The book presents a series of studies that probe young children's knowledge of a relatively well-defined, abstract semantic realm, that of definite and indefinite reference. Topics investigated include children's knowledge of the difference between referring to particular objects (e.g. I have a dog, which refers to a particular dog) and no particular objects at all (e.g. I don't have a dog, which makes reference to no particular dog) and their knowledge of how to account for the knowledge of their listeners in situations, e.g. in which they have in mind a particular reference but their listen does not. Because overlapping problems are investigated by a wide variety of methods, it is possible to verify more certainly the true level of children's performance. At the same time, the investigation by many methods illustrates how methodological problems may systematically affect and at times even distort our picture of development if not carefully allowed for.

This Handbook is a comprehensive volume outlining the foremost issues regarding research and teaching of second language speaking, examining such diverse topics as cognitive processing, articulation, knowledge of pragmatics, instruction in sub-components of speaking (e.g., grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary) and the attrition of the first language. Outstanding academics have contributed chapters to provide an integrated and inclusive perspective on oral language skills. Specialized contexts for speaking are also explored (e.g., English as a Lingua Franca, workplace, and interpreting). The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Speaking will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars in applied linguistics, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and education.

Using novel examples from live, unscripted radio/TV broadcasts and the internet, this path-breaking book will force us to reconsider the nature of everyday English and its complex interplay of syntactic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors. Uncovering unusual types of non-standard relative clauses, Andrew Radford develops theoretically sophisticated analyses in an area that has traditionally hardly been touched on: that of nonstandard (yet not clearly dialectal) variation in English. Making sense of a huge amount of data, the book demonstrates that some types of non-standard relative clauses have a complex syntactic structure of their own in which the relation between the relative clause and its antecedent is either syntactically encoded or pragmatic in nature, while others come about as a result of hypercorrection, and yet others arise from processing errors.

This book offers an in-depth explanation of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and the methods necessary to implement it in the language classroom successfully. * Combines a survey of theory and research in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) with insights from language teaching and the philosophy of education * Details best practice for TBLT programs, including discussion of learner needs and means analysis; syllabus design; materials writing; choice of methodological principles and pedagogic procedures; criterion-referenced, task-based performance assessment; and program evaluation * Written by an esteemed scholar of second language acquisition with over 30 years of research and classroom experience * Considers diffusion of innovation in education and the potential impact of TBLT on foreign and second language learning

Presenting a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of theoretical and descriptive research in the field, The Handbook of Conversation Analysis brings together contributions by leading international experts to provide an invaluable information resource and reference for scholars of social interaction across the areas of conversation analysis, discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, interpersonal communication, discursive psychology and sociolinguistics. * Ideal as an introduction to the field for upper level undergraduates and as an in-depth review of the latest developments for graduate level students and established scholars * Five sections outline the history and theory, methods, fundamental concepts, and core contexts in the study of conversation, as well as topics central to conversation analysis * Written by international conversation analysis experts, the book covers a wide range of topics and disciplines, from reviewing underlying structures of conversation, to describing conversation analysis' relationship to anthropology, communication, linguistics, psychology, and sociology

How did Ronald Reagan go from calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" in his first term as president to saying the US had "forged a satisfying new closeness" with the Soviets by the end of his second term? In Reagan's Soviet Rhetoric: Telling the Soviet Redemption Story, rhetorical scholar Mark LaVoie examines the ways Reagan negotiated his shift from a vehemently anti-communist discourse to a rhetoric of guarded optimism about the future of US-Soviet relations that ultimately revealed a Soviet redemption narrative. Following Reagan's Soviet rhetoric from his 1947 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee to his Farewell Address in 1989, LaVoie considers the President's use of "Soviet/Nazi analogy," "historical narrative," "reciprocity," and other rhetorical strategies in creating the narrative. Scholars and students of rhetoric, history, and international relations will find this book particularly interesting.

This book presents a novel semantic account of weak, or selective, islands. Weak islands are configurations that block the displacement of certain elements in a sentence. Examples of island violations with acceptable counterexamples include '#How much wine haven't you drunk?' (but 'Which girl haven't you introduced to Mary?'), '#How does John regret that he danced at the party?' (but 'Who does John regret that he invited to the party?') or '#How much wine do you know whether you will produce?' (but 'Which glass of wine do you know whether you'll poison?'). For forty years or more, explanations of the unacceptability of these island constructions have been syntactic. Syntactic accounts have also provided some of the key empirical motivation for Chomsky's claim that universal grammar (UG) contains language independent abstract syntactic constraints. But syntactic accounts, however subtle, fail to explain why many weak island violations are made almost acceptable by modals and attitude verbs, as in 'How much wine aren't you allowed to drink?'; 'How fast do you hope Lewis didn't drive?'; or 'How does Romeo regret he was allowed to go to the party?' Dr Abrusan considers which contexts and expressions create - or are sensitive to - weak island violations, and examines the factors that go some way to curing them. She puts forward a semantic analysis to account for the unacceptability of violations of negative, presuppositional, quantificational and wh-islands. She explains why grammaticality violations can be obviated by certain modal expressions, and why and how far the grammaticality judgments of speakers depend on the context of the utterance. The book argues that there is no need to assume abstract syntactic rules in order to derive these facts; rather, they can be made to follow from independent semantic principles. If correct, this work has a fundamental consequence for the field of linguistics in general: it removes some of the most important reasons for postulating abstract syntactic rules as part of UG, and hence weakens the arguments for postulating a module of UG.

This book provides new insights into the acquisition of functional categories in child language. Operating within the Minimalist Framework (Chomsky 1995) it examines in particular the availability of Determiner Phrases in the grammar of young children acquiring Spanish as a first language. The analysis reveals an interaction in child grammar around the production of bare nominals, proto-determiners and full determiner phrases. Socarr's performs both qualitative and quantitative analyses to point to a link between the development stages children go through, and the occurrence of these elements in their speech. The work goes on to address the language acquisition debate between the continuity and discontinuity hypotheses, aligning the findings with a conclusion on how best to organise the theory.

AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE American Sign Language (ASL) is the visual-gestural language used by most of the deaf community in the United States and parts of Canada. On the surface, this language (as all signed languages) seems radically different from the spoken languages which have been used to formulate theories of linguistic princi ples and parameters. However, the position taken in this book is that when the surface effects of modality are stripped away, ASL will be seen to follow many of the patterns proposed as universals for human language. If these theoretical constructs are meant to hold for language in general, then they should hold for natural human language in any modality; and ifASL is such a natural human language, then it too must be accounted for by any adequate theory of Universal Grammar. For this rea son, the study of ASL can be vital for proposed theories of Universal Grammar. Recent work in several theoretical frameworks of syntax as well as phonology have argued that indeed, ASL is such a lan guage. I will assume then, that principles of Universal Gram mar, and principles that derive from it, are applicable to ASL, and in fact that ASL can serve as one of the languages which test Universal Grammar. There is an important distinction to be drawn, however, be tween what is called here 'American Sign Language', and other forms of manual communication."

This book reflects the cutting edge in ecostylistic approaches to nature, the environment and sustainability as represented in contemporary non-literary discourse. Firstly, the book presents the ecolinguistic and stylistic terms and theories applied in this ecostylistic analysis (ecosophy, beneficial, ambivalent and destructive discourses; and foregrounding, point of view, metaphor), and reviews the most recent literature in the field of ecostylistics. Secondly, the book examines the occurrences of five marker words (nature, environment, ecosystem, ecology, sustainability) on the websites of five environmental organisations and agencies (Forestry England, Greenpeace International, National Park Service, Navdanya International, World Wide Fund for Nature). The main research purpose of this study is to identify beneficial discourses in the environet and to investigate the beneficial ecostylistic strategies utilised to produce them. Above all, this book reminds us humans that we do not stand apart from nature: we are a part of it. The book will be of interest to scholars of stylistics, ecolinguistics and ecocriticism, as well as scholars of discourse analysis, environmental communication and environmental humanities.

This book provides a state-of-the-art review of the acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect, in both first and second language acquisition. More specifically, it presents a comprehensive analysis of how child and adult speakers learn to mark aspect, an important subsystem of language that marks the temporal contour of events by means of inherent lexical meanings and/or grammatical morphology (in contrast to tense which marks the temporal location of events with respect to past, present, and future).

Readers from linguistics, psychology, language acquisition, language education, and cognitive science should all find this book a relevant and important text for their research and teaching.

This book places Li Ji (the Book of Rites) back in the overall context of "books," "rites" and its research history, drawing on the interrelations between myth, ritual and "materialized" symbols to do so. Further, it employs the double perspectives of "books" and "rites" to explore the sources and symbols of the capping ceremony (rites of passage), decode the prototypes of Miao and Ming Tang, and restore the discourse patterns of "people of five directions." The book subsequently investigates the formation and function of the Yue Ling calendar and disaster ritual, so as to reveal the human cognitive encoding and metalanguage of ritual behavior involved. In the process, it demonstrates that Li Ji, its textual memories, archaeological remains and "traditional ceremony" narratives are all subject to the latent myth coding mechanism in China's cultural system, while the "compilation" and "materialized" remains are merely forms of ritual refactoring, interpretation and exhibition, used when authority seeks the aid of ritual civilization to strengthen its legitimacy and maintain the social order.

Our understanding of the concept of narrative has undergone a significant transformation over time, particularly today as new communication technologies are developed and popularized. As new narrative genres are born and old ones undergo great change by the minute, a thorough understanding can shed light on which storytelling elements work best in what format. That deep understanding can then help build strong, satisfying stories. The Handbook of Research on Narrative Interactions is an essential publication that examines the relationships between types of narratives in a shifting and widening scope of storytelling forms. While highlighting a wide range of topics including contemporary culture, advertising, and transmedia storytelling, this book is ideally designed for media professionals, content creators, advertisers, entrepreneurs, researchers, academicians, and students.

This book emphasizes the advantages of examining discourse connectivity from a constructionist perspective and highlights the role of discourse configurations in the construction of meaning. The research contained advances the field of cognitive classification and categorization of discourse constructions. The text is a great improvement in the discourse analysis literature, since it uniquely clarifies the subtleties of meaning between different discourse markers that are frequently treated as equivalent by lexicographers. It is unique in being the first contribution to the creation of a Constructicon at the discourse level and it fills an important gap within cognitively oriented constructionist accounts that have mostly restricted their analyses to argument-structure and illocutionary constructions. This yearbook appeals to students and researchers working within corpus linguistics.

Semiotics has had a profound impact on our comprehension of a wide range of phenomena, from how animals signify and communicate, to how people read TV commercials. This series features books on semiotic theory and applications of that theory to understanding media, language, and related subjects. The series publishes scholarly monographs of wide appeal to students and interested non-specialists as well as scholars. AAS is a peer-reviewed series of international scope.

Stefano Predelli presents an original account of the relationships between the central semantic notions of meaning and truth. Part One begins with the study of phenomena that have little or nothing to do with the effects of meaning on truth. Predelli warns against what he calls 'the Fallacy of Misplaced Character', and is concerned with sentences such as 'there sometimes exist sentences containing exactly eight words', 'I am now uttering a non-contradictory sentence', or 'I exist'. In Part Two, he moves on to further cases which bear no interesting relations with questions of truth, but which, unlike those in Part One, have important repercussions on questions of meaning. The resulting 'Theory of Bias' is applied to expressive interjections (with a chapter about the logical properties of 'alas'), to instances of register and coarse slang, to honorifics and nicknames, and to derogatory slurs. Part Three draws from the previous two parts, and argues that some notorious semantic problems ought to be approached from the viewpoint of the Theory of Bias. Predelli starts with vocatives, dates, and signatures, and introduces the notion of 'obstinate indexicality', which then guides his solution to Quine's 'Giorgione' puzzle, his version of the demonstrative theory quotation, and his defence of the bare-boned approach to demonstratives and demonstrations.

"Caged in Our Own Signs: A Book About Semiotics" is a primer of semiotics, intended for general readers as well as communication majors. The first five chapters introduce the basic constructs, models, assumptions, frameworks for semiotic thinking, and other elements that underpin contemporary semiotics. This volume also provides the reader with semiotic methodology to analyze issues of postmodernism, of text semiotics, and of mass cultural semiotics. This book is written in such a way that the reader may easily apply the semiotic knowledge to the everyday conversation and discourse.

This book addresses an important aspect of how language is used in written communication: the ways that writers reflect on their texts to refer to themselves, their readers or the text itself. This is known as METADISCOURSE. Metadiscourse is a key resource in language, as it allows the writer to engage with readers in familiar and expected ways. Writers use the devices of metadiscourse to adjust the level of personality in their texts, to offer a representation of themselves and their arguments. This helps the reader organise, interpret and evaluate the information presented in the text. Metadiscourse is therefore crucial to successful communication. Knowing how to identify metadiscourse as a reader is a key skill to be learnt by students of discourse analysis. Learning how to use metadiscourse in writing is an important tool for students of academic writing in both the L1 and L2 context. This book has four main purposes: - to provide an accessible introduction to metadiscourse, discussing its role and importance in written communication and reviewing current thinking on the topic. - to explore examples of metadiscourse in a range of texts from business, academic, journalistic, and student writing - to offer a new theory of metadiscourse - to show the relevance of this theory to students, academics and language teachers.

Semiotics, or the study of signs, plays an increasingly important role within marketing as a guide to psychological and social aspects of communication. Jean-Marie Floch provides an introduction to the potential offered by a semiotic approach to a variety of marketing and communication problems or situations. Key semiotic concepts and principles are gradually introduced using real life studies.

This book provides a corpus-led analysis of multi-word units (MWUs) in English, specifically fixed pairs of nouns which are linked by a conjunction, such as 'mum and dad', 'bride and groom' and 'law and order'. Crucially, the occurrence pattern of such pairs is dependent on genre, and this book aims to document the structural distribution of some key Linked Noun Groups (LNGs). The author looks at the usage patterns found in a range of poetry and fiction dating from the 17th to 20th century, and also highlights the important role such binomials play in academic English, while acknowledging that they are far less common in casual spoken English. His findings will be highly relevant to students and scholars working in language teaching, stylistics, and language technology (including AI).

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.

The success of VietnaM's August Revolution of 1945 can be attributed in part to Ho Chi Minh's reconstitutive rhetoric, a form of rhetorical discourse that gave the Vietnamese people a new sense of identification. This reawakened identity in turn influenced a renewed demand for nationalism and independence. This study explores the reconstitutive rhetoric of Ho Chi Minh. In doing so, it advances rhetorical theory founded on nonWestern premises and examines the cultural differences responsible for creating a rhetoric whose focus is nonEurocentric.

Most current thinking on reconstitutive discourse has focused on Western premises. Decaro challenges some of these premises and adds a new dimension to reconstitutive understanding. Ho Chi Minh utilized the cultural heritage of the Vietnamese people as a means of creating his persona--a powerful aspect of his ability to persuade. In understanding Ho Chi Minh's unique form of discourse, it is then possible to see how he was able to unify his country in order to sustain a protracted conflict with the goal of securing national independence.

GOAL This is the funniest book I have ever written - and the ambiguity here is deliberate. Much of this book is about deliberate ambiguity, described as unambiguously as possible, so the previous sentence is probably the fIrst, last, and only deliberately ambiguous sentence in the book. Deliberate ambiguity will be shown to underlie much, if not all, of verbal humor. Some of its forms are simple enough to be perceived as deliberately ambiguous on the surface; in others, the ambiguity results from a deep semantic analysis. Deep semantic analysis is the core of this approach to humor. The book is the fIrst ever application of modem linguistic theory to the study of humor and it puts forward a formal semantic theory of verbal humor. The goal of the theory is to formulate the necessary and sufficient conditions, in purely semantic terms, for a text to be funny. In other words, if a formal semantic analysis of a text yields a certain set of semantic proptrties which the text possesses, then the text is recognized as a joke. As any modem linguistic theory, this semantic theory of humor attempts to match a natural intuitive ability which the native speaker has, in this particular case, the ability to perceive a text as funny, i. e. , to distinguish a joke from a non-joke.