Originally published in 1985, The Semantic Theory of Evolution addresses the notion that life is not shaped by the single law of natural selection, but instead by a plurality of laws that resemble grammatical rules in language. This remarkable work presents a semantic theory centering on the concept of the ribotype. Supported by both sound facts and logical arguments, this analysis reaches beyond the established cadre of biological thought to unravel many of life's mysteries and paradoxes, including the origin of the cell and the nucleus and the evolution of ribosomes.

This book is about the doing and experiencing of diagnosis in everyday life. Diagnoses are revealed as interactive negotiations rather than as the assigning of diagnostic labels. The authors demonstrate, through detailed discourse analyses, how the diagnostic process depends on power and accountability as expressed through the talk of those engaged in the diagnostic process. The authors also show that diagnostic decisions are not only made by professional experts trained in the art and science of diagnosis, but they can also be made by anyone trying to figure out the nature of everyday problems. Finally, diagnostic reasoning is found to extend beyond typical diagnostic situations, occurring in unexpected places such as written letters of recommendation and talk about the nature of communication. Together, the chapters in this book demonstrate how diagnosis is a communication practice deeply rooted in our culture. The book is interdisciplinary and unusually broad in its focus. The authors come from different experiential scholarly backgrounds. Each of them takes a different look at the impact and nature of the diagnostic process. The diagnoses discussed include autism, Alzheimer's disease, speech and language disorders, and menopause. The focus is not only on the here and now of the diagnostic interaction, but also on how diagnoses and diagnostic processes change over time. The book can serve as an undergraduate or graduate text for courses offered in various disciplines, including communication, sociology, anthropology, communication disorders, audiology, linguistics, medicine, and disability studies.

This book challenges the current consensus on the analysis of wh-questions and reflexives from the perspective of the syntax-semantics interface. An integrated approach incorporating analyses of the interaction between different levels of linguistic knowledge is proposed. It argues that the derivation and interpretation of wh-questions and reflexives are not purely syntactic in nature but are regulated by principles operating at the syntax-semantics interface. Two general principles underlying our knowledge of language and cognition are proposed in this work. One is the Principle of Locality, and the other is the Principle of Prominence. It shows that although wh-quantification and reflexivization belong to two different domains of study in generative grammar, their derivation and interpretation are basically constrained by the complex interaction between prominence and locality in grammar. The first part of the book discusses how wh-questions are formed and interpreted in Chinese and English and shows that the formation and interpretation of wh-questions are constrained by the interaction between prominence and locality. It is shown that in wh-interpretation prominence is used to define the set generators so as to licence other wh-words in the pair-list reading in multiple wh-questions. It also discusses wh-island effects in English and Chinese, and unlike previous claims made in the literature (cf. Huang 1982a, 1982b), it argues that the so-called wh-island effects in English are also observed in Chinese. The second part of the book investigates the role that prominence and locality play in reflexive binding. It is shown that in reflexive binding, the binding domain of the reflexive is defined by prominence. It proposes a unified account for both the noncontrastive compound reflexive and the bare reflexive in Chinese and shows that they are constrained by the same reflexive binding condition proposed in this work, though they employ different definitions of the most prominent NPs to determine their binding domains. Prominence and Locality in Grammar: The Syntax and Semantics of Wh-Quesitons and Reflexives is an important theoretical contribution to the syntax-semantics interface studies and can serve as a valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the field of Chinese, linguistics, and cognitive science.

Nach der internationalen Tagung, die an der Universitat zu Creteil am 10. Marz 2017 zu Ehren Jean-Marie Zembs abgehalten wurde, ist diesem nun der vorliegende Band ausgewahlter Beitrage gewidmet. Die ForscherInnen aus unterschiedlichen Landern heben Jean-Marie Zembs wichtigen Beitrag zur Sprachwissenschaft und Didaktik des Deutschen und Franzoesischen sowie dessen Modernitat hervor. Jean-Marie Zemb (1928-2007) hatte am College de France den fur ihn eingerichteten Lehrstuhl "Grammaire et pensee allemandes" inne (1986-1998). Danach wurde er zum Mitglied der "Academie des sciences morales et politiques", Abteilung Philosophie. Als geburtiger Elsasser hat er sich sein Leben lang fur das Deutsche und Franzoesische engagiert. Apres la journee d'etude internationale du 10 mars 2017, a l'UPEC, en l'honneur de Jean-Marie Zemb, voici un volume de contributions choisies dedie a Jean-Marie Zemb. Les chercheuses et chercheurs de divers pays ont mis en lumiere les apports linguistiques et didactiques de la pensee de Jean-Marie Zemb (1928-2007). Il s'agit, par cette publication, de faire apparaitre la richesse et la modernite de cet eminent linguiste et philosophe, entre le francais et l'allemand, pour qui fut creee en 1986 au College de France la Chaire " Grammaire et pensee allemandes ", (1986-1998) et qui fut ensuite elu a l'Academie des sciences morales et politiques, dans la section philosophie.

One prominent function of natural language is to convey information. One peculiarity is that it does not do so randomly, but in a structured way, with information structuring formally recognized to be a component of grammar. Among all information structuring notions, focus is one primitive needed to account for all phenomena. Focus Manifestation in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese: A Comparative Perspective aims to examine from a semantic perspective how syntactic structures and focus adverbs in Mandarin Chinese and semantic particles in Cantonese conspire to encode focus structures and determine focus manifestation in Chinese. With both being tonal languages, Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese manifest different morpho-syntactic configurations to mark focus. A general principle governing focus marking in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese is given in the book, which aims to give a better understanding of the underlying principles the two use to mark additive and restrictive meanings, and related focus interpretations. Particular attention is also drawn to the co-occurrence of multiple forms of restrictive and additive particles in Cantonese, including adverbs, verbal suffixes and sentence-final particles. Linearity has been shown to be an important parameter to determine how focus is structured in Cantonese. This book is aimed at advanced graduate students, researchers, and scholars working on Chinese linguistics, syntax and semantics, and comparative dialectal grammar.

This timely volume, inspired by the work of Umberto Eco, features applications of semiotic theories and methodological frameworks to a vast array of texts, genres and practices within contemporary semiosphere. Exploring the interplay of language, image and sound, contributors discuss the structural and functional properties of signs, along with motivations behind them and implications they have for the meaning-making process, identity, ideology, and the politics of representation. The volume is an outcome of the SIVO "Signum-Idea-Verbum-Opus" project initiated by Umberto Eco's keynote address during his visit at the University of Lodz in 2015. It is also a continuation of theoretical explorations which can be found in "Current Perspectives in Semiotics: Signs, Signification, and Communication", published simultaneously by Peter Lang.

This book proposes a new model of phonology that integrates rules and repairs triggered by markedness constraints in a classical derivational model. In developing this theory, the book offers new solutions to many long-standing problems involving syllabic and segmental phonology with analyses of natural language data, both well-known and relatively unknown. The book also includes a new treatment of Palatalization and Affrication processes, a novel theory of feature visibility as an alternative to feature underspecification and an extensive critique of Optimality Theory.

The book elaborates one of Roman Jakobson's many brilliant ideas, i.e. his insight that the two cognitive strategies of the metaphoric and the metonymic are the end-points on a continuum of conceptualization processes. This elaboration is achieved on the background of Lakoff and Johnson's twodomain approach, i.e. the mapping of a source onto a target domain of conceptualization. Further approaches dwell on different stretches of this metaphor-metonymy continuum. Still other papers probe into the specialized conceptual division of labor associated with both modes of thought. Two new breakthroughs in the cognitive linguistics approach to metaphor and metonymy have recently been developed: one is the three-domain approach, which concentrates on the new blends that become possible after the integration or the blending of source and target domain elements; the other is the approach in terms of primary scenes and subscenes which often determine the way source and target domains interact.

"Discourse and Politeness" examines Japanese institutional discourse and attempts to clarify the relationship between politeness, facework and speaker identity. The book seeks to establish an empirically grounded analysis of facework as the basis for evaluating politeness, and describes facework in delicate situations such as disagreement, teasing and talking about troubles, which have rarely been discussed in politeness studies.Insightful and cutting-edge, this research monograph will be of interest to researchers in discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and Japanese language.

This book consists of scientific chapters devoted to innovative approaches to examination of anthropocentrism. It depicts human beings as physical, spiritual, social and cultural creatures perceived through the lingual and literary lens. The publication has an intercultural foundation, as it examines Slovak, Russian, German, English and Romanian languages. The authors of the book discuss issues which transcend the boundaries of philological research. They apply knowledge from various fields, such as psychology, communication theory, aesthetics, mass media and other social sciences in order to obtain relevant scientific results. The authors present critical analyses and interpretations of contemporary theoretical and practical problems occurring in the selected areas of expertise, and outline the perspective research possibilities.

This book presents a cognitive semantic model of what the whole range of functions is that English and German discourse particles can fulfil, how these functions are related, why discourse particles fulfil just these functions and not others, and what factors condition their interpretation. Methodologically, conversation analysis and various methods from lexical semantics, such as field analysis and semantic decomposition, as well as contrastive studies are combined with the statistical analyses of large corpora, simulation experiments involving supervised learning in artificial neural networks, and the representation of the results in a computational lexicon. This methodologically interdisciplinary study thus not only presents a general model of polysemy which includes structural aspects, a conceptual background frame, and the contribution of the lexeme, it also provides full coverage for the functional readings of discourse particles and a unified definition of the word class.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks, as well as studies that provide new insights by approaching language from an interdisciplinary perspective. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

This volume integrates new studies by leading researchers in sociolinguistics, sociology, social psychology, and cultural theory. It explores the many interfaces of body and discourse, organized under three main themes: the body as an interactional resource, ideological representations of the body, and discursive constructions of the body in normal and pathological contexts.

This book presents a wide range of topics and approaches in the nowadays Translation Studies, which includes popular, trendy issues as well as niche subjects that are rarely taken up in research. The chapters can be grouped into four thematic divisions that capture some major interests of translation scholars. They discuss the nature of the discipline as such and its dimensions, its development and tendencies in some countries, the process of translation from the perspective of translation practice as well as culture-specific elements in translation.

This collection of essays foregrounds the work of filmmakers in theorizing and comparing postcolonial conditions, recasting debates in both cinema and postcolonial studies. Postcolonial cinema is presented, not as a rigid category, but as an optic through which to address questions of postcolonial historiography, geography, subjectivity, and epistemology.

Current circumstances of migration and immigration, militarization, economic exploitation, racial and religious conflict, enactments of citizenship, and cultural self-representation have deep roots in colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial histories. Contributors deeply engage the tense asymmetries bequeathed to the contemporary world by the multiple, diverse, and overlapping histories of European, Soviet, U.S., and multi-national imperial ventures. With interdisciplinary expertise, they discover and explore the conceptual temporalities and spatialities of postcoloniality, with an emphasis on the politics of form, the postcolonial aesthetics through which filmmakers challenge themselves and their viewers to move beyond national and imperial imaginaries.

Contributors include: Jude G. Akudinobi, Kanika Batra, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Shohini Chaudhuri, Julie F. Codell, Sabine Doran, Hamish Ford, Claudia Hoffmann, Anik Imre, Priya Jaikumar, Mariam B. Lam, Paulo de Medeiros, Sandra Ponzanesi, Richard Rice, Mireille Rosello and Marguerite Waller.

This book offers an overview of research regarding L2 writing and L2 writing assessment with the secondary aim of making L2 writing a central topic within the field of Second Language Acquisition. This monographic volume collects and summarises the different research trends in L2 writing and explores key concepts in L2 writing assessment. It provides a compendium of the research carried out from the 1980s onwards into the assessment of writing in a foreign/second language classroom across different educational levels, outlining the major tenets of research in the field. The assessment of language learners has had a growing impact in English language teaching and applied linguistics in the last thirty years. This field is in great need of work on the assessment of writing abilities in a foreign or second language and their implications for language teaching practitioners wishing to improve their students writing. This book addresses this issue from a theoretical, empirical and pedagogical perspective.

Over ten years after the original edition of Teacher Identity Discourses, Janet Alsup revisits her work with a new research study examining the characteristics of the millennial teachers now beginning to populate K-12 classrooms. Building off the first edition, this text is based on a qualitative, interview-based research study, and provides a contemporary look at how millennial teachers experience professional identity growth through language use. This innovative research investigates how formation of a professional identity is central in the process of becoming an effective teacher. Updated with new analyses of teacher identity discourses, the second edition covers themes that still resonate today and provides practical suggestions and sample assignments for teacher educators to use or adapt in methods courses.

Over the past few decades, cognitive linguistic research has turned metonymy from the "poor sister" of metaphor into a ubiquitous conceptual phenomenon. However, this broad notion of metonymy might run the risk of becoming too unrestricted and vacuous. In order to come to grips with the problem, the author proposes a narrower definition of metonymy, according to which linguistic metonymies co-activate the source, the target, and the relation between them so that only the target is expressed linguistically. Furthermore, he argues for a typology of metonymies based on the mental contents they involve. These results may not only prevent that the category of metonymy will become unlimited but may also take us a step closer to enhancing the empirical study of metonymic phenomena.

Over ten years after the original edition of Teacher Identity Discourses, Janet Alsup revisits her work with a new research study examining the characteristics of the millennial teachers now beginning to populate K-12 classrooms. Building off the first edition, this text is based on a qualitative, interview-based research study, and provides a contemporary look at how millennial teachers experience professional identity growth through language use. This innovative research investigates how formation of a professional identity is central in the process of becoming an effective teacher. Updated with new analyses of teacher identity discourses, the second edition covers themes that still resonate today and provides practical suggestions and sample assignments for teacher educators to use or adapt in methods courses.

This important new text invites readers to step back from their busy professional lives and look at technical communication philosophically, to ask fundamental questions such as what does it mean to communicate? and how do language and graphics - the ""signs"" or ""tools"" of the technical communicator - relate to action in a technological world? Through this excursion in the theory of technical discourse, you will discover a fresh approach to reports, manuals, and proposals produced and consumed daily in business, government, and research organizations around the world. The authors examine familiar genres in two relatively new ways.

The German word mauscheln is derived from the Yiddish language. It's original meaning is 'to talk like a Jewish trader' (Mausche = Yiddish word for Mose). Today the verb has a negative connotation and means 'to use dishonest tricks to reach an aim', 'to cheat'. Althaus examines the history of the word and asks how this negative connotation has developed and how the word was (and is ) applied as a weapon and defamation among artists, politicians and scientists. In this way the author depicts a fascinating picture of cultural history, - focussed in the colourful history of a single manysided word.