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The papers collected in this volume (including a comprehensive introduction) investigate semantic and discourse-related aspects of subordination and coordination, in particular the relationship between subordination/coordination at the sentence level and subordination/coordination - or hierarchical/non-hierarchical organization - at the discourse level. The contributions in part I are concerned with central theoretical questions; part II consists of corpus-based cross-linguistic studies of clause combining and discourse structure, involving at least two of the languages English, German, Dutch, French and Norwegian; part III contains papers addressing specific - predominantly semantic - topics relating to German, English or French; and the papers in part IV approach the topic of subordination, coordination and rhetorical relations from a diachronic (Old Indic and Early Germanic) perspective. The book aims to contribute to a better understanding of information packaging on the sentence and text level related, within a particular language as well as cross-linguistically.
In recent years there has been increasing interest in the development and use of bilingual and multilingual corpora. As Karin Aijmer writes in this book, 'The contrastive or comparative perspective ... makes it possible to dig deeper and to ask new questions about the relationship between languages with the aim of sharpening our conceptions of cross-linguistic correspondences and adding to our knowledge of the languages compared.' The papers in this volume are a showcase of the great variety of purposes to which bilingual and multilingual corpora can be put. They do not only lend themselves to descriptive and applied approaches, but are also suitable for theory-oriented studies. The range of linguistic phenomena covered by the various approaches is very wide; the papers focus on fields of research like syntax, discourse, semantics, information structure, lexis, and translation studies. The range of languages studied comprises English, Norwegian, Swedish, German, Dutch, and Portuguese. In addition to purely linguistic papers, there are contributions on computer programs developed for the compilation and use of bilingual and multilingual corpora.
Reports on joint work by researchers from different theoretical and linguistic backgrounds offer new insights on the interaction of linguistic code and context in language production and comprehension. This volume takes a genuinely cross-linguistic approach integrating theoretically well-founded contrastive descriptions with thorough empirical investigations. Authors answer questions on the topic of how we ‘encode’ complex thoughts into linguistic signals and how we interpret such signals in appropriate ways. Chapters combine on- and off-line empirical methods varying from large-scale corpus analyses over acceptability judgements, sentence completion studies and reading time experiments. The authors shed new light on the central questions related to our everyday use of language, especially the problem of how we construe meaning in and through language in general as well as through the means provided by particular languages.
The present volume draws together contributions from a number of scholars with an interest in empirical, cross-linguistic description. Most of the papers were first presented at the symposium Information Structure in a Cross-linguistic Perspective held in Oslo in November/December 2000. The descriptions are functionally oriented, and their common focus is how information structure – in a broad sense – can be compared across languages. 'Information structure' has been approached in a variety of ways by the authors, so as to give a broad picture of this fundamental principle of text production, involving the way in which a speaker/writer chooses to present a message in terms of given/new information, focus, cohesion, and point of view. Central to much of the research is the problem of establishing criteria for isolating linguistic constraints on language use from cultural-linguistic conventions in text production. The linguistic comparison includes English, German and/or one of the Scandinavian languages, with sidelights to other languages. Most of the papers are text- or corpus-based, and the ongoing work on parallel corpora in Scandinavia is reflected in several contributions.
The volume addresses the role of salience in discourse and provides broad coverage of various perspectives on and functions of discourse salience. The range of multidisciplinary approaches adopted in the volume differ with regard to the underlying theoretical proposals and foci of research. The topics range from (i) entity-based salience to (ii) discourse-structural salience of utterances to (iii) extra-linguistic factors of salience in discourse. Accordingly, the volume is organized into three sections. Part I focuses on discourse referents and the choice of referring expressions. The contributions cover issues such as salience and demonstrativity in Russian, discourse salience and grammati...
"This collection of papers on contrastive semantics and pragmatics has developed out of talks given at the Third International Conference on Contrastive Semantics and Pragmatics that was held at the ... Hongkou Campus of Shanghai International Studies University ... in 2005."--
Free indirect discourse presents us with the inner world of protagonists of a story. We seem to see the world through their eyes, and listen to their inner thoughts. The present study analyses the logic of free indirect discourse and offers a framework to represent multiple ways in which words betray the speaker's feelings and attitude. The theory covers tense, aspect, temporal indexicals, modal particles, exclamatives and other expressive elements and their dependence on shifting utterance contexts. It traces the subtle ways in which story texts can offer information about protagonists. The study of free indirect discourse has been a topic of great interest in recent years in semantics and ...
The book contains ten papers discussing issues of the relation between syntax and morphology from the perspective of morphologically rich languages including, among others, Indo-European languages, indigenous languages of the Americas, Turkish, and Hungarian. The overall question discussed in this book is to what extent morphological information shows up in syntactic structures and how this information is represented. The authors adopt different theoretical frameworks such as the Derivational Theory of Morphology, Distributed Optimality, Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical-Functional Grammar, Lexical Decomposition Grammar combined with Linking Theory and OT-like constraints, Paradigm-Based Morphosyntax as well as the Principles and Parameters Approach of Generative Grammar.
Studies on the nature of quotation have become a topic of growing interest among linguists and philosophers of language. What is the function and logical status of quotations? How can an analysis of quotation help to develop a general theory of the semantics-pragmatics interface? This volume is a collection of original papers by leading researchers in the field on such issues and related linguistic and philosophical aspects of quotations.
Main headings: Introduction. - I. Representing language use. - II. Grammar and lexis in English corpora. - III. Contrastive and translation studies. - IV. English abroad. - List of Stig Johansson's publications (selection).