principles of both construction grammar and lexicography, and is probably best characterized as a blend between the two traditions. We call this blend constructicography.
The present volume is a comprehensive introduction to the emerging field of constructicography. After a general introduction follow six chapters presenting constructicon projects for English, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish, respectively, often in relation to a framenet of the language. In addition, there is a chapter addressing the interplay between linguistics and language technology in constructicon development, and a final chapter exploring the prospects for interlingual constructicography.
This is the first major publication devoted to constructicon development and it should be particularly relevant for those interested in construction grammar, frame semantics, lexicography, the relation between grammar and lexicon, or linguistically informed language technology.
-
-
-
Arabic in Contact
More LessThe present volume provides an overview of current trends in the study of language contact involving Arabic. By drawing on the social factors that have converged to create different contact situations, it explores both contact-induced change in Arabic and language change through contact with Arabic. The volume brings together leading scholars who address a variety of topics related to contact-induced change, the emergence of contact languages, codeswitching, as well as language ideologies in contact situations. It offers insights from different theoretical approaches in connection with research fields such as descriptive and historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, and language acquisition. It provides the general linguistic public with an updated, cutting edge overview and appreciation of themes and problems in Arabic linguistics and sociolinguists alike.
As of January 2023, this e-book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.
-
-
-
Growing up on the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea
More LessThis volume deals with the children’s socialization on the Trobriands. After a survey of ethnographic studies on childhood, the book zooms in on indigenous ideas of conception and birth-giving, the children’s early development, their integration into playgroups, their games and their education within their `own little community’ until they reach the age of seven years. During this time children enjoy much autonomy and independence. Attempts of parental education are confined to a minimum. However, parents use subtle means to raise their children. Educational ideologies are manifest in narratives and in speeches addressed to children. They provide guidelines for their integration into the Trobrianders’ “balanced society” which is characterized by cooperation and competition. It does not allow individual accumulation of wealth – surplus property gained has to be redistributed – but it values the fame acquired by individuals in competitive rituals. Fame is not regarded as threatening the balance of their society.
-
-
-
Adjective Adverb Interfaces in Romance
More LessWithin the current discussion on grammatical interfaces, the word-classes of adjective and adverb are of particular interest because they appear to be separated or joined in manifold ways at the level of word-class or syntax, with morphology playing a prominent role, especially in Romance. The volume provides typological and theoretical insights into the common or different usage of adjectives and adverbs in Romance. Diachronic change is discussed alongside with synchronic variation and the representation in grammar. The discussion turns out to be controversial, calling into question traditional assumptions such as the dogma of the invariability and the categorial status of the adverb.
-
-
-
Language Dispersal Beyond Farming
More LessWhy do some languages wither and die, while others prosper and spread? Around the turn of the millennium a number of archaeologists such as Colin Renfrew and Peter Bellwood made the controversial claim that many of the world’s major language families owe their dispersal to the adoption of agriculture by their early speakers. In this volume, their proposal is reassessed by linguists, investigating to what extent the economic dependence on plant cultivation really impacted language spread in various parts of the world. Special attention is paid to "tricky" language families such as Eskimo-Aleut, Quechua, Aymara, Bantu, Indo-European, Transeurasian, Turkic, Japano-Koreanic, Hmong-Mien and Trans-New Guinea, that cannot unequivocally be regarded as instances of Farming/Language Dispersal, even if subsistence played a role in their expansion.
-
-
-
The Dawn of Dutch
More LessThe Low Countries are famous for their radically changing landscape over the last 1,000 years. Like the landscape, the linguistic situation has also undergone major changes. In Holland, an early form of Frisian was spoken until, very roughly, 1100, and in parts of North Holland it disappeared even later. The hunt for traces of Frisian or Ingvaeonic in the dialects of the western Low Countries has been going on for around 150 years, but a synthesis of the available evidence has never appeared. The main aim of this book is to fill that gap. It follows the lead of many recent studies on the nature and effects of language contact situations in the past. The topic is approached from two different angles: Dutch dialectology, in all its geographic and diachronic variation, and comparative Germanic linguistics. In the end, the minute details and the bigger picture merge into one possible account of the early and high medieval processes that determined the make-up of western Dutch.
-
-
-
Language and Slavery
More LessThis posthumous work by Jacques Arends offers new insights into the emergence of the creole languages of Suriname including Sranantongo or Suriname Plantation Creole, Ndyuka, and Saramaccan, and the sociohistorical context in which they developed. Drawing on a wealth of sources including little known historical texts, the author points out the relevance of European settlements prior to colonization by the English in 1651 and concludes that the formation of the Surinamese creoles goes back further than generally assumed. He provides an all-encompassing sociolinguistic overview of the colony up to the mid-19th century and shows how ethnicity, language attitude, religion and location had an effect on which languages were spoken by whom. The author discusses creole data gleaned from the earliest sources and interprets the attested variation. The book is completed by annotated textual data, both oral and written and representing different genres and stages of the Surinamese creoles. It will be of interest to linguists, historians, anthropologists, literary scholars and anyone interested in Suriname.
-
-
-
Imdeduya
More LessThis volume presents five variants of the Imdeduya myth: two versions of the actual myth, a short story, a song and John Kasaipwalova’s English poem “Sail the Midnight Sun”. This poem draws heavily on the Trobriand myth which introduces the protagonists Imdeduya and Yolina and reports on Yolina’s intention to marry the girl so famous for her beauty, on his long journey to Imdeduya’s village and on their tragic love story. The texts are compared with each other with a final focus on the clash between orality and scripturality. Contrary to Kasaipwalova’s fixed poetic text, the oral Imdeduya versions reveal the variability characteristic for oral tradition. This variability opens up questions about traditional stability and destabilization of oral literature, especially questions about the changing role of myth – and magic – in the Trobriand Islanders' society which gets more and more integrated into the by now “literal” nation of Papua New Guinea.
-