Form and Function in Language Research PDF Download

Author: Johannes Helmbrecht
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110216124
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Language description enriches linguistic theory and linguistic theory sharpens language description. Based on this assumption, the volume presents theoretical and empirical studies that explore the explanatory power of functional-typological linguistics for the investigation of the world's languages.

Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262640442
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
The two basic approaches to linguistics are the formalist and the functionalist approaches. In this engaging monograph, Frederick J. Newmeyer, a formalist, argues that both approaches are valid. However, because formal and functional linguists have avoided direct confrontation, they remain unaware of the compatability of their results. One of the author's goals is to make each side accessible to the other. While remaining an ardent formalist, Newmeyer stresses the limitations of a narrow formalist outlook that refuses to consider that anything of interest might have been discovered in the course of functionalist-oriented research. He argues that the basic principles of generative grammar, in interaction with principles in other linguistic domains, provide compelling accounts of phenomena that functionalists have used to try to refute the generative approach.

Author: Johannes Helmbrecht
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110216132
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
Language description enriches linguistic theory and linguistic theory sharpens language description. Based on evidence from the world's languages, functional-typological linguistics has established a number of thorough generalizations about the nature of linguistic categorizations and their manifestation in natural languages. Empirical studies in these fields of linguistics have contributed to sharpen linguistic theory in several respects. This volume is a collection of 19 contributions from outstanding scholars in the field of functional-typological linguistics that address fundamental issues in the study of language, such as the nature of linguistic categories, the constitution of functional domains, and the form of cross-linguistic continua. Empirical data from individual languages and from typological samples are investigated in order to achieve generalizations about the properties of human grammar(s). Several grammatical phenomena are dealt with including tonal systems, person distinctions, modalities, reciprocity, complex predicates, grammatical relations, word order, clause linkage, and information structure. The structure of the book illustrates the fundamental importance of the analytical distinction between the onomasiological and the semasiological approach to language and language diversity. Both perspectives are integrated in most papers with a dominant focus on either the former or the latter perspective.

Author: Albert Rijksbaron
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004386122
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
Albert Rijksbaron is internationally known as one of the leading scholars of the Ancient Greek language, whose work has exerted a strong and lasting influence on the scholarly debate concerning many aspects of Greek linguistics. This volume brings together twenty of his papers, two of which have been translated into English and some which are not easily accessible elsewhere. The selection represents the full range of Rijksbaron’s research, including papers on central topics in Greek linguistics such as tense-aspect, mood, voice, particles, negation, the article, questions, discourse analysis, as well as on the views of ancient grammarians and modern commentators. As a whole, the volume shows how much linguistic analysis can contribute to our understanding of Greek literary texts.

Author:
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316764397
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description

Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027229805
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 566

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Book Description
Is the passive a unified universal phenomenon? The claim derived from this volume is that the passive, if not universal, has become unified according to function. Language as a means of communication needs the passive, or passive-like constructions, and sooner or later develops them based on other voices (impersonal active, middle, reflexive), specific semantic meanings such as adversativity, or tense-aspect categories (stative, perfect, preterit). Certain contributors review the passives in various languages and language groups, including languages rarely discussed. Another group of contributors takes a novel theoretical approach toward passivization within a broad typological perspective. Among the languages discussed are Vedic, Irish, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Lithuanian, Mordvin, and Nganasan, next to almost all European languages. Various theoretical frameworks such as Optimality Theory, modern structuralist approaches, Role and Reference Grammar, cognitive semantics, Distributed Morphology, and case grammar have been applied by the different authors.

Author: Holger Diessel
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027229422
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
All languages have demonstratives, but their form, meaning and use vary tremendously across the languages of the world. This book presents the first large-scale analysis of demonstratives from a cross-linguistic and diachronic perspective. It is based on a representative sample of 85 languages. The first part of the book analyzes demonstratives from a synchronic point of view, examining their morphological structures, semantic features, syntactic functions, and pragmatic uses in spoken and written discourse. The second part concentrates on diachronic issues, in particular on the development of demonstratives into grammatical markers. Across languages demonstratives provide a frequent historical source for definite articles, relative and third person pronouns, nonverbal copulas, sentence connectives, directional preverbs, focus markers, expletives, and many other grammatical markers. The book describes the different mechanisms by which demonstratives grammaticalize and argues that the evolution of grammatical markers from demonstratives is crucially distinct from other cases of grammaticalization.

Author: Christine Coombe
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030347621
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
Written by leading experts in the field of TESOL, this book explores the literature on various topic areas and demonstrates how teachers can increase their levels of professionalism by acquiring some general and field-specific strategies. Being a teaching professional is not simply about having the right teaching qualifications and good academic standing, it involves a commitment to being innovative and transformative in the classroom and helping both students and colleagues achieve their goals. A dictionary definition of professionalism reads as follows: professionalism is the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional person; and it defines a profession as a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation (Merriam-Webster, 2013). However, according to Bowman (2013), professionalism is less a matter of what professionals actually do and more a matter of who they are as human beings. Both of these views imply that professionalism encompasses a number of different attributes, and, together, these attributes identify and define a professional. The book is primarily intended for teachers at all levels and in all contexts who are interested in improving their professionalism and developing strategies that can take them to higher levels in the field of TESOL/ELT.

Author: Karolina Drabikowska
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781443842792
Category : Applied linguistics
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The book is a collection of 10 papers on theoretical and applied linguistics, and is divided into two sections. Part I, devoted to Theoretical Linguistics, addresses a range of issues pertaining to phonology, morphophonology, morphology, cognitive semantics, syntax and lexicology, and consists of six chapters. Part II, Applied Linguistics, comprises four chapters, which investigate the intricacies of language acquisition, psycholinguistics and pragmatics, discourse analysis, and translation studies. The languages analysed include Polish, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Middle English, Middle French, Anglo-Norman and Bangor Welsh. Some of the phenomena analysed in the volume are the properties of Bangor Welsh diphthongs in the light of the Lateral Theory of Phonology, Polish palatalization within Element Theory, lexical convergence in Psalters, bilingual acquisition, impoliteness in talk-show political discourse, and translation and localisation of video games, among others.

Author: Myriam Vermeerbergen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027247964
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Signed language users can draw on a range of articulators when expressing linguistic messages, including the hands, torso, eye gaze, and mouth. Sometimes these articulators work in tandem to produce one lexical item while in other instances they operate to convey different types of information simultaneously. Over the past fifteen years, there has been a growing interest in the issue of simultaneity in signed languages. However, this book is the first to offer a comprehensive treatment of this topic, presenting a collection of papers dealing with different aspects of simultaneity in a range of related and unrelated signed languages, in descriptive and cross-linguistic treatments which are set in different theoretical frameworks. This volume has relevance for those interested in sign linguistics, in teaching and learning signed languages, and is also highly recommended to anyone interested in the fundamental underpinnings of human language and the effects of signed versus spoken modality.