New perspectives in interpreting contemporary family and reproductive - haviour of Mediterranean Europe 1. THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF FERTILITY AND THE FAMILY IN EUROPE The countries of southern Europe have begun to reduce conjugal fertility at a later date compared to most other nations in the west. This has been - plained by means of the category of delay: the backwardness of the pr- esses of accumulation and economic development being seen as the cause of the maintaining of the reproductive models of the past. Moreover, the inf- ence of the Catholic Church in Italy, Spain and Portugal is supposed to have delayed the processes of secularisation, rendering difficult the changes in mentality necessary for assuming modern patterns of reproductive behaviour not only for fertility, but also for the variables which are strictly linked to it, such as sexuality, contraception and abortion (Livi Bacci, 1977; Lesthaeghe and Wilson, 1986). 1. 1. The trends of very low fertility Now the panorama is very different. Since the mid-seventies, southern Europe has been washed by the tide of a lowest-low fertility (i. e. , TFR under 1. 5 for several a prolonged period, Billari et al. , 2003), which in some areas 1 has reached and maintained scarcely imaginable levels for years on end. Conversely, other areas of Europe, where fertility started to fall many d- ades earlier than in the regions of the sourth, have recovered or maintained considerably higher levels of fertility, often close to replacement level.

This study presents a semantic framework for analysing all aspectual constructions in terms of the event state distinction, and describes the grammatical expression of aspectual meaning in terms of a theory of grammatical constructions. In this theory, grammatical constructions, like words, are conventionalized form-meaning pairs, which are best described not only with respect to their intrinsic semantic values, but also with respect to the functional oppositions in which they participate.

This study presents a semantic framework for analysing all aspectual constructions in terms of the event state distinction, and describes the grammatical expression of aspectual meaning in terms of a theory of grammatical constructions. In this theory, grammatical constructions, like words, are conventionalized form-meaning pairs, which are best described not only with respect to their intrinsic semantic values, but also with respect to the functional oppositions in which they participate.

New perspectives in interpreting contemporary family and reproductive - haviour of Mediterranean Europe 1. THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF FERTILITY AND THE FAMILY IN EUROPE The countries of southern Europe have begun to reduce conjugal fertility at a later date compared to most other nations in the west. This has been - plained by means of the category of delay: the backwardness of the pr- esses of accumulation and economic development being seen as the cause of the maintaining of the reproductive models of the past. Moreover, the inf- ence of the Catholic Church in Italy, Spain and Portugal is supposed to have delayed the processes of secularisation, rendering difficult the changes in mentality necessary for assuming modern patterns of reproductive behaviour not only for fertility, but also for the variables which are strictly linked to it, such as sexuality, contraception and abortion (Livi Bacci, 1977; Lesthaeghe and Wilson, 1986). 1. 1. The trends of very low fertility Now the panorama is very different. Since the mid-seventies, southern Europe has been washed by the tide of a lowest-low fertility (i. e. , TFR under 1. 5 for several a prolonged period, Billari et al. , 2003), which in some areas 1 has reached and maintained scarcely imaginable levels for years on end. Conversely, other areas of Europe, where fertility started to fall many d- ades earlier than in the regions of the sourth, have recovered or maintained considerably higher levels of fertility, often close to replacement level.

Construction grammar (CxG) is a framework for syntactic analysis that takes constructions - pairings of form and meaning that range from the highly idiomatic to the very general - to be the building blocks of sentence meaning. Offering the first comprehensive introduction to CxG to focus on both English words and the constructions that combine them, this textbook shows students not only what the analyses of particular structures are, but also how and why those analyses are constructed, with each chapter taking the student step-by-step through the reasoning processes that yield the best description of a data set. It offers a wealth of illustrative examples and exercises, largely based on real language data, making it ideal for both self-study and classroom use. Written in an accessible and engaging way, this textbook will open up this increasingly popular linguistic framework to anyone interested in the grammatical patterns of English.

Construction grammar (CxG) is a framework for syntactic analysis that takes constructions - pairings of form and meaning that range from the highly idiomatic to the very general - to be the building blocks of sentence meaning. Offering the first comprehensive introduction to CxG to focus on both English words and the constructions that combine them, this textbook shows students not only what the analyses of particular structures are, but also how and why those analyses are constructed, with each chapter taking the student step-by-step through the reasoning processes that yield the best description of a data set. It offers a wealth of illustrative examples and exercises, largely based on real language data, making it ideal for both self-study and classroom use. Written in an accessible and engaging way, this textbook will open up this increasingly popular linguistic framework to anyone interested in the grammatical patterns of English.

This Book Is In German, Italian, And French.

This Book Is In German, Italian, And French.

Linguistic mismatch phenomena involve semiotic functions that attach to forms in defiance of grammatical design features. Noun phrases, when used as predicates, provide one example: how do predicate nominals correspond to our theories of what nouns mean? How do such phenomena challenge traditional conceptions of grammar? How do competing theories of the syntax-semantics interface stand up when confronted with mismatch phenomena? "Mismatch" addresses these questions through the efforts of some of the most original thinkers in syntactic and semantic theory, exploring a wide variety of mismatch phenomena in a broad sampling of languages.