All aspects of the concept of collocation - the phenomenon whereby words naturally tend to occur in the company of a restricted set of other words - are covered in this book. It deals in detail with the history of the word collocation, the concepts associated with it and its use in a linguistic context. The authors show the practical means by which the collocational behavior of words can be explored using illustrative computer programs and examine applications in teaching, lexicography and natural language processing that use collocation in formation. The book investigates the place that collocation occupies in theories of language and provides a thoroughly comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the current position of collocation in language studies and applied linguistics.

This book examines the most frequent form of Jew-hatred: Israel-related antisemitism. After defining this hate ideology in its various manifestations and the role the internet plays in it, the author explores the question of how Israel-related antisemitism is communicated and understood through the language used by readers in below-the-line comments. Drawing on a corpus of over 6,000 comments from traditionally left-wing news outlets The Guardian and Die Zeit, the author examines both implicit and explicit comparisons made between modern-day Israel and both colonial Britain and Nazi Germany. His analyses are placed within the context of resurgent neo-nationalism in both countries, and it is argued that these instances of antisemitism perform a multi-faceted role in absolving guilt, re-writing history, and reinforcing in-group status. This book will be of interest not only to linguistics scholars, but also to academics in fields such as internet studies, Jewish studies, hate speech and antisemitism.

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 handbook comprehensively examines social interaction by providing a critical overview of the field of linguistic politeness and impoliteness. Authored by over forty leading scholars, it offers a diverse and multidisciplinary approach to a vast array of themes that are vital to the study of interpersonal communication. The chapters explore the use of (im)politeness in specific contexts as well as wider developments, and variations across cultures and contexts in understandings of key concepts (such as power, emotion, identity and ideology). Within each chapter, the authors select a topic and offer a critical commentary on the key linguistic concepts associated with it, supporting their assertions with case studies that enable the reader to consider the practicalities of (im)politeness studies. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of linguistics, particularly those concerned with pragmatics, sociolinguistics and interpersonal communication. Its multidisciplinary nature means that it is also relevant to researchers across the social sciences and humanities, particularly those working in sociology, psychology and history.

You are at a dinner with someone attractive. She suddenly kisses you. Or he leans unexpectedly across the table and caresses your thigh. Whatever. You know the kind of encounter and the range of possible responses. Consider the kiss. What does it mean, and where does it lead? Does kissing necessarily imply more, and if so how much? These and similar questions of amorous ethics and erotic disquisition are the central to our everyday intimate public lives and they are the lost object of the law of love, the "lex amatoria" collated and presented here.

The long-held belief that acquired aphasia in children is primarily of the non-fluent type has been challenged in recent years. It is also now apparent that children with acquired aphasia have a number of features in common with developmental language-learning disabilities, especially if the linguistic deficits persist long-term. Consequently, in addition to discussing language problems arising from cerebro-vascular accidents occurring in childhood, detailed discussion of each of the childhood linguistic deficits caused by other aetiologies, including head injury infections, cerebral anoxia, neural tube defects, brain tumours and metabolic disorders is presented in this book.

This book uses a corpus of manuscript letters from Bess of Hardwick to investigate how linguistic features characteristic of spoken communication function within early modern epistolary prose. Using these letters as a primary data source with reference to other epistolary materials from the early modern period (1500-1750), the author examines them in a unique and systematic way. The book is the first of its kind to combine a replicable scribal profiling technique, used to identify holograph and scribal handwriting within the letters, with innovative analyses of the language they contain. Furthermore, by adopting a discourse-analytic approach to the language and making reference to the socio-historical context of language use, the book provides an alternative perspective to the one often presented in traditional historical accounts of English. This volume will appeal to students and scholars of early modern English and historical linguistics.

In recent years, the study of formal semantics and formal pragmatics has grown tremendously showing that core aspects of language meaning can be explained by a few principles. These principles are grounded in the logic that is behind - and tightly intertwined with - the grammar of human language. In this book, some of the most prominent figures in linguistics, including Noam Chomsky and Barbara H. Partee, offer new insights into the nature of linguistic meaning and pave the way for the further development of formal semantics and formal pragmatics. Each chapter investigates various dimensions in which the logical nature of human language manifests itself within a language and/or across languages. Phenomena like bare plurals, free choice items, scalar implicatures, intervention effects, and logical operators are investigated in depth and at times cross-linguistically and/or experimentally. This volume will be of interest to scholars working within the fields of semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics.

This open access book presents novel theoretical, empirical and experimental work exploring the nature of mental representations that support natural language production and understanding, and other manifestations of cognition. One fundamental question raised in the text is whether requisite knowledge structures can be adequately modeled by means of a uniform representational format, and if so, what exactly is its nature. Frames are a key topic covered which have had a strong impact on the exploration of knowledge representations in artificial intelligence, psychology and linguistics; cascades are a novel development in frame theory. Other key subject areas explored are: concepts and categorization, the experimental investigation of mental representation, as well as cognitive analysis in semantics. This book is of interest to students, researchers, and professionals working on cognition in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology.

This book is a study of techniques used to introduce, continue and change the discourse topic in expository writing. Discourse topic is examined by focusing on the sequential techniques and strategies in a step-by-step process. To describe the process a model of sequentiality is proposed. The aims of the book are to advance current thinking in discourse analysis and to provide a practical exemplar of expository discourse.

This collection shows students of English and applied linguistics ways in which language and literary study can be integrated. By drawing on a wide range of texts by mainly British and American writers, from a variety of different periods, the contributors show how discourse stylistics can provide models for the systematic description of, for example, dialogue in fiction; language of drama and balladic poetry; speech presentation; the interactive properties of metre; the communicative context of author/reader. Among the texts examined are novels, poetry and drama by major twentieth-century writers such as Joyce, Auden, Pinter and Hopkins, as well as examples from Shakespeare, Donne and Milton. Each chapter has a wide range of exercises for practical analysis, an extensive glossary and a comprehensive bibliography with suggestions for further reading. The book will be particularly useful to undergraduate students of English and applied linguistics and advanced students of modern languages or English as a foreign language.

The use of vague language (for example expressions such as 'bags of time', 'doing stuff', 'sort of thing', 'and all that') is an aspect of communicative competence of considerable social importance. Vague Language Explored examines the function of vague language in context. It spans genre analysis, critical discourse analysis, psycholinguistics and cross-cultural sociolinguistics, in a variety of world cultures. It suggests also applications in TEFL, asking questions such as 'What should learners be taught to understand and use, and why?' and suggesting directions for future research.

This volume brings together the latest research on the semantics of nouns in both familiar and less well-documented languages, including English, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, the Papuan language Koromu, the Dravidian language Solega, and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara from Australia. Chapters offer systematic and detailed analyses of scores of individual nouns across a range of conceptual domains, including 'people', 'places', and 'living things', with each analysis fully grounded in a unified methodological framework. They not only cover central theoretical issues specific to the analysis of the domain in question, but also empirically investigate the different types of meaning relations that hold between nouns, such as meronymy, hyponymy, taxonomy, and antonymy. The collection of studies show how in-depth meaning analysis anchored in a cross-linguistic and cross-domain perspective can lead to unexpected insights into the common and particular ways in which speakers of different languages conceptualize, categorize, and order the world around them. This unique volume brings together a new generation of semanticists from across the globe, and will be of interest to researchers in linguistics, psychology, anthropology, biology, and philosophy.

The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics is a comprehensive and accessible reference resource to research in contemporary cognitive linguistics. Written by leading figures in the field, the volume provides readers with an authoritative overview of methods and current research topics and future directions. The volume covers all the most important issues, concepts, movements and approaches in the field. It devotes space to looking specifically at the major figures and their contributions. It is a complete resource for postgraduate students and researchers working within cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and those interested more generally in language and cognition.

Generative analyses of comparatives traditionally include two construction specific ellipsis operations, Comparative Deletion and Comparative Ellipsis. Drawing from a wide array of new data, the present monograph develops a novel, directly semantically interpretable analysis of comparatives which does not require reference to designated deletion processes. On the one hand, Comparative Deletion is reinterpreted in terms of overt movement of the degree predicate. The resulting head-raising analysis contributes to an understanding of various puzzles for comparatives related to binding, locality and the influence of word-order variation on the interpretation and size of the ellipsis site. On the other hand, it is argued that Comparative Ellipsis can entirely be subsumed under standardly sanctioned ellipsis operations such as Gapping, Right Node Raising and Across-the-Board-movement. In addition, the study presents arguments for an ellipsis analysis of phrasal comparatives (such as Millhouse saw more movies than Bart). Empirical support for this conception derives, among others, from the complex interdependencies between ellipsis and serialization in English and German, and the binding properties of remnants inside the comparative complement. The study is directed towards readers interested in formal syntax and the syntax/semantics interface.

This book provides a very readable introduction to how children acquire and use language. It is aimed at advanced students of psychology, language, and education. Focusing on research evidence and everyday examples, it covers a broad range of topics and assumes no prior knowledge of either developmental psychology or linguistics. The emphasis of The Language of Children is on explaining psychological (cognitive, biological, and social) variables in language. The development of human language use is first related to the development of signaling in other species and to the early interaction between the infant and his or her mother (or other caregiver). The author then goes on to relate the child's language development to broader cognitive development, and considers the influence of schooling and social experience.

This book presents and discusses theoretical and practical perspectives on English pronunciation theory, research and practice in order to establish evidence-based pronunciation teaching models, teaching and research priorities, and recommendations for best practices in teaching English pronunciation. The chapters provide a balanced view of theory and practice based on the authors' empirical findings and their extensive professional experiences in English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) and lingua franca contexts. The book identifies pronunciation teaching priorities that take into account individual learner variables, disseminates knowledge about theoretical frameworks, explores teachers' and learners' beliefs and practices regarding pronunciation instruction, and shares empirical findings regarding teacher education and teaching interventions in diverse contexts with English learners of different ages and language backgrounds. Overall, the chapters highlight the need to focus on intelligibility models that consider individual learner differences, and teacher and contextual variables.

The comprehension, retention and production of idiomatic expressions is one of the most difficult areas of the lexicon for second language (L2) learners, even very advanced students, to master. This book investigates this under-researched and interesting aspect of language acquisition, shedding light on both conventional uses of idiomatic expressions as well as creative variant forms. The chapters in the book delve into different aspects of idiomatic mastery: students' comprehension of canonically used idioms in both their first and second language; the effects of multimedia and visualization techniques on learners' comprehension and retention of L2 idioms; students' misinterpretations of L2 idioms; L2 learners' comprehension of creative idiom variants and their use of idioms in free composition writing.

Small Dictionaries and Curiosity tells a story which has not been told before, that of the first European wordlists of minority and unofficial languages and dialects, from the end of the Middle Ages to the early nineteenth century. These wordlists were collected by people who were curious about the unrecorded or little-known languages they heard around them. Between them, they document more than 40 language varieties, from a Basque-Icelandic pidgin of the North Atlantic to the Kalmyk language of the lower Volga. The book gives an account of about 90 of these dictionaries and wordlists, some of them single-page jottings and some of them full-sized printed books, paying attention to their content and their physical form alike. It explores the kinds of curiosity and imagination by which their makers were moved: the lover of all languages hearing new voices in an inn; the speaker of a dying language recording his linguistic memories; the patriot deploying his lexicographical findings in the service of an emerging nation. It offers an encounter with the diverse voices of the entirety of post-medieval Europe, turning away from the people of the courts and universities whose language was documented in big dictionaries to listen to people who did not speak the languages of power: the people of remote places and dying communities; the illiterate poor, settled or homeless; migrants from the edges of Europe and beyond.

This book examines the formations, internal tensions, and promotion of macroconcepts as novel ideas borrowed from Europe but mediated through Meiji Japan. Corpus-based discourse analysis Uses two most influential periodicals Xinmin Congbao and Minbao Represents the first study in English on this press debate between Xinmin Congbao and Minbao that contributes significantly to the intellectual foundation of modern China.

This book synthesizes and integrates 40 years of research on the semantics of questions, and its interface with pragmatics and syntax, conducted within the formal semantics tradition. A wide range of topics are covered, including weak-strong exhaustiveness, maximality, functional answers, single-multiple-trapped list answers, embedding predicates, quantificational variability, concealed questions, weak islands, polar and alternative questions, negative polarity, and non-canonical questions. The literature on this rich set of topics, theoretically diverse and scattered across multiple venues, is often hard to assimilate. Veneeta Dayal, drawing on her own research, brings them together for the first time in a coherent, concise, and well-structured whole. Each chapter begins with a non-technical introduction to the issues discussed; semantically sophisticated accounts are then presented incrementally, with the major points summarized at the end of each section. Written in an accessible style, this book provides both a guide to one of the most vibrant areas of research in natural language and an account of how this area of study is developing. It will be a unique resource for the novice and expert alike, and seeks to appeal to a variety of readers without compromising depth and breadth of coverage.

This book includes interviews with fourteen internationally-acclaimed leading figures in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), who speak on seminal issues in the field as well as their own contributions to SLA scholarship. As well as covering the contributors' backgrounds and academic achievements, the interviews also delve into their areas of expertise, current theoretical and practical considerations, and contemporary questions, developments and challenges in SLA. The author probes their views on current topics including input and interaction, vocabulary acquisition, teaching pronunciation, writing development, syntactic processing, multilingualism, L1 attrition, complex dynamic systems, processing instruction, instructed second language acquisition, and technology in language teaching. An introduction by the author draws out the key themes and debates in the field today, and highlights areas for future research and further exploration, and a foreword is provided by Rod Ellis. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Applied Linguistics, Teacher Education and Methodology, and Second and Foreign Language Education.

Anglo-Saxons valued education yet understood how precarious it could be, alternately bolstered and undermined by fear, desire, and memory. They praised their teachers in official writing, but composed and translated scenes of instruction that revealed the emotional and cognitive complexity of learning. Irina Dumitrescu explores how early medieval writers used fictional representations of education to explore the relationship between teacher and student. These texts hint at the challenges of teaching and learning: curiosity, pride, forgetfulness, inattention, and despair. Still, these difficulties are understood to be part of the dynamic process of pedagogy, not simply a sign of its failure. The book demonstrates the enduring concern of Anglo-Saxon authors with learning throughout Old English and Latin poems, hagiographies, histories, and schoolbooks.

Denis Donoghue turns his attention to the practice of metaphor and to its lesser cousins, simile, metonym, and synecdoche. Metaphor ("a carrying or bearing across") supposes that an ordinary word could have been used in a statement but hasn't been. Instead, something else, something unexpected, appears. The point of a metaphor is to enrich the reader's experience by bringing different associations to mind. The force of a good metaphor is to give something a different life, a new life. The essential character of metaphor, Donoghue says, is prophetic. Metaphors intend to change the world by changing our sense of it.

At the center of Donoghue's study is the idea that metaphor permits the greatest freedom in the use of language because it exempts language from the local duties of reference and denotation. Metaphors conspire with the mind in its enjoyment of freedom. Metaphor" celebrates imaginative life par excellence, from Donoghue's musings on Aquinas' Latin hymns, interspersed with autobiographical reflection, to his agile and perceptive readings of Wallace Stevens.

When Donoghue surveys the history of metaphor and resistance to it, going back to Aristotle and forward to George Lakoff, he is a sly, cogent, and persuasive companion. He also addresses the question of whether or not metaphors can ever truly die. Reflected on every page of Metaphor" are the accumulated wisdom of decades of reading and a sheer love of language and life.