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For the whole of the last half-century, most theoretical syntacticians have assumed that knowledge of language is different from the tasks of speaking and understanding. There have been some dissenters, but, by and large, this view still holds sway. This book takes a different view: it continues the task set in hand by Kempson et al (2001) of arguing that the common-sense intuition is correct that knowledge of language consists in being able to use it in speaking and understanding. The Dynamics of Language argues that interpretation is built up across as sequence of words relative to some context and that this is all that is needed to explain the structural properties of language. The dynami...
This is the first of three volumes dealing with clausal architecture, grammatical relations, case-marking and the syntax–semantics interface in Baltic. It focuses on the grammatical relations of subject and object and the viability of these notions in languages like Lithuanian and Latvian, which have a rich case morphology and show many deviations from the canonical nominative-accusative pattern of case-marking. The issues examined include differential object marking, subjecthood in specificational copular constructions, ‘swarm’-type alternations and what they tell us about grammatical relations, special types of subject and object marking in non-finite clauses, and non-canonical grammatical relations induced by modal predicates. One study provides a comparative outlook towards Icelandic, another language noted for its complex marking of grammatical relations. The articles in the volume represent various theoretical frameworks.
The syntactic periphery has become one of the most important areas of research in syntactic theory in recent years, due to the emergence of new research programmes initiated by Rizzi, Kayne and Chomsky. However research has concentrated on the empirical nature of clausal peripheries. The purpose of this volume is to explore the question of whether the notion of periphery has any real theoretical bite. An important consensus emerging from the volume is that the edges of certain syntactic expressions appear to be the locus of the connection between phrase structure, prosody, and information structure. This volume contains 16 papers by researchers in this area. The book: - contains an extensive...
This collection offers a critical examination of online language teacher education programs (OLTE), looking at a range of issues which have informed their development and the challenges and opportunities in their implementation from a TESOL perspective. Positioning itself uniquely amongst the growing literature at the nexus of technology and language learning, the book focuses on language teacher education programs designed for academic and professional credentials in online environments. Introductory sections provide a brief historical overview of the OLTEs as we know them today, with examples from a global range of programs toward demonstrating their theoretical and philosophical foundatio...
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The core data is laid out, followed by critical discussion of the various approaches found in the literature. Each chapter ends with a section on how the study of the particular phenomenon in Japanese contributes to our knowledge of general linguistic theory.
This is a systematic presentation of the parametric approach to child language. Linguistic theory seeks to specify the range of grammars permitted by the human language faculty and thereby to specify the child's "hypothesis space" during language acquisition. Theories of language variation have central implications for the study of child language, and vice versa. Yet the acquisitional predictions of such theories are seldom tested against attested data. This book aims to redress this neglect. It considers the nature of the information the child must acquire according to the various linguistic theories. In doing so it sets out in detail the practical aspects of acquisitional research, address...
Students often struggle to understand linguistic concepts through examples of language data provided in class or in texts. Presented with ambiguous information, students frequently respond that they do not 'get it'. The solution is to find an example of humour that relies on the targeted ambiguity. Once they laugh at the joke, they have tacitly understood the concept, and then it is only a matter of explaining why they found it funny. Utilizing cartoons and jokes illustrating linguistic concepts, this book makes it easy to understand these concepts, while keeping the reader's attention and interest. Organized like a course textbook in linguistics, it covers all the major topics in a typical linguistics survey course, including communication systems, phonetics and phonology, morphemes, words, phrases, sentences, language use, discourses, child language acquisition and language variation, while avoiding technical terminology.
Die Buchreihe Linguistische Arbeiten hat mit über 500 Bänden zur linguistischen Theoriebildung der letzten Jahrzehnte in Deutschland und international wesentlich beigetragen. Die Reihe wird auch weiterhin neue Impulse für die Forschung setzen und die zentrale Einsicht der Sprachwissenschaft präsentieren, dass Fortschritt in der Erforschung der menschlichen Sprachen nur durch die enge Verbindung von empirischen und theoretischen Analysen sowohl diachron wie synchron möglich ist. Daher laden wir hochwertige linguistische Arbeiten aus allen zentralen Teilgebieten der allgemeinen und einzelsprachlichen Linguistik ein, die aktuelle Fragestellungen bearbeiten, neue Daten diskutieren und die Theorieentwicklung vorantreiben.
The polarity of a sentence is crucial for its meaning. It is thus hardly surprising that languages have developed devices to highlight this meaning component and to contrast statements with negative and positive polarity in discourse. Research on this issue has started from languages like German and Dutch, where prosody and assertive particles are systematically associated with polarity contrast. Recently, the grammatical realization of polarity contrast has been at the center of investigations in a range of other languages as well. Core questions concern the formal repertoire and the exact meaning contribution of the relevant devices, the kind of contrast they evoke, and their relation to information structure and sentence mood. This volume brings together researchers from a theoretical, an empirical, and a typological orientation and enhances our understanding of polarity with the help of in-depth analyses and cross-linguistic comparisons dealing with the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and/or prosodic aspects of the phenomenon.