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The volume is a collection of papers reporting the results of investigations on the interaction of discourse and sentence structure in the languages of Europe. The subjects discussed in the book include: morphosyntactic characteristics of spontaneous spoken texts; different patterns of word order in a pragmatic perspective; the coding of the pragmatic functions topic and focus in sentences with non-canonical word orders (e.g. dislocations, clefts); the range of functions of verb-subject order in declarative clauses and the notion of theticity; prosodic patterns of de-accenting of given information; deixis and anaphora; coding of definiteness and article systems. The book provides the empirical basis for the comparative survey of major phenomena found in the languages of Europe which have pragmatic relevance. Beside traditional areas of investigation at the interface between syntax and pragmatics such as dislocations, new areas are explored, such as the prosody of given information. Data are considered within a functional-typological approach.
This volume addresses the constructional variability with transitive and causative verbs from the point of view of their respective action and motion patterns. Drawing on the theoretical advances registered in cognitive approaches to language (Cognitive Grammar, Construction Grammar and space semantics), the papers substantiate new interpretations and adduce empirical evidence from various languages to refine or adjust existing analyses of transitivity and causation. The different contributions all address the crucial question of how concrete and abstract notions of human behavior drive linguistic expressions. Cognitive linguists consider that linguistic competence functions in terms of comp...
This compilation of invited contributions, gathering an international collection of cognitive and functional linguists, offers an outline of original empirical work carried out in grounding theory. Grounding is a central notion in cognitive grammar that addresses the linking of semantic content to contextual factors that constitute the subjective ground (or situation of speech). The volume illustrates a growing concern with the application of cognitive grammar to constructions establishing deixis and reference. It proposes a double focus on nominal and clausal grounding, as well as on ways of integrating analyses across these domains.
The intuition that translations are somehow different from texts that are not translations has been around for many years, but most of the common linguistic frameworks are not comprehensive enough to account for the wealth and complexity of linguistic phenomena that make a translation a special kind of text. The present book provides a novel methodology for investigating the specific linguistic properties of translations. As this methodology is both corpus-based and driven by a functional theory of language, it is powerful enough to account for the multi-dimensional nature of cross-linguistic variation in translations and cross-lingually comparable texts.
Combinatorial enumeration is a readily accessible subject full of easily stated, but sometimes tantalizingly difficult problems. This book leads the reader in a leisurely way from basic notions of combinatorial enumeration to a variety of topics, ranging from algebra to statistical physics. The book is organized in three parts: Basics, Methods, and Topics. The aim is to introduce readers to a fascinating field, and to offer a sophisticated source of information for professional mathematicians desiring to learn more. There are 666 exercises, and every chapter ends with a highlight section, discussing in detail a particularly beautiful or famous result.
Grammar is seen as a complex sign system, and, as a consequence, grammatical change always comprises semantic change. The book introduces the concept of connecting grammaticalisation to describe the formation, restructuring and dismantling of such complex paradigms. It offers a broad general discussion of theoretical issues and three case studies
In recent years, research in cognitive linguistics has expanded its interests to cover a variety of texts – spoken, written, or multimodal. Analytical tools such as conceptual metaphor, frame semantics, mental spaces and grammatical constructions have been productively applied in various discourse contexts. In this volume, originally published as a special issue of English Text Construction 3:2 (2010), the contributors, a mix of established and emerging authors in the field, analyse broadcast and print journalism, argumentative scientific discourse, radio lectures on music, and the main literary genres (the poetry of Szymborska and bpNichol, the drama of Shakespeare, the modernist prose of Virginia Woolf and recent fiction by John Banville). Collectively the findings suggest a need to broaden and refine the cognitive linguistic repertoire, while also uncovering new ways to interpret textual data. The book will appeal to researchers and graduate students with interests in cognitive poetics and linguistics, stylistics, pragmatics and construction grammar.
Main description: This volume presents strongly empirical, corpus-based studies of a range of English modal auxiliaries and modal constructions in specific uses. It also approaches some of the classic issues in the field of modality from new perspectives, notably that of the 'Theory of Enunciative Operations' developed by the French linguist Antoine Culioli and his colleagues.
New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax: Complex Sentences, Grammaticalization, Typology is the fourth in a set of four volumes dealing with the long-term evolution of Latin syntax, roughly from the 4th century BCE up to the 6th century CE. As in the other volumes, the non-technical style and extensive illustration with classical examples makes the content readable and immediately useful to the widest audience.
This book fills a long standing need for a basic introduction to Cognitive Grammar that is current, authoritative, comprehensive, and approachable. It presents a synthesis that draws together and refines the descriptive and theoretical notions developed in this framework over the course of three decades. In a unified manner, it accommodates both the conceptual and the social-interactive basis of linguistic structure, as well as the need for both functional explanation and explicit structural description. Starting with the fundamentals, essential aspects of the theory are systematically laid out with concrete illustrations and careful discussion of their rationale. Among the topics surveyed a...