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 book offers an original account of the dynamics of syntactic change and the evolving structure of Old Spanish that combines rigorous manuscript-based investigation, quantitative analysis and a syntactic approach grounded in Minimalist thinking. Its analysis of both successful and failed changes demonstrates the degree of unpredictability caused by the interaction of competing factors and will shed fresh light on the assumed unidirectionality of linguistic change. Importantly, it reveals that Old Spanish and modern Spanish are more similar to one another than is usually supposed and demonstrates that many of the differences between the two varieties are quantitative rather than qualitative. This theoretically sophisticated examination of historical corpora will provide an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Old and modern Spanish, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and syntax.

In this interdisciplinary volume, sociolinguists and sociologists explore the intersections of language, culture, and identity for rural populations around the world. Challenging stereotypical views of rural backwardness and urban progress, the contributors reveal how language is a key mechanism for constructing the meaning of places and the people who identify with them. With research that spans numerous countries and several continents, the chapters in this volume add broadly to knowledge about status and prestige, authenticity and belonging, rural-urban relations, and innovation and change among rural peoples and in rural communities across the globe.

This book offers a systematic, bottom-up account of irony across both everyday contexts and literary and linguistic texts, using an empirically rigorous approach in distinguishing between central irony, non-central ironies, and non-ironies and highlighting a new way forward for irony research. The volume considers the current landscape of irony, in which the term is used with increasing frequency with the knock-on effect of a loosening of its meaning. Pattison addresses this challenge by applying a systematic form of analysis, rooted in frameworks from pragmatics and complementary disciplines, to a database of over 500 irony candidates from a wide range of sources. The book uses these examples to illustrate the features of central ironies as well as the attributes used to differentiate between central ironies, non-central ironies, and non-ironies. These attributes are mapped across four key domains, including: difference and opposition; the role of context; how ironies are signaled; and speaker attitude and intention. Taken together, the volume puts forth a credible account for more clearly characterizing examples of irony and equips researchers with a comprehensive step-by-step method for undertaking future research. This book is key reading for scholars in stylistics, pragmatics, literary studies, and psycholinguistics.

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.

The first usage-based approach of its kind, this volume contains twelve studies on key issues in Spanish syntax: word order, null arguments, grammatical-relation marking, inalienable possession, "ser" and "estar," adjective placement, small clauses and causatives. The studies are approached within a broad functionalist perspective. The studies strengthen the view that components of grammar intricately interact and that a usage-based approach to analyzing them offers new and insightful perspectives on some stubborn problems.

Extremely isolated communities offer "laboratory conditions" for examining the processes of language change and dialect formation. This book presents findings of the first ever ethnographic field work on the most remote island in the world with a permanent population, Tristan da Cunha. It documents the historical formation of a unique local dialect and investigates the sociolinguistic mechanisms that underlie dialect contact and new-dialect formation. It also uncovers the linguistic consequences of post-insularity - language change processes as a result of increasing contacts with other communities and speakers. Researchers and students of language variation will find this book a unique resource.

The proposed book will be the first publication on record that systematically and comprehensively addresses the acquisition and development of Cantonese in early childhood. It draws upon evidence from up-to-date reviews of associated literature, on the outcomes of numerous research studies conducted by the authors and on the outcomes of an in-depth study of the largest corpus of early childhood Cantonese. To supplement and illuminate published trends in the literature, carefully gathered reliable and valid empirical data will be critically scrutinized. The evidence will be used to clarify and examine theoretical assumptions and to outline putative developmental trends in early childhood Cantonese pragmatics.

A practical, accessible textbook for undergraduate students with no background in linguistics. Incorporates a range of pedagogical features such as real texts, end of chapter exercises, web links, annotated bibliography and glossary which makes it the ideal textbook for students coming to this topic for the first time. Now supported by IOS and Android app that features grammar exercises; translations; and readings of texts that will support and engage student in their understanding of this topic. Only textbook available that combines the study of Old, Middle and Early Modern English which sets this book apart from the competition.

This innovative book examines the discourse of reality television, and the elasticity of language in the popular talent show The Voice from a cross-cultural perspective. Analysing how and why elastic language is used in persuasion and comforting, a comparison between Chinese and English is made, and the authors highlight the special role that elastic language plays in effective interactions and strategic communication. Through the lens of the language variance of two of the world's most commonly spoken languages, the insights and resources provided by this book are expected to advance knowledge in the fields of contrastive pragmatics and cross-cultural communication, and inform strategies in bridging different cultures. This study highlights the need to give the elastic use of language the attention it deserves, and reveals how language is non-discrete and strategically stretchable. This book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students engaged in elastic/vague language studies, cross-cultural pragmatics, media linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and communication studies.

This book investigates the role of inference in argumentation, considering how arguments support standpoints on the basis of different loci. The authors propose and illustrate a model for the analysis of the standpoint-argument connection, called Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT). A prominent feature of the AMT is that it distinguishes, within each and every single argumentation, between an inferential-procedural component, on which the reasoning process is based; and a material-contextual component, which anchors the argument in the interlocutors' cultural and factual common ground. The AMT explains how these components differ and how they are intertwined within each single argument. This model is introduced in Part II of the book, following a careful reconstruction of the enormously rich tradition of studies on inference in argumentation, from the antiquity to contemporary authors, without neglecting medieval and post-medieval contributions. The AMT is a contemporary model grounded in a dialogue with such tradition, whose crucial aspects are illuminated in this book.

This book illustrates the potential of Relevance Theory (RT) in offering a cognitive-pragmatic, cause-effect account of translation and interpreting (T&I), one which more closely engages T&I activity with the mental processes of speakers, listeners, writers, and readers during communicative acts. The volume provides an overview of the cognitive approach to communication taken by RT, with a particular focus on the distinction between explicit and implicit content and the relationship between thoughts and utterances. The book begins by outlining key concepts and theory in RT pragmatics and charting the development of their disciplinary relationship with work from T&I studies. Chapters draw on practical examples from a wide range of T&I contexts, including news media, scientific materials, literary translation, audiovisual translation, conference interpreting, and legal interpreting. The book also explores the myriad applications of RT pragmatics-inspired work and future implications for translation and interpreting research. This volume will be of interest to scholars in T&I studies and pragmatics.

This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world's languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on the previous book on indirect reports in this series, this volume adds an empirical and cross-linguistic approach that covers an impressive range of languages, such as Cantonese, Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Armenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, German, Rumanian, and Basque.

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 collection charts the evolution of grammatical variation in Englishes from Late Middle English to the present, using corpus linguistic tools to address divergence and convergence in local and global perspectives. The book considers both diachronic and synchronic perspectives in grammatical variation across varieties of English across the UK, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The volume reflects on the questions of whether patterns of variation diverge or converge and to what extent catalysts for change are shared in time and space. Chapters look at different factors in grammatical variation at both the macro and micro level, investigating specific linguistic and grammatical features but also at wider phenomena in contact linguistics, social patterns, social networks, and media-based corpora. Chapters progress from the local to the global, all with an eye towards using the latest methodological approaches from corpus linguistics to shed light on the affordances of data-informed methods to study grammatical change and the possibilities for future research. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and World Englishes.

i) It is the first monograph concentrating on the study of semantic rhetoric, especially that in Mandarin Chinese. The Chinese semantic rhetoric examples may provide a channel to touch Chinese culture and thinking. ii) Published in 2019, the Chinese version sold about 800 copies. iii) This book has important theoretical reference value for the study of semantic rhetoric, can provide practical guidance for language teaching, especially for the teaching of rhetorical discourse, and is suitable for college and graduate students, foreign language teachers and related social workers who are interested in language and language studies.

English lexicography and linguistics have always shared close ties, yet the potential of cognitive linguistics for lexicography has only been hesitantly acknowledged in the literature. This is what cognitive lexicography attempts to change by using insights gained in cognitive semantic research for the development of new dictionary features. After a short survey of the history and practice of English monolingual learner lexicography, as well as an outline of the relationship between linguistics and lexicography, three new dictionary features are developed. They cover three different cognitive semantic theories as well as three different parts of the monolingual dictionary entry, each time for a new set of lexemes. Frame semantics, conceptual metaphor theory, as well as cognitive conceptions of polysemy, are used to create a new example section for agentive nouns, a new defining structure for emotion terms and a new microstructural arrangement for particle entries. Dictionary analyses on all, as well as user studies on two of the features, complement these suggestions. The monograph thus presents a new approach to lexicography that incorporates into its description of lexical items how humans perceive and conceptualise language.

This book contains papers that were written to honor Professor Lyn Frazier on the occasion of her retirement from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Some were presented at the Lynschrift on May 19-20, 2018; others were written especially for this volume. The papers report original research on, or research-based theoretical analyses of, several of the domains that Professor Frazier contributed to during her career. The volume begins with a brief overview of Professor Frazier's research contributions and an appreciation of the contributions she has made to the field of psycholinguistics and to her students and colleagues. The next several chapters discuss the roles that prosody plays in language processing, and the volume continues with chapters on the topic that established Professor Frazier as a major psycholinguistic theorist, syntactic processing. The volume then explores the roles semantics and pragmatics play in language comprehension, and concludes with reports of applications and extensions of research on language processing. All chapters were contributed by current and former students and colleagues of Professor Frazier in gratitude for the impact she has had on their lives and careers.

Esta monografia colectiva profundiza en las formulas de saludo y de despedida en diferentes lenguas romanicas. Los dieciseis capitulos que constituyen el libro ofrecen novedosas aportaciones sobre el funcionamiento de estas unidades discursivas -en principio, rutinarias- en latin, espanol, friulano, frances, italiano y rumano desde varios puntos de vista: sincronico, diacronico, diatopico, diafasico y diastratico. Asimismo, se tiene en cuenta su aplicacion a la ensenanza y al aprendizaje de las citadas lenguas romances como idiomas extranjeros.

This book presents the use of kernelsmoothing, a family of methods adapted from fields such as signal processing, as a way to identify the true spatial distribution of linguistic forms at particular points in time. Discusses the use of kernel smoothing in historical dialectology and new approaches to parameter setting Presents a series of case studies from the history of Norwegian language Investigates some of the major phonological and morphosyntactic shifts which transformed the language from Old Norwegian through Middle to early Modern Norwegian Demonstrates how the kernel smoothing method allows us to see how these changes spread from place to place, and these findings are used to throw light on a number of more general research questions of interest to an audience beyond Scandinavianists A step-by-step guide to kernel smoothing is offered, so that non-experts can apply the approach to their own data

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.

Essays reappraising the relationship between the various languages of late medieval Britain. The languages of later medieval Britain are here seen as no longerseparate or separable, but as needing to be treated and studied together to discover the linguistic reality of medieval Britain and make a meaningful assessment ofthe relationship between the languages, and the role, status, function or subsequent history of any of them. This theme emerges from all the articles collected here from leading international experts in their fields, dealing withlaw, language, Welsh history, sociolinguistics and historical lexicography. The documents and texts studied include a Vatican register of miracles in fourteenth-century Hereford, medical treatises, municipal records from York, teaching manuals, gild registers, and an account of work done on the bridges of the river Thames. Contributors: PAUL BRAND, BEGON CRESPO GARCIA, TONY HUNT, LUIS IGLESIAS-RABADE, LISA JEFFERSON, ANDRES M. KRISTOL, FRANKWALTMOHREN, MICHAEL RICHTER, WILLIAM ROTHWELL, HERBERT SCHENDL, LLINOS BEVERLEY SMITH, D.A. TROTTER, EDMUIND WEINER, LAURA WRIGHT Professor D.A. TROTTER is Professor of French and Head of Department of European Languages at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Prophecy was a wide-spread phenomenon in the ancient world - not only in ancient Israel but in the whole Eastern Mediterranean cultural sphere. This is demonstrated by documents from the ancient Near East, that have been the object of Martti Nissinen's research for more than twenty years. Nissinen's studies have had a formative influence on the study of the prophetic phenomenon. The present volume presents a selection of thirty-one essays, bringing together essential aspects of prophetic divination in the ancient Near East. The first section of the volume discusses prophecy from theoretical perspectives. The second sections contains studies on prophecy in texts from Mari and Assyria and other cuneiform sources. The third section discusses biblical prophecy in its ancient Near Eastern context, while the fourth section focuses on prophets and prophecy in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Even prophecy in the Dead Sea Scrolls is discussed in the fifth section. The articles are essential reading for anyone studying ancient prophetic phenomenon.

The Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics is the first comprehensive exploration into the field of ecolinguistics, also known as language ecology. Organized into three sections that treat the different topic areas of ecolinguistics, the Handbook begins with chapters on language diversity, language minorities and language endangerment, with authors providing insight into the link between the loss of languages and the loss of species. It continues with an overview of the role of language and discourse in describing, concealing, and helping to solve environmental problems. With discussions on new orientations and topics for further exploration in the field, chapters in the last section show ecolinguistics as a pacesetter into a new scientific age. This Handbook is an excellent resource for students and researchers interested in language and the environment, language contact, and beyond.