Bücher der Reihe Routledge Studies in Germanic Linguistics

Written from within the well-defined theoretical frameword of Generalized Quantifiers, the three main areas considered in this study are: collocations, polarity items, and multiple negations. It takes into account not only semantic and syntactic considerations, but also pragmatic ones.

Investigates the use of the pronouns he and she for inanimate objects (tree, house, bucket, and more.) across different varieties of English. This work offers an illuminating generalization in terms of the well known hierarchy of individuation, which provides a systematic link between pronominal usage in standard English and its varieties.

Discusses the role of two major factors shaping the grammars of different varieties of English (and of other languages) all over the world: so-called vernacular universals and contact-induced change. This book focuses on putative universal vernacular features.

This study presents a semantic framework for analysing all aspectual constructions in terms of the event state distinction, and describes the grammatical expression of aspectual meaning in terms of a theory of grammatical constructions.

This book argues that language systems determine language use to a greater extent than is generally assumed. The author demonstrates how typological characteristics of a language determine the most general aspects of our stylistic preferences.

Provides an account of the complex interaction of intonational phenomena, semantics and pragmatics. Based on examples from German and English, and centred on an analysis of the fall-rise intonation contour, a semantic interpretation for two different pitch accents - focus and topic - is developed.

This work offers a descriptive and contact-linguistic account of the grammar of Irish English, also known as 'Hiberno-English'. It examines Hiberno_English dialects past and present and their distinctive grammatical features

This book investigates the use of constructions such as 'make an accusation against' or 'give one's approval of' which can be seen as 'stretched' versions of simple verbs such as 'accuse' or 'approve of'.

Tense is one of the central issues of linguistics. In this book, Declerck offers a detailed discussion of the temporal structures that are expressed by the combination of tense forms with the conjunction "when".

Non-standard varieties of English all over the world share a striking number of grammatical features which are hard to explain because of the widely differing sociolinguistic and historical backgrounds of these varieties. Contributors to this book discuss two major factors behind the shared features: vernacular universals and contact-induced change.