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Building Up Aspect
This book addresses the problems of the nature of the category of aspect, its formal expression and its relation to Action modes, to the Aorist/Imperfect and Perfect/Non-Perfect distinctions. The discussion is largely based on data from Bulgarian - a Slavonic language where aspect as a grammatical category systematically coexists not only with verbal prefixation, but also with temporal boundedness, correlation and, in the nominal sphere, definiteness. Cross-language parallels with English and French data and the mapping of Bulgarian structures to notions drawn from the «western» tradition of aspectual study result in the outline of a framework for an integrated study of the expression of aspectuality in languages belonging to different language groups. Refuting existing views of aspect as a «compensatory» phenomenon for nominal definiteness, the book presents arguments in favour of a systematic relation between verbal prefixation and NP quantification in Slavonic languages and of a compositional, syntactic dimension of aspectual analysis.
Chinese Learners and the Lexis Learning Rainbow
This book focuses on vocabulary acquisition in the areas of English language learning either in a foreign or a second language environment. Starting from the social phenomenon that a large number of Mainland Chinese students obtain their further education in Western universities, the author carries out a longitudinal study by using instruments of vocabulary levels tests, questionnaires and interviews. On the basis of an in-depth investigation of vocabulary strategy usage by Chinese learners in widely differing environments, the author develops a model of vocabulary acquisition. This is the first model to combine both linguistic and non-linguistic strategies, motivation, and the stages of vocabulary learning into one comprehensive representation of vocabulary acquisition. The book not only offers a solid data base but also suggests effective strategies to enhance English language teaching and learning.
Sourcing the Self
Social constructionists argue that our inner selves and our actions in the world are socially produced. Meta-realists, on the other hand, say that human consciousness is stratified, and not socially shaped at all levels. How do the human acts of creativity and resistance illuminate these different perspectives on human consciousness? This book explores theories of self and agency through a critical discourse analysis of the accounts of five British artists talking about their motivations, their creative processes and their experiences of the practices and institutions of visual art. Throughout the analysis the author considers how we voice dimensions of being that are 'beyond' language, and how these words impact on our sense of self and actions. The concept of self realisation is at the centre of this book and is critically examined. The analysis also explores the construction of social identities through family relations and institutional art practices and the media. It shows how they can provide solidarity for those who risk breaking social norms, but at the same time build barriers of difference.
The Advanced Learner Variety
This volume originates from a workshop entitled 'Revisiting advanced varieties in L2 learning' organized by the editors at Aston University (Birmingham, UK) in June 2006. It consists of a peer-reviewed selection of the best contributions. Many different approaches have been used in the study of advanced learners and their characteristics. Specific areas of language have repeatedly been found to remain problematic even at advanced levels, and much empirical research has been carried out. In particular, areas of grammar such as the tense or agreement systems often pose difficulties, as well as lexical idiosyncrasies such as formulaic sequences, and the discourse/pragmatic constraints operating...
Discursive Constructions Around Terrorism in the People's Daily (China) and The Sun (UK) Before and After 9.11
How have media constructions around terrorism changed since 9.11? This book analyses the ways that language is employed in the media to reference discourses around terrorism in different social systems and doctrines, and illustrates the ways in which news reporting around terrorism is filtered according to a wide range of phenomena including national interests, the goals of those who run the press, international relations, methods of news production, audience targeting and other historical, political and social factors. This book collects and analyses corpora from news articles in the two most widely read newspapers in China and the UK. Corpus techniques including frequency and keyness are merged with methods associated with critical discourse analysis particularly investigation of social context. This book shows that there is a wide range of possible discursive constructions of terrorism in the media. Such different perspectives are likely to shape national or even global opinion on how to tackle terrorism.
A Theory of Aspectuality
Sentences may pertain to states or processes or events. They may express duration, frequency, habituality, and many other forms of temporality. How do they do this? It is the aspectual properties of sentences in natural languages which allow the user to express a temporal structure, and Henk Verkuyl presents a unified formal system to account for them. He explains aspectuality in terms of the opposition between terminative aspect and durative aspect, and describes the way in which terminative aspect is compositionally formed on the basis of semantic information expressed by different syntactic elements, in particular the verb and its arguments. The aim is to determine which semantic conditions make a sentence terminative; but at least ten different forms of durative aspectuality are also treated. All are drawn into a theory which can account for both terminative and durative aspectuality together. A Theory of Aspectuality draws together into a coherent whole the author's thinking on the subject over the last twenty years, and will interest all those working on aspect and the semantics of noun phrases. It promises to be a major new contribution to our understanding of the subject.
Grammaticalising the Perfect and Explanations of Language Change
In Grammaticalising the Perfect and Explanations of Language Change: Have- and Be-Perfects in the History and Structure of English and Bulgarian, Bozhil Hristov investigates key aspects of the verbal systems of two distantly related Indo-European languages, highlighting similarities as well as crucial differences between them and seeking a unified approach. The book reassesses some long-held notions and functionalist assumptions and shines the spotlight on certain areas that have received less attention, such as the role of ambiguity in actual usage. The detailed analysis of rich, contextualised material from a selection of texts dovetails with large-scale corpus studies, complementing their findings and enhancing our understanding of the phenomena. This monograph thus presents a happy marriage of traditional philological techniques and recent advances in theoretical linguistics and corpus work.
Topics in South Slavic Syntax and Semantics
This collection of articles presents a variety of approaches to central phenomena in South Slavic syntax and semantics, with an informal introduction by the editors on South Slavic clause structure. Phenomena addressed (treated partly on a language specific basis, partly comparative) include: the structure of the functional field, verb fronting, clitic placement, conjunctions, noun phrase structure, possessives, agreement, and aspectual phenomena.
