Ten leading scholars provide exacting research results and a reliable and accessible introduction to the new field of optimality theoretic pragmatics. The book includes a general introduction that overviews the foundations of this new research paradigm. The book is intended to satisfy the needs of students and professional researchers interested in pragmatics and optimality theory, and will be of particular interest to those exploring the interfaces of formal pragmatics with grammar, semantics, philosophy of language, information theory and cognitive psychology.

What did eighth-century Japanese sound like? How does one decode its complex script? This book provides the definitive answers to these questions using an unprecedented range of data from the past and the present, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Sanskrit and Tibetan sources, and enables the reader to approximate the original pronunciation of Old Japanese literature.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203510720

In a systematic presentation of Johnson's views on language, Johnson on Language: An Introduction addresses the problems inherent in the formation of style, as Johnson saw them, but also contains a detailed discussion of his opinions concerning the proper responsibilities of the lexicographer. The wide-ranging discussion takes in the linguistic controversies of classical antiquity, the resumption and elaboration of various classical ideas in the Renaissance period, and the way in which Johnson's own ideas have been shaped by his reading of important documents of these eras.

Foundations of Bilingual Memory provides a valuable update to the field of bilingual memory and offers a new psychological perspective on how the bilingual mind encodes, stores, and retrieves information. This volume emphasizes theoretical issues, such as classic memory approaches, Compound-Coordinate Bilingualism, Bilingual Dual Coding Theory, and Working Memory, about which relatively little has been written in the bilingual domain. Also covered are: * The neuropsychology of bilingual memory * Applied issues (such as false memories and bilingualism, emotion and memory) * Empirical findings in support of the uniqueness of the different memory systems of the bilingual individual * Connectionist models of bilingualism The volume represents the first book of its kind, in stressing a memory perspective with regards to bilingual speakers. It can serve as an advanced text for both undergraduate and graduate level students and it will be of great interest to the growing number of bilingual teachers and university classes interested in understanding the bilingual mind, as well as in preparing teachers to work with the bilingual individual.

Contents:
L. Nickels, Therapy for Naming Disorders: Revisiting, Revising and Reviewing. A. Raymer, T. Ellsworth, Response to Contrasting Verb Retrieval Treatments: A Case Study. L. Nickels, Improving Word Finding: Practice Makes (Closer to) Perfect? M. Rose, J. Douglas, T. Matyas, The Comparative Effectiveness of Gesture and Verbal Treatments for a Specific Phonologic Naming Impairment. R.B. Fink, A. Brecher, M.F. Schwartz, R.R. Robey, A Computer Implemented Protocol for Treatment of Naming Disorders: Evaluation of Clinician-guided and Partially Self-guided Instruction. S. Franklin, F. Buerk, D. Howard, Generalised Improvement in Speech Production for a Subject with Reproduction Conduction Aphasia. J. Hickin, Phonological Therapy for Word-finding Difficulties: A Re-evaluation. B. Biedermann, G. Blanken, L. Nickels, The Representation of Homophones: Evidence from Remediation.

These volumes reprint articles from a variety of international journals, book chapters and key technical reports, to take a broad look at how the field has developed from the turn of theTwentieth Century through to the turn of the twenty-first.
Since the 1960s, there has been a boom in research on how the human mind both produces and comprehends language. Psycholinguistics - as a product of this boom - represents a synthesis between linguistics and psychology.
The set covers the following topics:
* Language Acquisition
* The Mental Lexicon
* Sentence Processing
* Discourse and Meaning
* Spoken Language Production
* Reading
* Disorders of Language and Production
* Computational Models of Language Learning and Adult * Language Use

A revival of interest in morphology has occurred during recent years. The Yearbook of Morphology series, published since 1988, has proven to be an eminent support for this upswing of morphological research, since it contains articles on topics which are central in the current theoretical debates which are frequently referred to. The Yearbook of Morphology 1999 focuses on diachronic morphology, and shows, in a number of articles by renowned specialists, how complicated morphological systems develop in the course of time. In addition, this volume deals with a number of hotly debated issues in theoretical morphology: its interaction with phonology (including Optimality Theory), the relation between inflection and word formation, and the formal modeling of inflectional systems. A special feature of this volume is an article on morphology in sign language, a very new and exciting area of research in linguistics. The relevant evidence comes from a wide variety of languages, amongst which Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages are prominent. Audience: Theoretical, descriptive, and historical linguists, morphologists, phonologists, and psycholinguists will find this book of interest.

Until about 60 years ago, linguistic research on the Arabic language in the West was restricted to inquiries on Classical Arabic and the Classical tradition, and spoken Arabic dialects, with historical studies embedded within the broader field of Semitic languages. This situation is changing quickly, not only through the continuation of older research traditions, but also with the integration of new research fields and perspectives. With this expansion comes the danger of specialists in Arabic losing an overview of the field, and of leaving non-specialists without basic resources for evaluating domains of research which they may be interested in for comparative purposes. The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics will confront this problem by combining state-of-the-art overviews with essays on issues of perspective, controversy, and point of view. In twenty-four chapters, leading experts from around the world will lay out their own stances on controversial issues. The book not only evaluates ways in which questions and theories established in general linguistics and its sub-fields elucidate Arabic, but also challenges approaches which might result in accommodating Arabic to "non-Arabic" interpretations, and brings out the Arabic specificity of individual problems. The Handbook, in one compact volume, gives critical expression to a language which covers large populations and geographical areas, has a long written tradition, and has been the locus of major intellectual fervor and debate.

This history of the Spanish lexicon is written from the interacting perspectives of linguistic and cultural change and in the light of advances in the study of language contact and lexical change. The author describes the language inherited from spoken Latin in the Iberian Peninsula during six centuries of Roman occupation and examines the degree to which it imported words from the languages - of which only Basque survives - of pre-Roman Spain. He then shows how Germanic words were imported either indirectly through Latin or Old French or directly by contact with the Visigoths. He describes the importation of Arabisms following the eighth-century Arab conquest of Spain, distinguishing those documented in medieval sources from those adopted for everyday use, many of which survive in modern Spanish. He considers the influence of Old French and Old Provencal and identifies late direct and indirect borrowings from Latin, including the Italian elements taken up during the Renaissance. After outlining minor influences from languages such as Flemish, Portuguese, and Catalan, Professor Dworkin examines the effects on the lexicon of contact between Spanish and the indigenous languages of South and Central America, and the impact of contact with English. The book is aimed at advanced students and scholars of Spanish linguistics and will interest specialists in Hispanic literary and cultural studies.

"The Language Impact" is a transdisciplinary book which looks at language from the point of view of its effect on the world. The appearance of language on our planet is similar to a natural event with far-reaching consequences for the evolution of the human species, the language system and discourse. The author shows in detail with many examples to what extent language has had and still has a strong effect on individuals, societies and the earth in general from the first bonding talk 30,000 years ago to the effects of the internet in the 21st century A.D. The book serves as a comprehensive and cutting-edge survey of this emerging field, covering a wide variety of topics including the phylogeny of language, Linguistic Relativity (Sapir/Whorf) and Linguistic Constructivism, Cognitive Linguistics as well as Critical Discourse Analysis and Discourse Strategies.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

Applying insights from variationist linguistics to historical change mechanisms that have affected the consonantal system of English, Daniel Schreier reports findings from a historical corpus-based study on the reduction of particular consonant clusters and compares them with similar processes in synchronic varieties, thus defining consonantal change as a phenomenon involving psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, phonological theory and contact linguistics. Moreover, he weighs the impact of external and internal effects on causation, examining data from a total of fifteen varieties with different time depths and social histories.

This accessible and lively introduction to semantics and the multi-faceted nature of language guides the student and non-specialist through the major ways in which the English language makes meaning. The author discusses the meaning of linguistic units at all levels of language, from sound to discourse, while studying also the role of theories and models themselves in helping us to understand human linguistic behaviour. Through examples and exercises, readers are encouraged to think through and evaluate complex ideas and theories for themselves.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Power of Tests applies a critical perspective of language tests by examining their uses and consequences in education and society and by viewing tests not as isolated events but rather as embedded in social, educational and political contexts.

Representing what someone else has said is an integral part of spoken and written communication. Speech representation occurs in many contexts from news reports and legal trials to everyday conversation. Although commonplace, it requires sophisticated choices regarding what to represent and how to represent it. These choices can highlight a speaker's voice, shape our perception of the reported speech, or support our claims of authority.While speech representation in Present-day English has been studied extensively, this book extends the discussion to historical periods. Speech Representation in the History of English explores speech representation of the past, providing in-depth analyses of how speakers and writers mark, structure, and discuss a previous speech event or fictional speech. Focusing on the Early Modern English and the Late Modern English periods (1500-1900), this volume covers topics such as parentheses as markers of represented speech, the development of like as a reporting expression, the gradual formation of free indirect speech reporting, and the interpersonal functions of represented speech. Chapters draw on a wide range of methodologies, including historical sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics, and cover many genres from witness depositions, literary texts, and letters, to the spoken language of the recent past. In this comprehensive volume, Peter Grund and Terry Walker bring together a collection of works that use cutting-edge approaches to speech representation. Researchers and students of the history of English, sociolinguistics, and discourse studies alike will find Speech Representation in the History of English to be an invaluable addition to the field.

Words and Minds takes a lively and accessible look at how we use language to combine our mental resources and get things done. Examining everyday language and drawing on a wide range of research, but always with a light style, Neil Mercer provides a unified account of the relationship between thought and language.
Mercer analyses real-life examples of language being used effectively, or otherwise, in many different settings, including workplaces and schools, the home, the internet and the courtroom, and offers practical insights into how we might improve our communication skills.
Words and Minds will appeal to anyone interested in language and the psychology of everyday life.

eBook available with sample pages: PB:0415224764 EB:0203464982

This highly interdisciplinary project presents new results and the state of the art of knowledge in the psychology and neurophysiology of language, reading and dyslexia. It concentrates on basic cognitive functions of understanding and producing language and disorders within its spoken and written execution. The book grew out of the Basic Mechanisms of Language and Language Disorders conference (Leipzig, Sept. 1999).

This book explores the topics of English accents and pronunciation. It highlights their connections with several important issues in the study of English in the world, including intelligibility, identity, and globalization. The unifying strand is provided by English pronunciation models: what do these models consist of, and why? The focus on pronunciation teaching is combined with sociolinguistic perspectives on global English, and the wider question asked by the book is: what does it mean to teach English pronunciation in a globalized world? The book takes Hong Kong - 'Asia's World City' - as a case study of how global and local influences interact, and of how decisions about teaching need to reflect this interaction. It critically examines existing approaches to global English, such as World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca, and considers their contributions as well as their limitations in the Hong Kong context. A data-based approach with quantitative and qualitative data anchors the discussion and assists in the development of criteria for the contents of pronunciation models. English Pronunciation Models in a Globalized World: Accent, Acceptability and Hong Kong English discusses, among other issues: Global English: A socio-linguistic toolkit Accents and Communication: Intelligibility in global English Teaching English Pronunciation: The models debate Somewhere Between: Accent and pronunciation in Hong Kong Researchers and practitioners of English studies and applied linguistics will find this book an insightful resource.

The Boston Process Approach to neuropsychological assessment, advanced by Edith Kaplan, has a long and well-respected history in the field. However, its theoretical and empirical support has not previously been assembled in an easily accessible format. This volume fills that void by compiling the historical, empirical, and practical teachings of the Process Approach. The reader will find a detailed history of the precursors to this model of thought, its development through its proponents such as Harold Goodglass, Nelson Butters, Laird Cermak, and Norman Geschwind, and its continuing legacy. The second section provides a guide to applying the Boston Process Approach to some of the field's most commonly used measures, such as the various Wechsler Intelligence Scales, the Trail Making Test, the California Verbal Learning Test, and the Boston Naming Test. Here, the reader will find a detailed history of the empirical evidence for test administration and interpretation using Boston Process Approach tenets. The final section of the book provides various perspectives on the implementation of the Boston Process Approach in various clinical and research settings and with specialized populations.

This work provides a detailed account of word level pronunciation in England and Scotland between 1700 and 1900. All major and minor source materials are presented in depth and there is a close discussion of contemporary attitudes to pronunciation standards and orthographic reform. The materials are presented in three chronological periods: 1700-1750, 1750-1800 and the Nineteenth century, so that the reader is able not only to see the main characteristics of the pronunciation of both vowels and consonants in each period, but can also compare developments from one period to another, thus identifying ongoing changes to the phonology.

Greek Writing from Knossos to Homer examines the origin of the Greek alphabet. Departing from previous accounts, Roger Woodard places the advent of the alphabet within an unbroken continuum of Greek literacy beginning in the Mycenean era. He argues that the creators of the Greek alphabet, who adapted the Phoenician consonantal script, were scribes accustomed to writing Greek with the syllabic script of Cyprus. Certain characteristic features of the Cypriot script--for example, its strategy for representing consonant sequences and elements of Cypriot Greek phonology--were transferred to the new alphabetic script. Proposing a Cypriot origin of the alphabet at the hands of previously literate adapters brings clarity to various problems of the alphabet, such as the Greek use of the Phoenician sibilant letters. The alphabet, rejected by the post- Bronze Age "Mycenaean" culture of Cyprus, was exported west to the Aegean, where it gained a foothold among a then illiterate Greek people emerging from the Dark Age.