Language users have access to several sources of information during the build up of a meaningful construction. These include grammatical rules, situational knowledge, and general world knowledge. A central role in this process is played by the argument structure of verbs, which establishes the syntactic and semantic relationships between arguments. This book provides an overview of recent psycholinguistic and theoretical investigations on the interplay between structural syntactic relations and role semantics. The focus herein lies on the interaction of case marking and word order with semantic prominence features, such as animacy and definiteness. The interaction of these different sorts of information is addressed from theoretical, time-insensitive, and incremental perspectives, or a combination of these. Taking a broad cross-linguistic perspective, this book bridges the gap between theoretical and psycholinguistic approaches to argument structure.

A History of the Chinese Language provides a comprehensive introduction to the historical development of the Chinese language from its Proto-Sino-Tibetan roots in prehistoric times to Modern Standard Chinese. Taking a highly accessible and balanced approach, it presents a chronological survey of the various stages of the Chinese language, covering key aspects such as phonology, syntax, and semantics. The second edition presents a revised and updated version that reflects recent scholarship in Chinese historical linguistics and new developments in related disciplines. Features include: Coverage of the major historical stages in Chinese language development, such as Old Chinese, Middle Chinese, Early Modern Chinese, and Modern Standard Chinese. Treatment of core linguistic aspects of the Chinese language, including phonological changes, grammatical development, lexical evolution, vernacular writing, the Chinese writing system, and Chinese dialects. Inclusion of authentic Chinese texts throughout the book, presented within a rigorous framework of linguistic analysis to help students to build up critical and evaluative skills and acquire valuable cultural knowledge. Integration of materials from different disciplines, such as archaeology, genetics, history, and sociolinguistics, to highlight the cultural and social background of each period of the language. Written by a highly experienced instructor, A History of the Chinese Language will be an essential resource for students of Chinese language and linguistics and for anyone interested in the history and culture of China.

A lot of what we know about "exotic languages" is owed to the linguistic activities of missionaries. They had the languages put into writing, described their grammar and lexicon, and worked towards a standardization, which often came with Eurocentric manipulation. Colonial missionary work as intellectual (religious) conquest formed part of the Europeans' political colonial rule, although it sometimes went against the specific objectives of the official administration. In most cases, it did not help to stop (or even reinforced) the displacement and discrimination of those languages, despite oftentimes providing their very first (sometimes remarkable, sometimes incorrect) descriptions. This volume presents exemplary studies on Catholic and Protestant missionary linguistics, in the framework of the respective colonial situation and policies under Spanish, German, or British rule. The contributions cover colonial contexts in Latin America, Africa, and Asia across the centuries. They demonstrate how missionaries dealing with linguistic analyses and descriptions cooperated with colonial institutions and how their linguistic knowledge contributed to European domination.

The Hittite Etymological Dictionary is a comprehensive compendium of the vocabulary of Hittite, one of the great languages of the Ancient Near East, and of paramount importance for comparative Indo-European studies. Since the start of publication, as evidenced by frequency of reference and quotation, this work has become an important tool for study and research in Hittite, Ancient Anatolian, and Indo-European linguistics. Volume 8 of the dictionary deals with words beginning with PA.

From the point of view of psychology and cognitive science, much of modern linguistics is too formal and mathematical to be of much use. The newly emerging approaches to language termed, "Functional and Cognitive Linguistics," however, are much less formally oriented. Instead, functional and cognitive approaches to language structure are typically couched in terms already familiar to cognitive scientists: perception, attention, conceptualization, meaning, symbols, categories, schemas, perspectives, discourse context, social interaction, and communicative goals. The account of human linguistic competence emerging from this new paradigm should be extremely useful to scientists studying how human beings (not formal devices) comprehend, produce, and acquire natural languages.
The current volume brings together 10 of the most important linguists in cognitive and functional linguistics whose work is often not easily available to those outside the field. In original contributions, each of these scholars focuses on an important aspect of human linguistic competence, with a special eye to readers who are not professional linguists. Of special importance to all of the contributions are the cognitive and social interactional processes that constitute human linguistic communication. The book is of special interest to psychologists, cognitive scientists, psycholinguists, and developmental psycholinguists, in addition to linguists taking a more psychological approach to language.

This manual is intended to fill a gap in the area of Romance studies. There is no introduction available so far that broadly covers the field of Catalan linguistics, neither in Catalan nor in any other language. The work deals with the language spoken in Catalonia and Andorra, the Balearic Islands, the region of Valencia, Northern Catalonia and the town of l'Alguer in Sardinia. Besides introducing the ideologies of language and nation and the history of Catalan linguistics, the manual is divided into separate parts embracing the description - grammar, lexicon, variation and varieties - and the history of the language since the early medieval period to the present day. It also covers its current social and political situation in the new local and global contexts. The main emphasis is placed on modern Catalan. The manual is designed as a companion for students of Catalan, while also introducing specialists of other languages into this field, in particular scholars of Romance languages.

The breakthrough of the alphabetic script early in the first millennium BCE coincides with the appearance of several new languages and civilizations in ancient Syria-Palestine. Together, they form the cultural setting in which ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and, transformed by Hellenism, the New Testament took shape. This book contains concise yet thorough and lucid overviews of ancient Near Eastern languages united by alphabetic writing and illuminates their interaction during the first 1000 years of their attestation. All chapters are informed by the most recent scholarship, contain fresh insights, provide numerous examples from the most pertinent sources, and share a clear historical framework that makes it easier to trace processes of contact and convergence in this highly diversified speech area. They also address non-specialists. The following topics are discussed: Alphabetic writing (A. Millard), Ugaritic (A. Gianto), Phoenician and Hebrew (H. Gzella), Transjordanian languages (K. Beyer), Old and Imperial Aramaic (M. Folmer), Epigraphic South Arabian (R. Hasselbach), Old Persian (M. de Vaan/A. Lubotsky), Greek (A. Willi).

A multimodal ethnography of language as living process, this book demonstrates methods for the integrated analysis of talk, gesture, and material culture, developing a fresh way to understand human language through a focus on jointly achieved social actions to which it is part. Based on findings from a participatory, multimedia language documentation project in a highland Zapotec community of Oaxaca, Mexico, Mark A. Sicoli brings together goals of documentary linguistics and anthropological concern with the everyday means and ends of human social life with theoretical consequences for the analysis of linguistic and cultural reproduction and change. This book argues that resonances emergent in the whole of multiparticipant, multimodal interaction, are organizational of human social-cognitive process important for understanding both the shape linguistic utterances take in interaction (dialogic resonance) and the relationships built between distinct sign modes (intermodal resonance). In this way, Saying and Doing in Zapotec develops a new theory, characterizing the logic of resonance in human interaction as semiotic process that connects and juxtaposes interactional moves into assemblages of relations, resonances and collaborations that build an emergent lifeworld for a language.

This book presents and analyzes various features of the morphosyntax of Borgomanerese, a Gallo-Italic dialect spoken in the town of Borgomanero, in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy. The study is highly comparative, drawing on the literature on numerous other Italian dialects and Romance languages (as well as English), to inform our understanding of the Borgomanerese phenomena. Christina Tortora takes the many unusual and understudied (and often novel) facts of Borgomanerese grammar as compelling grounds for revisiting and reformulating current analyses of syntactic phenomena in these other languages. The phenomena treated include the syntax and semantics of the weak locative in presentational sentences; the syntax of object clitics and argument prepositions; the syntax of subjects and subject clitics; the syntax of interrogatives; clausal architecture; and the relationship between orthography and theoretical analysis. The principal value of this book lies both in the rich description of the morphosyntactic phenomena of Borgomanerese, many of which have not been previously reported in the literature, and in the consequent novel analyses developed, which contribute insights for other languages and dialects, and advance our understanding of syntax and syntactic theory in general.

This sociolinguistic study offers a new theoretical framework for understanding the diffusion of language change within a community. Advanced statistical analysis methods are used in rigorously testing the supposed norm-enforcement effect of social networks. Revisions to the social network model are proposed, allowing the effects of various social factors operating simultaneously on the individual to be considered in evaluating the process of resistance to language change.

In this Hebrew language learning setting, students' backgrounds and histories are diverse: some were born and raised in Canada, the United States, or South Africa and studied Hebrew at Jewish day schools; others were born in the former USSR, immigrated to Israel as children, and moved to Canada with their families as teenagers; others were children of Israeli emigrants who learned Hebrew at home. This ethnographic qualitative study examines two conflicting camps within the Hebrew class, defined by themselves and Othered by opposing sub-groups as ""Canadians"" and ""Israelis"". As the students and the author negotiate their strong ties to the language with Othering and exclusion by other sub-groups from the dominant speech community, the sentiment of the Israeli emigrant professor regarding her students hangs overhead: ""None of them are Israelis. None of them are native speakers of Hebrew."" Who does this language belong to? Which subgroup can declare authenticity as real, rightful owners of the language and its indelible culture and identity?As language programs worldwide deal with a diverse and heterogeneous student population who enter the classroom categorized as heritage, second, bilingual, foreign, or native language speakers, this book addresses clashing and Othering between sub-groups over the authenticity of the variety of the language and its speakers, and who can rightfully claim the language as their own.

International scholars and researchers present cutting edge contributions on the significance of vocabulary in current thinking on first and second language acquisition in the school and at home. By pursuing common themes across first and second language and bilingual contexts, the editors offer a collection that tackles the most important issues.

This book explores the issues and concerns many language teachers have in not just helping able students to learn a foreign or second language but more importantly how to get reluctant learners to become interested in language learning. Tin proposes 'interest' as an important construct that requires investigation if we are to understand second language learning experiences in a modern globalised world. The book offers both theoretical explorations and empirical findings arising from the author's own research in the field. Chapters demonstrate how various theoretical and empirical findings can be applied to practice so as to raise the awareness of the importance of interest in language learning and teaching. For teacher trainers and educators, researchers, and practising language teachers, this comprehensive study provides tools to stimulate student interest in language learning for successful language learning.

This book concerns the field of the history of philological-grammatical exegesis and ancient scholarship. Over recent decades this line of research has aroused lively interest, and noteworthy advances in knowledge have been achieved. In comparison with the state and trends of studies in the mid-20th century, the scenario now appears radically changed: editions of texts, preparation of reference tools, in-depth investigation on personalities, problems and movementshave ledto substantial progress in our understanding of these aspects of ancient literary culture. The five articles that make up this book discuss both general questions and more specific points. Franco Montanari deals with the form of the Alexandrian ekdosis on the basis of the relationship between the library artefact on one hand and the text as an object of editing on the other. Lara Pagani treats the problem of the origins of the study of language in Greek Antiquity and specifically in Hellenistic scholarship. Paola Ascheri investigates the ideological position adopted by Rome in the age of Augustus in its relations with the Greek world, on the basis ofher research into the Homeric scholia and in POxy. 3710. Silvia Consonni studies some specific aspects of Apollonius Dyscolus' treatise On adverbs. Fausto Montana discusses the crucial point of the genesis of Greek scholiastic corpora.

This book examines the diachronic development of negation in Low German, from Old Saxon up to the point at which Middle Low German is replaced by High German as the written language. It investigates both the development of standard negation, or Jespersen's Cycle, and the changing interaction between the expression of negation and indefinites in its scope, giving rise to negative concord along the way. Anne Breitbarth shows that developments in Low German form a missing link between those in High German, English, and Dutch, which have been much more widely researched. These changes are analysed using a generative account of syntactic change combined with minimalist assumptions concerning the syntax of negation and negative concord. The book provides the first substantial, diachronic analysis of the development of the expression of negation through the Old Saxon and Middle Low German periods, and will be of interest not only to students and researchers in the history of German, but also to all those working on the syntax of negation from a diachronic and synchronic perspective.

Building on Raymond Williams' iconic "Keywords" released in 1975, Jeffries and Walker show how some pivotal words significantly increased in use and evolved in meaning during the years of the 'New Labour' project. Focussing on print news media, this book establishes a set of socio-political keywords for the 'Blair Years', and demonstrates how their evolving meanings are indicative of the ideological landscape in Britain at that time, and the extent to which the cultural hegemony of the New Labour project influenced the language of the commentariat. Combining corpus linguistic approaches with critical stylistics the authors conduct an analysis of two newspaper corpora using computational tools. Looking closely at textually-constructed meanings within the data, their investigation of the keywords has a qualitative focus, and sets out a clear methodology for combining corpus approaches with systematic co-textual analysis.

Drawing on a dual expertise of rare intensity, Mirco Ghini's book is a major contribution to both Romance dialectology and phonological theory. It gives a comprehensive account of the segmental and metrical phonology of the Ligurian dialect of the village of Miogliola, North-west Italy. Based on the author's own fieldwork, it is the first in-depth study of this area, also tracing its development from Latin. Feature assignment, underspecification, and quantity alternations are most prominent among the general theoretical issues on which the particulars of Miogliola phonology, meticuously analysed, are brought to bear with elegance and force.

Throughout modern history, the Garden of Eden narrative has been viewed through the blurred lenses of tradition and science by both sides of the apologetic debate. In this comprehensive study, Collins challenges readers to look at human origins with a fresh understanding, unhindered by modern culture and varying traditions, and guides them to examine prerequisite elements necessary for a more incisive understanding of the story of Eden, including covenants, original language, and ancient history. The result is a unique and insightful account of the first love story, with its secrets laid bare for the first time in ages. Drawing from extensive and expansive resources, Collins dissects the story of Eden to reveal a shocking truth that unlocks the mystery of the Fall of Mankind. Peer back through oceans of time to discover and investigate the thread that unites man with God and reveals the awesome beauty and ultimate power of forgiveness.

Globalization is calling for new conceptualizations of belonging within culturally diverse communities. This book takes Quebec as a case study and examines how it fosters a sense of belonging through a common citizenship with French as the key element. As a nation without a state, Quebec is driven by two distinct imperatives: the need to affirm a robust Francophone identity within Anglophone North America, and the civic obligation to accommodate an increasingly diverse range of migrant groups, as well as demands for recognition by Aboriginal and Anglophone minorities.

This volume provides the first systematic and data-driven exploration of English emotional prosody processing in the minds of non-native speakers of the language. Over the past few decades emotional prosody has attracted the interest of researchers from a variety of disciplines such as psychiatry, neuropsychology, psycholinguistics, and linguistics. Although a considerable collective body of empirical evidence exists regarding emotional prosody processing in native speakers of various languages, non-native speakers have been virtually ignored. This constitutes a knowledge gap of increasing relevance, as we approach 2050, the year when the global population of non-native speakers of English is estimated to overtake that of native speakers of the language. This volume aims to fill this gap and provide insights into how emotions are processed on multiple levels while also presenting novel methodological solutions. Crucially, Emotional Prosody Processing for Non-Native English Speakers: Towards an Integrative Emotion Paradigm begins by providing a conceptual background of emotion research, and then demonstrates a novel, workable, completely integrative paradigm for emotion research. This integrative approach reconciles theories such as the dimensional view of emotions, the standard basic emotions view, and the appraisal view of emotions. Following this theoretical section is an empirical exploration of the topic: the volume explores those views via experimental tasks. The insight into overall processing such a multiple-level approach allows a comprehensive answer to the question of how non native speakers of English process emotional prosody in their second language. By offering a critical, data-driven, integrative approach to investigating emotions in the minds of non-native English speakers, this volume is a significant and timely contribution to the literature on emotion prosody processing, bilingual research, and broadly understood emotion research.

The topic addressed in this volume lies within the study of sentence processing, which is one of the major divisions of psycholinguistics. The goal has been to understand the structure and functioning of the mental mechanisms involved in sentence comprehension. Most of the experimental and theoretical work during the last twenty or thirty years has focused on 'first-pass parsing', the process of assigning structure to a sentence as its words are encountered, one at a time, 'from left to right' . One important guiding idea has been to delineate the processing mechanisms by studying where they fai . For this purpose we identify types of sentences which perceivers have trouble assigning structure to. An important class of perceptually difficult senten ces are those which contain temporary ambiguities. Since the parsing mechanism cannot tell what the intended structure is, it may make an incorrect guess. Then later on in the sentence, the structure assignment process breaks down, because the later words do not fit with the incorrect structural analysis. This is called a 'garden path' situation. When it occurs, the parsing mechanism must somehow correct itself, and find a different analysis which is compatible with the incoming words. This reanalysis process is the subject of the research reported here.

The book Criminal proceedings, languages and the European Union: linguistic and legal issues the first attempt on this subject deals with the current situation in the jurislinguistic studies, which cover comparative law, language and translation, towards the aim of the circulation of equivalent legal concepts in systems which are still very different from one another. In the absence of common cultures and languages, in criminal procedure it is possible to distinguish features that are typical of common law systems and features that are typical of civil law systems, according to the two different models of adversarial and inquisitorial trials. Therefore, the most problematic challenges are for the European Union legislator to define generic measures that can be easily implemented at the national level, and for the individual Member States to choose corresponding domestic measures that can best implement these broad definitions, so as to pursue objectives set at the European level.

In this "scenario," the book assesses the new framework within which criminal lawyers and practitioners need to operate under the Lisbon Treaty (Part I), and focuses on the different versions of its provisions concerning cooperation in criminal matters, which will need to be implemented at the national level (Part III). The book analyses the issues raised by multilingualism in the EU decision-making process and subsequent interpretation of legal acts from the viewpoint of all the players involved (EU officials, civil, penal and linguistic lawyers: Part II), explores the possible impact of the EU legal acts concerning environmental protection, where the study of ascending and descending circulation of polysemantic words is especially relevant (Part IV), and investigates the new legal and linguistic concepts in the field of data retention, protection of victims, European investigation orders and coercive measures (Part V)."

The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.