There is still widespread disagreement among historical linguists about how, or whether, syntactic reconstruction can be done. This book presents a comprehensive methodology for syntactic reconstruction, grounded in a constructional understanding of language. The author then uses that methodology to reconstruct Proto-Sogeram, the ancestor to ten languages in Papua New Guinea. Chapters are devoted to phonology, lexicon, verbal morphosyntax, nominal morphosyntax, and syntactic constructions. The work culminates in a sketch of Proto-Sogeram grammar. Based largely on the author's original fieldwork, this is an innovative application of a novel methodology to new data, and the most complete reconstruction of a Papuan proto-language to date. It will be of interest to scholars of language change, language reconstruction, typology, and Papuan languages.

A classic text for theatre and film it has sold 100,000 copies in its first edition.

Monografia integrada por veinticuatro trabajos pertenecientes a diversos ambitos de los estudios de traduccion, divididos en tres secciones: Traduccion literaria (12 contribuciones), Traduccion juridico-economica (7) y Traduccion cientifico-tecnica (5). Los investigadores que componen el volumen representan a buena parte de las Areas y Departamentos de Traduccion e Interpretacion de la universidad espanola: Cordoba, Salamanca, Alicante, Valladolid, Castilla La-Mancha, Univ. Complutense, Autonoma de Madrid, Extremadura, Malaga, Alcala de Henares y Sevilla. Los trabajos comprenden: analisis y traducciones de obras inglesas, francesas, alemanas, e italianas; estudios sobre convenios de correos entre paises; equivalencias entre sociedades mercantiles; reflexiones sobre textos vinicolas, etc. El conjunto conforma una variada miscelanea sobre estudios clasicos de traduccion y otros mas novedosos, que ayudaran a las nuevas generaciones de investigadores a afrontar nuevas orientaciones y lineas de trabajo.

The Segment in Phonetics and Phonology unravels exactly what the segment is and on what levels it exists, approaching the study of the segment with theoretical, empirical, and methodological heterogeneity as its guiding principle. A deliberately eclectic approach to the study of the segment that investigates exactly what the segment is and on what level it exists Includes new research data from a diverse range of fields such as experimental psycholinguistics, language acquisition, and mathematical theories of communication Represents the major theoretical models of phonology, including Articulatory Phonology, Optimality Theory, Laboratory Phonology and Generative Phonology Examines both well-studied languages like English, Chinese, and Japanese and under-studied languages such as Southern Sierra Miwok, Pari, and American Sign Language

This book addresses important issues of speech processing and language learning in Chinese. It highlights perception and production of speech in healthy and clinical populations and in children and adults. This book provides diverse perspectives and reviews of cutting-edge research in past decades on how Chinese speech is processed and learned. Along with each chapter, future research directions have been discussed. With these unique features and the broad coverage of topics, this book appeals to not only scholars and students who study speech perception in preverbal infants and in children and adults learning Chinese, but also to teachers with interests in pedagogical applications in teaching Chinese as Second Language.

With more than sixty million speakers across Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Ghana Hausa is one of the most widely spoken African languages. It is known for its rich phonology and complex morphological and verbal systems. Written by the world's leading expert on Hausa, this ground-breaking book is a synthesis of his life's work, and provides a lucid and comprehensive history of the language. It describes Hausa as it existed in former times and sets out subsequent changes in phonology, including tonology, morphology, grammar, and lexicon. It also contains a large loanword inventory, which highlights the history of Hausa's interaction with other languages and peoples. It offers new insights not only on Hausa in the past, but also on the Hausa language as spoken today. This book is an invaluable resource for specialists in Hausa, Chadic, Afroasiatic, and other African languages as well as for general historical linguists and typologists.

This fully revised third edition integrates updated references, new findings, and modern theories, to present readers with the most thorough and complete introduction to phonetics and phonology.* Exceptionally thorough, including detailed attention to articulatory and acoustic phonetics as well as to the foundations of phonological analysis* Features a number of valuable changes, incorporating new material on the latest findings in speech production studies; greater coverage of prosody, including a major section on autosegmental metrical models; expanded coverage of phonology, including Optimality Theory; and sections on L1 and L2 acquisition, and sociolectal variation* Integrates new findings, theories references throughout, offering students the most thorough and complete knowledge of the subject to date* Includes 125 figures throughout

This book is designed to provide students of phonology with an accessible introduction to the phonological architecture of words. It offers a thorough discussion of the basic building blocks of phonology--in particular features, sounds, syllables and feet--and deals with a range of different theories about these units. The book provides a more detailed analysis of this subject than previously available in introductory textbooks and is an invaluable and indispensable first step toward understanding the major theoretical issues in modern phonology at the word level.

This book explores the dynamics of language changes from sociolinguistic and historical linguistic perspectives. With in-depth case studies from all around the world, it uses diverse approaches across sociolinguistics and historical linguistics to answer questions such as: How and why do language changes begin?; how do language changes spread?; and how can they ultimately be explained? Each chapter explores a different component of language change, including typology, syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, lexicology, discourse strategies, diachronic change, synchronic change, how the deafblind modify sign language, and the accommodation of language to song. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of language change over time, simultaneously advancing current research and suggesting new directions in sociolinguistic and historical linguistic approaches.

Drawing on data from well-known actors in popular films and TV shows, this reference guide surveys the representation of accent in North American film and TV over eight decades. It analyzes the speech of 180 film and television performances from the 1930s to today, looking at how that speech has changed; how it reflects the regional backgrounds, gender, and ethnic ancestry of the actors; and how phonetic variation and change in the 'real world' have been both portrayed in, and possibly influenced by, film and television speech. It also clearly explains the technical concepts necessary for understanding the phonetic analysis of accents. Providing new insights into the role of language in the expression of North American cultural identity, this is essential reading for researchers and advanced students in linguistics, film, television and media studies, and North American studies, as well as the larger community interested in film and television.

This book presents a comparative reconstruction of the common phonology of the Chinese dialects using representative data from living dialects. The resulting phonology includes all categories and phonological distinctions that are represented in the dialect data. It departs from the tradition of using philological sources and non-Chinese borrowings as the basis for a reconstructed system. Based on a strict comparative methodology, the phonology presented encapsulates the shared phonology of the dialects and reflects the real-world distinctions and categories found in the living dialects. For example, the initials preserve the tripartite division that includes voiced obstruents seen in Wu dialects; the finals are comparatively drawn based on the collective dialect data; and the syllable codas preserve the three-way contrasts of consonant stop endings seen in the Cantonese dialects. The data presented allows readers to observe the basis for all of the distinction and categories included in the common phonology and the relationship of that phonology to all of the dialects, and as a result to identify the dialects' disparate developments and evolution. The English translation also includes innovative elements that render it even more useful for researchers than the Chinese original. The book is primarily intended for scholars and researchers investigating the Chinese dialects and their relationships, and the history of Chinese. It is also useful for scholars of Chinese history and literature who need a handy resource providing essential information on the historical phonology of Chinese.

This book addresses various aspects of acoustic-phonetic analysis, including voice quality and fundamental frequency, and the effects of speech fluency and non-native accents, by examining read speech, public speech, and conversations. Voice is a sexually dimorphic trait that can convey important biological and social information about the speaker, and empirical findings suggest that voice characteristics and preferences play an important role in both intra- and intersexual selection, such as competition and mating, and social evaluation. Discussing evaluation criteria like physical attractiveness, pleasantness, likability, and even persuasiveness and charisma, the book bridges the gap between social and biological views on voice attractiveness. It presents conceptual, methodological and empirical work applying methods such as passive listening tests, psychoacoustic rating experiments, and crowd-sourced and interactive scenarios and highlights the diversity not only of the methods used when studying voice attractiveness, but also of the domains investigated, such as politicians' speech, experimental speed dating, speech synthesis, vocal pathology, and voice preferences in human interactions as well as in human-computer and human-robot interactions. By doing so, it identifies widespread and complementary approaches and establishes common ground for further research.

General extenders are phrases like 'or something', 'and everything', 'and things (like that)', 'and stuff (like that)', and 'and so on'. Although they are an everyday feature of spoken language, are crucial in successful interpersonal communication, and have multiple functions in discourse, they have so far gone virtually unnoticed in linguistics. This pioneering work provides a comprehensive description of this new linguistic category. It offers new insights into ongoing changes in contemporary English, the effect of grammaticalization, novel uses as associative plural markers and indicators of intertextuality, and the metapragmatic role of extenders in interaction. The forms and functions of general extenders are presented clearly and accessibly, enabling students to understand a number of different frameworks of analysis in discourse-pragmatic studies. From an applied perspective, the book presents a description of translation equivalents, an analysis of second language variation, and practical exercises for teaching second language learners of English.

This is the most comprehensive account of Catalan phonology ever published. Catalan is a Romance language, occupying a position somewhere between French, Spanish, and Italian. It is the first language of six and a half million people in the northeastern Spain and of the peoples of Andorra, French Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and a small region of Sardinia. Dr Wheeler describes Barcelona pronunciation and the major varieties of western Catalonia, Valencia, and Majorca, and considers social and stylistic variation.
The author's approach is through a clear, pragmatic version of orthodox Optimality Theory and is informed by close attention to articulatory phonetics. He includes a substantial account of post-lexical (phrasal) phonology and has designed his approach to be of maximum use to those seeking either to understand the phonology and morphology of Catalan and its varieties or to set these within a comparative or typological perspective. After an introduction to the varieties of Catalan the author devotes chapters to segment inventories; syllable structure; phrasal phonology; coda voicing; coda place; cluster reduction; epenthesis; stress and prosody; word phonology and allomorphy; and the syllabification of pronominal clitics. The book is fully referenced and contains a comprehensive bibliography. It is likely to be the standard account of its subject for many years.

Sound Patterns of Spoken English is a concise, to-the-point compendium of information about the casual pronunciation of everyday English as compared to formal citation forms. The book examines changes that occur to certain sounds and in certain parts of words and syllables in the casual, unmonitored speech of native English speakers. It outlines major phonological processes found in conversational English; reviews and criticizes attempts to include these processes in phonological theory; and surveys experimental approaches to explaining casual English pronunciation. Among the varieties of English covered are General American and Standard Southern British, but many other accents are mentioned, especially those of mainland Britain. Sound Patterns of Spoken English is of interest to students and scholars in a wide variety of fields, including sociolinguistics, lexicography, rhetoric, language learning and speech sciences, and has an accompanying website - http://www. blackwellpublishing. com/shockey - with examples from different accents.

According to a leading cognitive scientist, we've been teaching reading wrong. The latest science reveals how we can do it right. In 2011, when an international survey reported that students in Shanghai dramatically outperformed American students in reading, math, and science, President Obama declared it a "Sputnik moment": a wake-up call about the dismal state of American education. Little has changed, however, since then: over half of our children still read at a basic level and few become highly proficient. Many American children and adults are not functionally literate, with serious consequences. Poor readers are more likely to drop out of the educational system and as adults are unable to fully participate in the workforce, adequately manage their own health care, or advance their children's education. In Language at the Speed of Sight, internationally renowned cognitive scientist Mark Seidenberg reveals the underexplored science of reading, which spans cognitive science, neurobiology, and linguistics. As Seidenberg shows, the disconnect between science and education is a major factor in America's chronic underachievement. How we teach reading places many children at risk of failure, discriminates against poorer kids, and discourages even those who could have become more successful readers. Children aren't taught basic print skills because educators cling to the disproved theory that good readers guess the words in texts, a strategy that encourages skimming instead of close reading. Interventions for children with reading disabilities are delayed because parents are mistakenly told their kids will catch up if they work harder. Learning to read is more difficult for children who speak a minority dialect in the home, but that is not reflected in classroom practices. By building on science's insights, we can improve how our children read, and take real steps toward solving the inequality that illiteracy breeds. Both an expert look at our relationship with the written word and a rousing call to action, Language at the Speed of Sight is essential for parents, educators, policy makers, and all others who want to understand why so many fail to read, and how to change that.

This book presents a thorough investigation of the main diachronic changes that have taken place in the palatal sounds of the Romance languages, as well as their current patterns of synchronic variation. Andre Zampaulo draws on extensive data not only from diachronic sources, but also from a range of current phonetic, phonological, and dialectal studies to motivate a formal, constraint-based account of palatal sound change. The analysis takes into account the role of phonetic information in the shaping of phonological patterns, approaching sound change from its inception during the speaker-listener interaction and formalizing it as the difference in constraint ranking between the grammar of the speaker and that of the listener-turned-speaker. The volume offers insights into how and why similar types of change may take place in different varieties and/or the same language at different times, and will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology, Romance linguistics, and dialectology more broadly.

Murrinhpatha is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in a region of tropical savannah and tidal inlets on the north coast of the continent. Some 3000 speakers live mostly in the towns of Wadeye and Nganmarriyanga, though they maintain close ties to their traditional lands, totems and spirit ancestors. Murrinhpatha word structure is highly complex, and quite distinct from the better-known Pama-Nyungan languages of central and southern Australia. Murrinhpatha is characterised by prolific compounding, clitic clusters, cumulative inflection, irregular allomorphy and phonological assimilation. This book provides a comprehensive account of these phenomena, giving particular attention to questions of morphological constituency, lexical storage, and whether there is really such thing as a 'word' unit.

The term 'Maya', in Indian traditions, refers to our sensory perception of the world and, as such, to a superficial reality (or 'un-reality') that we must look beyond to find the inner reality of things. Applied to the study of language, we perceive sounds, a superficial reality, and then we seek structures, the underlying reality in what we call phonology, morphology, and syntax. This volume starts with an introduction by the editors, which shows how the various papers contained in the volume reflect the spectrum of research interests of Andrea Calabrese, as well as his influence on the work of colleagues and his students. Contributors, united in their search for the abstract structures that underlie the appearances of languages include linguists such as Adriana Belletti, Paola Beninca, Jonathan Bobaljik, Gugliemo Cinque, David Embick, Mirko Grimaldi, Harry van der Hulst, Michael Kenstowicz, Maria Rita Manzini, Andrew Nevins, Elizabeth Pyatt, Luigi Rizzi, Leonardo Savoia, Laura Vanelli, Bert Vaux, Susi Wurmbrand, as well as a few junior researchers including Mariachiara Berizzi, Giuliano Bocci, Stefano Canalis, Silvio Cruschina, Irina Monich, Beata Moskal, Diego Pescarini, Joseph Perry, Roberto Petrosino, and Kobey Schwayder.

According to well-established views, language has several subsystems where each subsystem (e.g. syntax, morphology, phonology) operates on the basis of hierarchically organised units. When it comes to the graphematic structure of words, however, the received view appears to be that linear structure is all that matters. Contrary to this view, a sub-field of writing systems research emerges that can be called non-linear or supra-segmental graphematics. Drawing on parallels with supra-segmental phonology, supra-segmental graphematics claims the existence and relevance of cross-linguistically available building blocks, such as the syllable and the foot, in alphabetical writing systems, such as the writing systems of German and English. This book explores the graphematic hierarchy with a special focus on the unit foot. Structural, experimental and databased evidence is presented in favour of this approach. In addition, analyses within the optimality theory framework are offered. This work shows that the supra-segmental graphematic approaches are superior to linear ones with respect to explanatory strength and even preciseness of the description. It is thus interesting for academics concerned with writing systems and orthography teaching.

There has been a longstanding bias in the study of spoken language towards using writing to analyse speech. This approach is problematic in that it assumes language to be derived from an autonomous mental capacity to assemble words into sentences, while failing to acknowledge culture-specific ideas linked to writing. Words and sentences are writing constructs that hardly capture the sound-making actions involved in spoken language. This book brings to light research that has long revealed structures present in all languages but which do not match the writing-induced concepts of traditional linguistic analysis. It demonstrates that language processes are not physiologically autonomous, and that speech structures are structures of spoken language. It then illustrates how speech acts can be studied using instrumental records, and how multisensory experiences in semantic memory couple to these acts, offering a biologically-grounded understanding of how spoken language conveys meaning and why it develops only in humans.

Even though second-language learners may master the grammar and vocabulary of the new languages, they almost never achieve a native phonology (accent). Scholars and professionals dealing with second-language learners would agree that this is one of the most persistent challenges they face.
Now, for the first time, Roy Major's "Foreign Accent" covers the exploding scholarship in this area and lays out the issues specifically for audiences in the second language acquisition and applied linguistics community.

This handbook brings together past and current research on all aspects of lying and deception, with chapters contributed by leading international experts in the field. We are confronted daily with cases of lying, deception, bullshitting, and 'fake news', making it imperative to understand how lying works, how it can be defined, and whether it can be detected. A further important issue is whether lying should always be considered a bad thing or if, in some cases, it is simply a useful instrument of human cognition. This volume is the first to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date exploration of these and other issues from the combined perspectives of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. Chapters offer precise definitions of lying and its subtypes, and outline the range of fields in which lying and deception play a role, from empirical lie detection and the acquisition of lying to its role in fiction, metaphor, and humour. They also describe the tools and approaches that are used by scholars researching lying and deception, such as questionnaire studies, EEG, neuroimaging, and the polygraph. The volume will be an essential reference for students and researchers in a range of fields who are looking to deepen their understanding of all aspects of lying and deception, and will contribute to establishing the vibrant new field of interdisciplinary lying research.