Phonetic research investigates how speakers and listeners use speech to convey messages. The speech produced to encode a particular message can vary wildly. Understanding and explaining the phonetic variability embodied in this example is one of the main motivations for this Element. Why and how do speakers produce this variability and how does it impact listeners? This Element focuses on spontaneous speech and its relationship with phonetic research. The authors discuss background and describe research investigating the variation that occurs when speakers and listeners are engaged in spontaneous, conversational speech. As a result, this Element explores aspects of spontaneous speech from the phonetic perspective using both production and perception areas of phonetics. This Element focuses on spontaneous speech and its relationship with phonetic research, exploring aspects of spontaneous speech from the phonetic perspective using both production and perception areas of phonetics.

This study investigates the oral and written story productions of 56 10-12-year-old Greek-German and Greek-English bilingual children in order find out to which extent their narrative abilities develop conjointly across their two languages and which factors affect this. Quantitative and qualitative measures of narrative discourse ability are related to a composite score of bilingual language dominance (Bilingual Index Score). Results indicate that the degree to which bilinguals can share abilities across their two languages is highly dependent on the type of ability and the degree of dominance and - to a lesser degree - on crosslinguistic differences and modality of production. As such, this study reveals nontrivial implications for the educational support of bi- and multilingual children.

This is the first book to cover the grammar of clitics from all points of view, including their phonology and syntax and relation to morphology. In the process, it deals with the relation of second position clitics to verb-second phenomena in Germanic and other languages, the grammar of contracted auxiliary verbs in English, noun incorporation constructions, and several other much discussed topics in grammar. Stephen Anderson includes analyses of a number of particular languages, and some of these - such as Kwakw'ala ( "Kwakiutl ") and Surmiran Rumantsch - are based on his own field research. The study of clitics has broad implications for a general understanding of sentence structure in natural language. Stephen Anderson's clearly-written, wide-ranging, and original account will be of wide interest to scholars and advanced students of phonology, morphology, and syntax.

This Element explores ways in which language teachers, especially teachers of English, can benefit from knowledge of phonetics. It also offers recommendations for introducing and improving pronunciation teaching in the classroom. While hoping that this Element is useful to instructors of all languages, the majority of the examples comes from North American English (NAE) and the English language classroom. At the same time, the Element acknowledges that English language teaching is rather different from the teaching of other languages, since nowadays, most interactions around the world in English do not involve a native speaker, and use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has become widespread. Teachers of English should be aware that their students may not want to mimic all aspects of native-speaker pronunciation; since some native-speaker patterns of speech, such as the extensive simplification and omission of sounds may not be helpful in enhancing intelligibility.

The book is the most comprehensive account of the phonology of Danish ever published in any language. It gives a clear analysis of the sound patterns of modern Danish and examines the relations between its speech sounds and grammar. The author develops new models for the analysis of phonology and morphology-phonology interactions, and shows how these may be applied to Danish and to other languages. Danish has an unusually rich vowel system and exhibits radical reduction processes that make it difficult for foreigners to understand. The sound pattern is equally challenging for the analyst. Professor Basboll develops a non-circular model for the sonority syllable and applies it to Danish phonotactics. He presents a radically new and insightful analysis of stod, a syllable accent which has a complex grammatical distribution and is unique among the world-s languages. He also describes syllabic and word structures, and stress and intonation. The book is fully referenced and indexed. It will be widely welcomed by phonologists and scholars of Danish, and is likely to become the standard account of Danish phonology.

Presenting a field-defining overview of one of the most appliable linguistic theories available today, this Handbook surveys the key issues in the study of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), covering an impressive range of theoretical perspectives. Written by some of the world's foremost SFL scholars, including M. A. K. Halliday, the founder of SFL theory, the handbook covers topics ranging from the theory behind the model, discourse analysis within SFL, applied SFL, to SFL in relation to other subfields of linguistics such as intonation, typology, clinical linguistics and education. Chapters include discussion on the possible future directions in which research might be conducted and issues that can be further investigated and resolved. Readers will be inspired to pursue the challenges raised within the volume, both theoretically and practically.

This book provides (a) the first comprehensive description of the phonology and phonetics of Standard Mongolian, known as the Halh (Khalkha) dialect and spoken in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of the Republic of Mongolia; and (b) the first account in any language of the historical phonology of the Mongolian group of languages. The synchronic phonology is based on data collected by the authors and on their own phonological analyses. The historical phonology is based on their research on the Halh, on published Chinese and Mongolian sources for the modern Mongolic languages, and on their reconstruction of Old Mongolian from the medieval written sources.

Prosody is generally studied at a separate linguistic level from syntax and semantics. It analyses phonetic properties of utterances such as pitch and prominence, and orders them into phonological categories such as pitch accent, boundary tone, and metrical grid. The goal is to define distinctive formal differentiators of meanings in utterances. But what these meanings are is either excluded or a secondary concern. This book takes the opposite approach, asking what are the basic categories of meaning that speakers want to transmit to listeners? And what formal means do they use to achieve it? It places linguistic form in functions of speech communication, and takes into account all the formal exponents - sounds, words, syntax, prosodies - for specific functional coding. Basic communicative functions such as 'questioning' may be universally assumed, but their coding by linguistic bundles varies between languages. A comparison of function-form systems in English, German and Mandarin Chinese shows this formal diversity for universal functions.

Diese Monographie verfolgt das Ziel, die zentralen Begriffe der Semantik von Phraseologismen - ihre Idiomatizitat, Motiviertheit, Bildhaftigkeit, Bildlichkeit, Ambiguitat - aus kognitiver Perspektive zu beschreiben. Die Autorin arbeitet ein Verfahren heraus und erprobt es in korpusbasierten Detailstudien, mit dem semantische Aspekte der Idiome in ihrer Komplexitat und Vielfalt anhand eines kongruenten Instrumentariums, unter koharenten theoretischen Pramissen, erlautert werden. Der wissenschaftliche Wert des Buches liegt in seiner Interdisziplinaritat: Hier treffen die empirisch breit abgesicherten Theorien zu Metapher und Metonymie, kognitiver Semantik, mentalen Reprasentationen, literaler und figurativer Sprache, mit der Korpuslinguistik und Phraseologie zusammen.

The most comprehensive work on dissimilation (the avoidance or repair of combinations of similar sounds) to date, this book proposes a novel analysis that handles dissimilation as the avoidance of surface correspondence relationships. It draws on recent work in Agreement By Correspondence to show that dissimilation is a natural outcome predicted by the same theory of Surface Correspondence. The theory is developed in more detail than ever before, and its predictions are tested and evaluated through ten in-depth analyses of diverse languages from Quechua to Kinyarwanda, together with a typological survey of over 150 dissimilation patterns drawn from over 130 languages, from Acehnese to Zulu. The book redefines the core of Surface Correspondence theory to a level of formal specificity and theoretical precision surpassing previous work. The book's findings are made more accessible by numerous examples featuring data from 47 languages from around the world.

For decades, a small set of major world languages have formed the basis of the vast majority of linguistic theory. However, minoritized languages can also provide fascinating contributions to our understanding of the human language faculty. This pioneering book explores the transformative effect minoritized languages have on mainstream linguistic theory, which, with their typically unusual syntactic, morphological and phonological properties, challenge and question frameworks that were developed largely to account for more widely-studied languages. The chapters address the four main pillars of linguistic theory - syntax, semantics, phonology, and morphology - and provide plenty of case studies to show how minoritized language can disrupt assumptions, and lead to modifications of the theory itself. It is illustrated with examples from a range of languages, and is written in an engaging and accessible style, making it essential reading for both students and researchers of theoretical syntax, phonology and morphology, and language policy and politics.

Turkic is one of the world's major language families, comprising a high number of distinct languages and varieties that display remarkable similarities and notable differences. Written by a leading expert in the field, this landmark work provides an unrivalled overview of multiple features of Turkic, covering structural, functional, historical, sociolinguistic and literary aspects. It presents the history and cultures of the speakers, structures, and use of the whole set of languages within the family, including Turkish, Azeri, Turkmen, Tatar, Kazakh, Uzbek, and Uyghur, and gives a comprehensive overview of published works on Turkic languages, large and small. It also provides an innovative theoretical framework, employing a unified terminology and transcription, to give new insights into the Turkic linguistic type. Requiring no previous knowledge of the Turkic languages, it will be welcomed by both general readers, as well as academic researchers and students of linguistic typology, comparative linguistics, and Turkic studies.

L'auteur concoit la modalite comme une categorie semantico-fonctionnelle, independante des elements qui l'expriment et du niveau de la structure grammaticale dont ils relevent. Pour definir la modalite, il tient compte egalement de ses caracteristiques structurelles ainsi que de phenomenes relevant de niveaux cognitifs plus hauts et plus bas. Cela permet de porter un regard critique sur les recherches anterieures, de developper un cadre theorique conciliant les differentes approches et d'analyser systematiquement les expressions de la modalite en francais (verbes et adverbes modaux, modes verbaux etc.). L'interaction entre plusieurs elements modaux dans le meme enonce peut declencher trois types d'interaction et produit des phenomenes modaux particulierement complexes.

Las formas de tratamiento en el ambito hispanico y lusofono representan uno de los temas mas complejos y, a la vez, mas estudiados. La diversidad de alternativas y usos a ambos lados del Atlantico es bien conocida, aunque la mayoria de estudios se concentra en casos aislados de una ciudad o region muy determinada, o bien muestra un analisis descriptivo de los pronombres de cortesia. Ademas, los especialistas han prestado mas atencion a la casuistica de las variedades americanas y menos a la situacion del espanol y portugues europeos. Este estudio pretende dar cuenta de la evolucion de las formas de tratamiento en la Peninsula Iberica en los ultimos cien anos, con un especial enfasis en el fenomeno de nivelacion que se atestigua en la zona suroccidental. De forma pionera, se expone el comportamiento geolinguistico, sociolinguistico y gramatical de dicha nivelacion, aplicando metodos estadisticos y los programas de cartografia mas actuales. Todo ello, auspiciado por una metodologia innovadora y un corpus cuantitativo que refleja la estrecha relacion que guardan el espanol y el portugues, no solo en la cortesia, sino a nivel linguistico, derivando en un Sprachbund que tiene como foco el suroccidente de la Peninsula Iberica.

Stress and accent are central, organizing features of grammar, but their precise nature continues to be a source of mystery and wonder. These issues come to the forefront in the phonetic manifestation of stress and accent, their cross-linguistic variation and the subtle and intricate laws they obey in individual languages. Understanding the nature of stress and accent systems informs all aspects of linguistic theory, methods, typology and especially the grammatical analysis of language data. These themes form the organizational backbone of this book. Bringing together a team of world-renowned phonologists, the volume covers a range of typological and theoretical issues in the study of stress and accent. It will appeal to researchers who value synergistic approaches to the study of stress and accent, careful attention to cross-linguistic variation, and detailed analyzes of both well-studied and understudied languages. The book is a lively testimony of a field of inquiry that shows progress, while also identifying questions for ongoing research.

This volume demonstrates that phonology is a subsystem of the mind/brain and explores the theoretical and practical (including medical) consequences of this insight. Written by American and European specialists at the cutting-edge of research in areas ranging from phonetics to neurology, the book addresses central questions relating to the cognitive status of phonological representation and phonetic implementation and the links between mental and physical representation of sound systems.

A revealing cross-disciplinary perspective on language, speech, and cognition. Written by American and European specialists at the cutting-edge of research in areas ranging from phonetics to neurology, Phonetics, Phonology, and Cognition explores the cognitive and biological systems involved in speech and offers challenging findings on the cognitive status of phonological representations and their relationship with phonetic implementations.

Linguists, biological anthropologists, and cognitive scientists come together in this book to explore the origins and early evolution of phonology, syntax, and semantics. They consider the nature of pre- and proto-linguistic communication, the internal and external triggers that led to its transformation into language, and whether and how language may be considered to have evolved after its inception. Evidence is drawn from many domains, including computer simulations of language emergence, the songs of finches, problem-solving abilities in monkeys, sign language, and the structure of languages today.

Linguists, biological anthropologists, and cognitive scientists come together in this book to explore the origins and early evolution of phonology, syntax, and semantics. They consider the nature of pre- and proto-linguistic communication, the internal and external triggers that led to its transformation into language, and whether and how language may be considered to have evolved after its inception. Evidence is drawn from many domains, including computer simulations of language emergence, the songs of finches, problem-solving abilities in monkeys, sign language, and the structure of languages today.

This book addresses universal tendencies of human vowel systems from the point of view of self-organization. It uses computer simulations to show that the same universal tendencies found in human languages can be reproduced in a population of artificial agents. These agents learn and use vowels with human-like perception and production, using a learning algorithm that is cognitively plausible. The implications of these results for the evolution of language are then explored.

Thomas Berg analyses language as a psychological phenomenon in order to reach a clearer understanding of why the structure of language is the way it is and how it changes. He claims that real explanations of the structure of language can only emerge by establishing connections between language and its context. The explanatory power of one of these contexts, the psychological one, is examined in detail.