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Comparative and Contrastive Studies of Information Structure
"The present book contains a selection of articles based on papers presented at the conference on 'Contrastive Information Structure Analysis' organised by Carsten Breul at the University of Wuppertal in March 2008"--Pref.
New Frontiers of Corpus Research
This volume presents highlights of the first ICAME conference held in the southern hemisphere, in papers on new kinds of corpora for business and communications technology, as well as those comprising computer-mediated communication and college newspapers. The latter yield lively insights into the digitized discourse of younger adults and non-professional writers -- speech communities that have been underrepresented in the standard English corpora. Other groups that are newly represented in research reported in this volume are bilingual users of English in Singapore, Hong Kong and China, as corpus data is brought to bear on second-language speech and writing. The proposed corpus of spoken Dutch profiled here will support research into its variation in different genres and contexts of use in the Netherlands and in Belgium. Research on new historical corpora from C15 to C18 is also reported, along with techniques for normalizing prestandardized English for computerized searching. Meanwhile papers on contemporary usage show some of the continual interplay between British and American English, in grammar and details of the lexicon that are important for English language teachers.
Connectives in the History of English
Clausal connection is one of the key building blocks of language and thus a field where a wide range of syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and cognitive phenomena meet. The availability of large databases as well as considerable advances in corpus-linguistic methods have strengthened the interest in the history of features linking clauses or larger chunks of text. The papers in this volume combine a thorough corpus-based analysis of the history of individual connectives, their co-occurrence patterns, and patterns of variation and change from both intra- and inter-systemic perspectives with a variety of methodological tools, ranging from sophisticated methods of grammatical analysis to pragmatics, text linguistics and discourse analysis. Drawing on quantitatively and qualitatively improved data, the studies reconstruct the history of a wide range of connectives in English from various new theoretical perspectives.
Focus Structure in Generative Grammar
The notion of focus structure in this work refers to the distinction between categorical, thetic and identificational sentences. The central claim is that the syntactic representation of every sentence has to encode which of these types of focus structure is realized. This claim is discussed in great detail with respect to syntax, intonation and semantics within the framework of the Minimalist Program. It is shown that the incorporation of focus structure into syntax offers new perspectives for a solution of vexing problems in syntax and semantics. For example, fronting (preposing, 'topicalisation') is treated as a syntactic operation which clearly belongs to core grammar, i.e. is not optional or 'stylistic'; the semantic notion of quantifier raising is dispensed with in favour of a focus structural treatment of phenomena which gave rise to it. The book appeals to generative linguists and to functional linguists who do not believe in an unbridgeable gap between the formal and functional analysis of language.
On Information Structure, Meaning and Form
This collection of articles offers a new and compelling perspective on the interface connecting syntax, phonology, semantics and pragmatics. At the core of this volume is the hypothesis that information structure represents the common interface of these grammatical components. Information structure is investigated here from different theoretical viewpoints yielding typologically relevant information and structural generalizations. In the volume's introductory chapter, the editors identify two central approaches to information structure: the formal and the interpretive view. The remainder of the book is organized accordingly. The first part examines information structure and grammar, concentrating on generalizations across languages. The second part investigates information structure and pragmatics, concentrating on clause structure and context. Through concrete analyses of topic, focus, and related phenomena across different languages, the contributors add new and convincing evidence to the research on information structure.
Relevance and Narrative Research
“Relevance” is one of the most widely used buzz words in academic and other socio-political discourses and institutions today, which constantly ask us to “be relevant.” To date, there is no profound scholarly conceptualization of the term, however, which is widely accepted in the humanities. Relevance and Narrative Research closes this gap by initiating a discussion which turns the vaguely defined evaluative tool “relevance” into an object of study. The contributors to this volume do so by firmly situating questions of relevance in the context of narrative theory. Briefly put, they ask either “What can ‘relevance’ do for narrative research?” or “What can narrative research do for better understanding ‘relevance?’” or both. The basic assumption is that relevance is a relational term. Further assuming that most (if not all) relations which human beings encounter within their cultures are narratively constructed, the contributors to this volume suggest that reflections on narrative and narrative research are fundamental to any endeavor to conceptualize notions of “relevance.”
Verb Second in Medieval Romance
This volume provides the first book-length study of the controversial topic of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance varieties. It presents an examination and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data from Old French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, Spanish, and Sardinian, in order to assess whether these were indeed Verb Second languages. Sam Wolfe argues that V-to-C movement is a point of continuity across all the medieval varieties - unlike in the modern Romance languages - but that there are rich patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the medieval period that have not previously been observed and investigated. These include differences in the...
Theory of Language
Karl Bühler (1879–1963) was one of the leading theoreticians of language of the twentieth century. Although primarily a psychologist, Bühler devoted much of his attention to the study of language and language theory. His masterwork Sprachtheorie (1934) quickly gained recognition in the fields of linguistics, semiotics, the philosophy of language and the psychology of language. This new edition of the English translation of Bühler’s theory begins with a survey on ‘Bühler’s legacy’ for modern linguistics (Werner Abraham), followed by the Theory of Language, and finally with a special ‘Postscript: Twenty-five Years Later ...’ (Achim Eschbach). Bühler’s theory is divided int...
An Introduction to the Grammar of English
It has been eight years since "An Introduction to the Grammar of English" was first published. The second edition is completely revised and greatly expanded, especially where texts, example sentences, exercises, and cartoons are concerned. It continues to provide a very lively and clearly written textbook. The book introduces basic concepts of grammar in a format which inspires the reader to use linguistic arguments. The style of the book is engaging and examples from poetry, jokes, and puns illustrate grammatical concepts. The focus is on syntactic analysis and evidence. However, special topic sections contribute sociolinguistic and historical reasons behind prescriptive rules such as the bans on split infinitives, dangling participles, and preposition stranding. The book is written for undergraduate students and structured for a semester-long course. It provides exercises, keys to those exercises, and sample exams. It also includes a comprehensive glossary. A basic website will be kept up at http: //www.public.asu.edu/ gelderen/grammar.htm.
