Linguistic constructions such as the English a ~Mary is cleverer than/as clever as Johna (TM) reveal a number of non-trivial problems, particularly if one includes Italian, which the present study resolves with the aid of a new grammatical model. What is new for Italian is the extension of the perspective beyond the comparative to other types of comparative construction, which are examined here systematically and in detail for the first time. It is shown that apparently differing constructions can actually be described on the syntactic level in a unitary manner.

The study uses a broad empirical database to clarify the variable time reference and modal reading ("unreal"/"potential") of non-past related (i.e. temporally refunctioned) forms such as 'wAre gekommen' [would have come] (e.g. 'Morgen wAre sie gekommen' [She would have come tomorrow]) and differences in meaning compared with forms such as 'kAme/wA1/4rde kommen' [would come]. The study concludes with a survey of the temporal refunctioning of the past subjunctive back into the 16th century.

The book discusses the central concepts of National Socialist art policy: 'degenerate art' and 'German art'. With the aid of linguistic discourse analysis the history of these concepts is traced from their emergence in the 18th century and their development investigated up to the deontic potential they were invested with in National Socialist criticism of literature and art. The author demonstrates how these two concepts were drawn upon in word and text as a foundation for bans on artists and the burning of paintings in the Third Reich.

Pragmatics is the study of human communication: the choices speakers make to express their intended meaning and the kinds of inferences that hearers draw from an utterance in the context of its use. This Handbook surveys pragmatics from different perspectives, presenting the main theories in pragmatic research, incorporating seminal research as well as cutting-edge solutions. It addresses questions of rational and empirical research methods, what counts as an adequate and successful pragmatic theory, and how to go about answering problems raised in pragmatic theory. In the fast-developing field of pragmatics, this Handbook fills the gap in the market for a one-stop resource to the wide scope of today's research and the intricacy of the many theoretical debates. It is an authoritative guide for graduate students and researchers with its focus on the areas and theories that will mark progress in pragmatic research in the future.

Language is more than words: it includes the prosodic features and patterns that we use, subconsciously, to frame meanings and achieve our goals in our interaction with others. Here, Nigel G. Ward explains how we do this, going beyond intonation to show how pitch, timing, intensity and voicing properties combine to form meaningful temporal configurations: prosodic constructions. Bringing together new findings and hitherto-scattered observations from phonetic and pragmatic studies, this book describes over twenty common prosodic patterns in English conversation. Using examples from real conversations, it illustrates how prosodic constructions serve essential functions such as inviting, showing approval, taking turns, organizing ideas, reaching agreement, and evoking action. Prosody helps us establish rapport and nurture relationships, but subtle differences in prosody across languages and subcultures can be damagingly misunderstood. The findings presented here will enable both native speakers of English and learners to listen more sensitively and communicate more effectively.

It is a commonplace in educational policy and theory to claim that digital technology has 'transformed' the university, the nature of learning and even the essence of what it means to be a scholar or a student. However, these claims have not always been based on strong research evidence. What are students and scholars actually doing in the day-to-day life of the digital university? This book examines in detail how the world of the digital interacts with texts, artefacts, devices and humans, in the contemporary university setting. Weaving together perspectives from a range of thinkers and disciplinary sources, Lesley Gourlay draws on ideas from posthuman and new materialist theory in particular, to open up our understanding about how digital knowledge practices operate. She proposes that digital engagement in the university should not be regarded as 'virtual' or disembodied, but instead may be understood as a complex set of entanglements of the body, texts and material artefacts, making a case that agency and the ways in which knowledge emerges should be regarded as 'more than human'.

The Logic of Narratives is a linguistic study of narrative discourse that contextualizes the 'logical' rather than the 'stylistic' aspect of narratives within the range of current issues in the interdisciplinary study of narratives being conducted in linguistics, philosophy, literature, cognitive science, and Artificial Intelligence. The book quantitatively analyzes naturally occurring narratives randomly selected from the British National Corpus (BNC) as well as James Joyce's (1882-1941) The Dead (1914) and Fredrik Backman's (1981-) A Man Called Ove (2012). Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) formalization (Kamp and Reyle, 1993) is employed and enriched with the representations and interpretations of perspective/point of view, genre differences, coherence relations, and episodes, which are called in the book Perspectival DRT (PDRT).

Critics shudder at mixed metaphors like 'that wet blanket is a loose cannon', but admire 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player', and all the metaphors packed into Macbeth's 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' speech. How is it that metaphors are sometimes mixed so badly and other times put together so well? In Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse, Karen Sullivan employs findings from linguistics and cognitive science to explore how metaphors are combined and why they sometimes mix. Once we understand the ways that metaphoric ideas are put together, we can appreciate why metaphor combinations have such a wide range of effects. Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse includes analyses of over a hundred metaphors from politicians, sportspeople, writers and other public figures, and identifies the characteristics that make these metaphors annoying, amusing or astounding.

Stefanie Lange erforscht das immersive Erleben von enhanced E-Books. Die Rezeption dieser digitalen Literaturform unterscheidet sich vor allem durch ihre Multimodalitat und Interaktivitat vom Lesen von Printbuchern. Somit verandern sich die Wahrnehmung und das Leseverstehen. Durch eine empirische Studie werden diese Veranderungen und Unterschiede zum Printlesen, mit Fokussierung des immersiven Lesens, sichtbar gemacht. Hierbei geht es auch darum, herauszufinden, welche Potentiale und Chancen enhanced E-Books fur den Literaturunterricht haben koennen.

Die PEWU-Studie liefert eine empirisch untermauerte Einschatzung des Nutzens von portablen elektronischen Woerterbuchern (PEW) als unterrichtlichem Hilfsmittel. Jan Kassel untersuchte uber anderthalb Jahre den Einsatz von PEW im Englischunterricht. Elektronische Woerterbucher wecken die Bereitschaft zur Woerterbucharbeit und foerdern die Lernmotivation. Leistungsschwache Englischlernende nutzen die Besonderheiten von PEW und schlagen selbst polyseme Lemmata erfolgreich nach. Durch die Identifikation von potenziellen Fehlerquellen einerseits und der Analyse des noetigen Wissens fur erfolgreiches Nachschlagen andererseits wird eine Basis fur eine woerterbuchdidaktische Konzeption geschaffen.

There is growing acceptance among pragmaticians that identity is often (de)constructed and negotiated in communication in order to impact the outcome of the interaction. Filling an important gap in current research, this book offers the first systematic, pragmatic theory to account for the generative mechanisms of identity in communication. Using data drawn from real-life communicative contexts in China, Xinren Chen examines why identity strategies are adopted, how and why identities are constructed and what factors determine their appropriateness and effectiveness. In answering these questions, this book argues that identity is an essential communicative resource, present across various domains and able to be exploited to facilitate the realization of communicative needs. Demonstrating that communication in Chinese involves the dynamic choice and shift of identity by discursive means, Exploring Identity Work in Chinese Communication suggests that identity is intersubjective in communication in all languages and that it can be accepted, challenged, or even deconstructed.

In Reference and Identity in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures: The Same God?, D. E. Buckner argues that all reference is story-relative. We cannot tell which historical individual a person is talking or writing about or addressing in prayer without familiarity with the narrative (oral or written) which introduces that individual to us, so we cannot understand reference to God, nor to his prophets, nor to any other character mentioned in the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim scriptures, without reference to those very scriptures. In this context we must understand God as the person who "walked in the garden in the cool of the day" (Gen. 3:8), and who is continuously referred to in the books of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, as well as the Quran. Further developing ideas presented by the late Fred Sommers in his seminal The Logic of Natural Language, Buckner argues that singular reference and singular conception is empty outside such a context.

In Rationalist Pragmatism: A Framework for Moral Objectivism, Mitchell Silver draws from a wide array of philosophical fields to formulate a comprehensive theory of ethics. He argues that an understanding of justification rooted in pragmatism leads to practical principles that apply to all those we would recognize as persons. The account bears implications for the nature of selfhood, the freedom of the will, the meaning of moral terms, the power of moral principles to motivate, conceptions of truth, the nature of value, and the use and abuse of abstract moral theorizing. Rationalist Pragmatism develops its pragmatically informed morality in light of prominent ethical schools, as well as relevant topics in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, including the correspondence theory of truth, inferentialist semantics, motivational internalism, the source of value, and experimental philosophy. Finally, Silver explores concrete moral and political implications of his theory, demonstrating that metaethics can affect positions regarding the morality of personal relations; the treatment of animals; and political assessments of democracy, socialism, and nationalism. Silver maintains that our interest in truth-our rational nature as practical and theoretical beings-forms us as a community of mutually recognizing truth seekers.

Many of the world's languages permit or require clause-initial positioning of the primary predicate, potentially alongside some or all of its dependents. While such predicate fronting (where "fronting" may or may not involve movement) is a widespread phenomenon, it is also subject to intricate and largely unexplained variation. In Parameters of Predicate Fronting, Vera Lee-Schoenfeld and Dennis Ott bring together leaders in the field of comparative syntax to explore the empirical manifestations and theoretical modelling of predicate fronting across languages. There exists by now a rich literature on predicate fronting, but few attempts have been made at synthesizing the resulting empirical observations and theoretical implementations. While individual phenomena have been described in some detail, we are currently far from a complete understanding of the uniformity and variation underlying the wider cross-linguistic picture. This volume takes steps towards this goal by showcasing the state of the art in research on predicate fronting and the parameters governing its realization in a range of diverse languages. Covering topics like prosody, VP-fronting, and predicate doubling across a wide arrange of languages, including English, German, Malagasy, Niuean, Ch'ol, Asante, Twi, Limbum, Krachi, Hebrew, and multiple sign languages, this collection enriches our understanding of the predicate fronting phenomenon.

This book explores and analyzes the ways fat acceptance activists have advocated through language and tactical action. Using Anthony Giddens' concept of Structuration in the make-up of ideology, the book identifies how fat acceptance activists use signification, domination, and legitimation to strengthen their cause. Thus, their actions are both rhetorical and tactical. Fat-considered a descriptor and not a negative label among activists-is highly stigmatized for arbitrary reasons in various areas of life ranging from the fashion industry to health care. This books shows how fat acceptance activists work to remedy this situation.