In spite of the day-to-day relevance of business communication, it remains underrepresented in standard handbooks and textbooks on applied linguistics. The present volume introduces readers to a wide variety of linguistic studies of business communication, ranging from traditional LSP approaches to contemporary discourse-based work, and from the micro-level of lexical choice to macro-level questions of language policy and culture.

This is the first volume specifically dedicated to competition in inflection and word-formation, a topic that has increasingly attracted attention. Semantic categories, such as concepts, classes, and feature bundles, can be expressed by more than one form or formal pattern. This departure from the ideal principle "one form - one meaning" is particularly frequent in morphology, where it has been treated under diverse headings, such as blocking, Elsewhere Condition, Panini's Principle, rivalry, synonymy, doublets, overabundance, suppletion and other terms. Since these research traditions, despite the heterogeneous terminology, essentially refer to the same underlying problems, this volume unites the phenomena studied in this field of linguistic morphology under the more general heading of competition. The volume features an extensive state of the art report on the subject and 11 research papers, which represent various theoretical approaches to morphology and address a wide range of aspects of competition, including morphophonology, lexicology, diachrony, language contact, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and language acquisition.

In spite of the day-to-day relevance of business communication, it remains underrepresented in standard handbooks and textbooks on applied linguistics. The present volume introduces readers to a wide variety of linguistic studies of business communication, ranging from traditional LSP approaches to contemporary discourse-based work, and from the micro-level of lexical choice to macro-level questions of language policy and culture.

This volume presents the first comprehensive description of 20th century Italian word formation in all its non-dialectal aspects. The main focus is on productive patterns. Alongside the central concern with composition and derivation, there is also due reference to frontier areas between word formation proper, semantics, and syntax, as well as to more marginal formation patterns like abbreviations and portmanteau words. The various facets are dealt with by 19 qualified experts from Italy, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, and a number of them are described in detail here for the first time. Although this description sets out to satisfy the highest standards of scholarship, the authors have been at pains to make their contributions as generally comprehensible as possible. Accordingly, the book can be profitably consulted not only by professional linguists but also by a wider audience.