Cognitive Sociolinguistics draws on the rich theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics and focuses on the social factors that underlie the variability of meaning and conceptualization. In the last decade, the field has expanded in various way. The current volume takes stock of current and emerging advances in the field in short academic contributions. The studies collected in this book have a usage-based approach to language variation and change, drawing on the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics and are sensitive to social variation, be it cross-linguistic or language-internal. Three types of contributions are collected in this book. First, it contains theoretical overview papers on the domains that have witnessed expansion in recent years. Second, it presents novel research ideas in proof-of-concept contributions, aimed at blue-sky research and out-of-the-box linguistic analyses. Third, it showcases recent empirical studies within the field. By combining these three types of contributions, the book provides an encompassing overview of novel developments in the field of Cognitive Sociolinguistics.
While "economic forces" are often cited as being a key cause of language loss, there is very little research that explores this link in detail. This work, based on policy analysis and ethnographic data, addresses this deficit. It examines how neoliberalism, the dominant economic orthodoxy of recent decades, has impacted the vitality of Irish in the Republic of Ireland since 2008. Drawing on concepts well established in public policy studies, but not prominent in the subfield of language policy, the neoliberalisation of Irish-language support measures is charted, including the disproportionately severe budget cuts they received. It is argued that neoliberalism¿s antipathy towards social planning and redistributive economic policies meant that supports for Irish were inevitably hit especially hard in an era of austerity. Ethnographic data from Irish-speaking communities reinforce this point and illustrate how macro-level economic disruptions can affect language use at the micro-level. Labour market transformations, emigration and the dismantling of community institutions are documented, along with many related developments, thereby highlighting an issue of relevance to communities around the world, the fundamental tension between neoliberalism and language revitalisation efforts.
This is a comprehensive linguistic description of Kunbarlang (Gunbalang), a highly endangered polysynthetic language of northern Australia. Kunbarlang belongs to the non-Pama-Nyungan Gunwinyguan language family and is currently spoken by nearly 40 people. This work draws on elicitations and analysis of narratives from the author's original field work (2015--2018), as well as those from previous recordings. The main areas covered are the sound system, morphology, syntax, and aspects of lexical and constructional semantics. Dictated by the polysynthetic structure of the language and the patterns of its use, the principal focus of the work is the analysis of the verbal complex and the interaction between the verb and other constituents of the clause. The analysis strike a balance between taking into consideration the areal and genetic context, being informed by linguistic typology and theory, yet at the same time remaining data-driven and theory-neutral in the way generalisations are stated. Against the Australian and a broader cross-linguistic background, Kunbarlang possesses remarkable features at all levels of its organisation.
This book offers a contemporary look at Somali from the standpoint of its major varieties and provides a comprehensive account of the language that is grounded in linguistic theory and the latest scholarship. The grammar includes an extensive array of examples drawn from online corpora and from fieldwork with native speakers of the language.
In the field of Second Language Studies, shared datasets provide a valuable contribution to second language research as many variables are held constant (e.g., participants, tasks, research context) thus allowing for an evaluation of theoretical and/or methodological perspectives that may not otherwise be comparable. This edited volume includes a wide range of studies using a common dataset (the Corpus of Collaborative Oral Tasks). The corpus includes 820 spoken tasks (268,927 words) carried out by dyads of L2 English speakers (primarily Chinese and Arabic learners). Studies included in the book are categorized into three main traditions: learner corpus research, Task-Based Language Teaching, and assessment. Because the corpus contains text and sound files, both lexico-grammatical and phonological analyses are included. Intended for researchers in the field of Second Language Studies with an interest in oral interaction research, this book provides a collection of methodological, pedagogical, and assessment studies using a common dataset.
While top-down policies and declarations have yet to establish equal status and opportunities for speakers of all languages in practice, activists and advocates at local levels are playing an increasingly significant role in the creation of new social imaginaries and practices in multilingual contexts. This volume describes how social actors across multiple domains contribute to the elusive goal of linguistic equality or justice through their language activism practices. Through an ethnographic account of Indigenous Isthmus Zapotec language activism in Oaxaca, Mexico, this study illuminates the (sometimes conflicting) imaginaries of what positive social change is and how it should be achieved, and the repertoire of strategies through which these imaginaries are being pursued. Ethnographic and action research conducted from 2013-2018 in the multilingual Isthmus of Tehuantepec brings to light the experiences of educators, students, writers, scholars and diverse cultural activists whose aspirations and strategies of social change are significant in shaping the future language ecology. Their repertoire of strategies may inform and encourage language activists, scholars, and educators working for change in other contexts of linguistic diversity and inequality.¿
This book focuses on the structure and sociolinguistics of Nigerian Pidgin English. Its major aim is to serve as a compendium which touches different major aspects of NPE as it has been observed that earlier works in this area have focused only on one aspect or the other. It will offer a broad survey of the form and functions of Nigerian Pidgin (NP) in different domains. The book promises to investigate the use of NP in such domains as popular culture, advertisement, social media and online discussion fora. One major strong point of this volume is the fact that it will direct attention to different fertile areas of NP by focusing, inter alia, on its social functions, its morphology and syntax, its regional varieties, its (possible) use as a viable medium of instruction in school, the changing attitudes of people towards its use, the place of NP in relation to language planning and policy in Nigeria as well as sociolinguistic variation within NP. The book will make a significant contribution to the existing literature on NP as, unlike earlier studies in this area, it will explore the grammatical, sociolinguistic and perceptual aspects of the language. By bringing together the expertise of renowned Nigerian and international scholars who have conducted research in this area, the volume will be an essential resource for researchers, graduate and undergraduate students interested not only in Nigerian Pidgin but also on contact linguistics.
Through constant exposure to adult input in interaction, children¿s language gradually develops into rich linguistic constructions containing multiple cross-modal elements subtly used together for communicative functions. Sensorimotor schemas provide the "grounding" of language in experience and lead to children¿s access to the symbolic function. With the emergence of vocal or signed productions, gestures do not disappear but remain functional and diversify in form and function as children become skilled adult multimodal conversationalists. This volume examines the role of gesture over the human lifespan in its complex interaction with speech and sign. Gesture is explored in the different stages before, during, and after language has fully developed and a special focus is placed on the role of gesture in language learning and cognitive development. Specific chapters are devoted to the use of gesture in atypical populations. CONTENTS Contributors Aliyah Morgenstern and Susan Goldin-Meadow1 Introduction to Gesture in Language Part I: An Emblematic Gesture: Pointing Kensy Cooperrider and Kate Mesh2 Pointing in Gesture and Sign Aliyah Morgenstern3 Early Pointing Gestures Part II: Gesture Before Speech Meredith L. Rowe, Ran Wei, and Virginia C. Salo4 Early Gesture Predicts Later Language Development Olga Capirci, Maria Cristina Caselli, and Virginia Volterra5 Interaction Among Modalities and Within Development Part III: Gesture With Speech During Language Learning Eve V. Clark and Barbara F. Kelly6 Constructing a System of Communication With Gestures and Words Pauline Beaupoil-Hourdel7 Embodying Language Complexity: Co-Speech Gestures Between Age 3 and 4 Casey Hall, Elizabeth Wakefield, and Susan Goldin-Meadow8 Gesture Can Facilitate Children¿s Learning and Generalization of Verbs Part IV: Gesture After Speech Is Mastered Jean-Marc Colletta9 On the Codevelopment of Gesture and Monologic Discourse in Children Susan Wagner Cook10 Understanding How Gestures Are Produced and Perceived Tilbe Göksun, Demet Özer, and Seda AkbIy¿k11 Gesture in the Aging Brain Part V: Gesture With More Than One Language Elena Nicoladis and Lisa Smithson12 Gesture in Bilingual Language Acquisition Marianne Gullberg13 Bimodal Convergence: How Languages Interact in Multicompetent Language Users¿ Speech and Gestures Gale Stam and Marion Tellier14 Gesture Helps Second and Foreign Language Learning and Teaching Aliyah Morgenstern and Susan Goldin-MeadowAfterword: Gesture as Part of Language or Partner to Language Across the Lifespan IndexAbout the Editors
The notion of the native speaker and its undertones of ultimate language competence, language ownership and social status has been problematized by various researchers, arguing that the ensuing monolingual norms and assumptions are flawed or inequitable in a global super-diverse world. However, such norms are still ubiquitous in educational, institutional and social settings, in political structures and in research paradigms. This collection offers voices from various contexts and corners of the world and further challenges the native speaker construct adopting poststructuralist and postcolonial perspectives. It includes conceptual, methodological, educational and practice-oriented contributions. Topics span language minorities, intercomprehension, plurilingualism and pluriculturalism, translanguaging, teacher education, new speakers, language background profiling, heritage languages, and learner identity, among others. Collectively, the authors paint the portrait of the "changing face of the native speaker" while also strengthening a new global agenda in multilingualism and social justice. These diverse and interconnected contributions are meant to inspire researchers, university students, educators, policy makers and beyond.
Management communication encompasses a wide range of practices that define modern organizations. Those practices are, in many respects, constituted, formed and contextualized by the use of language. This handbook traces the theoretical modelling of these practices by contemporary research. It explores their linguistic features and performance in specific situations of value creation and in various modes. It is a companion for students and scholars of applied linguistics and organizational communication as well as management and strategy research.
Element Theory (ET) covers a range of approaches that consider privativity a central tenet defining the internal structure of segments. This volume provides an overview and extension of this program, exploring new lines of research within phonology and at its interface (phonetics and syntax). The present collection reflects on issues concerning the definition of privative primes, their interactions, organization, and the operations that constrain phonological and syntactic representations. The contributions reassess theoretical questions, which have been implicitly taken for granted, regarding privativity and its corollaries. On the empirical side, it explores the possibilities ET offers to analyze specific languages and phonological phenomena.
Why is ¿Why¿ Unique? Its Syntactic and Semantic Properties considers the behaviour of this peculiar wh-element across many different languages, including Ewe, Trevisan, Italian, Basque, German, Dutch, Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Hebrew. In ten original chapters, the authors explore various aspects of why-questions, such as the way why interacts with V2 constructions in Basque, with a subject clitic in Trevisan or how its morpho-syntactic make-up determines its merge position in Ewe, to mention but a few. Furthermore, a clear-cut distinction is established between high and low reason adverbials which are subsequently examined in why-stripping environments in Dutch. Beyond why proper, the book explores a special class of wh-expressions in some in-situ languages which give rise to unexpected why-construals with a touch of whining force. The objective is to explain the unusual syntactic position of these wh-expressions as well as their association with peculiar pragmatics. The questions are addressed for Cantonese: are what-initial sentences genuine questions? To what extent are Cantonese what-initial sentences similar to how-initial sentences in Mandarin? Beside these what-as-why questions, a special class of rhetorical questions, the doubly-marked interrogatives in Hebrew, come under scrutiny. Why is ¿why¿ unique also concerns the interface with prosody and several experimental studies investigate precisely this aspect.
Why does language change? Why can we speak to and understand our parents but have trouble reading Shakespeare? Why is Chaucer's English of the fourteenth century so different from Modern English of the late twentieth century that the two are essentially different languages? Why are Americans and English 'one people divided by a common language'? And how can the language of Chaucer and Modern English - or Modern British and American English - still be called the same language? The present book provides answers to questions like these in a straightforward way, aimed at the non-specialist, with ample illustrations from both familiar and more exotic languages. Most chapters in this new edition have been reworked, with some difficult passages removed, other passages thoroughly rewritten, and several new sections added, e.g. on language and race and on Indian writing systems. Further, the chapter notes and bibliography have all been updated. The content is engaging, focusing on topics and issues that spark student interest. Its goals are broadly pedagogical and the level and presentation are appropriate for interested beginners with little or no background in linguistics. The language coverage for examples goes well beyond what is usual for books of this kind, with a considerable amount of data from various languages of India.
This book is an innovative contribution to contact linguistics as it presents a rarely studied but sizeable diaspora language community in contact with five languages ¿ English, German, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish ¿ across four continents. Foregrounded by diachronic descriptions of heritage Croatian in long-standing minority communities the book presents synchronically based studies of the speech of different generations of diaspora speakers. Croatian offers excellent scope as a base language to examine how lexical and morpho-structural innovations occur in a highly inflective Slavic language where external influence from Germanic and Romance languages appears evident. The possibility of internal factors is also addressed and interpretive models of language change are drawn on. With a foreword by Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan
No detailed description available for "Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Linguists, Cambridge, Mass., August 27-31, 1962".
New Directions in Second Language Pragmatics brings together varying perspectives in second language (L2) pragmatics to show both historical developments in the field, while also looking towards the future, including theoretical, empirical, and implementation perspectives. This volume is divided in four sections: teaching and learning speech acts, assessing pragmatic competence, analyzing discourses in digital contexts, and current issues in L2 pragmatics. The chapters focus on various aspects related to the learning, teaching, and assessing of L2 pragmatics and cover a range of learning environments. The authors address current topics in L2 pragmatics such as: speech acts from a discursive perspective; pragmatics instruction in the foreign language classroom and during study abroad; assessment of pragmatic competence; research methods used to collect pragmatics data; pragmatics in computer-mediated contexts; the role of implicit and explicit knowledge; discourse markers as a resource for interaction; and the framework of translingual practice. Taken together, the chapters in this volume foreground innovations and new directions in the field of L2 pragmatics while, at the same time, ground their work in the existing literature. Consequently, this volume both highlights where the field of L2 pragmatics has been and offers cutting-edge insights into where it is going in the future.
Research on language universals and research on linguistic typology are not antagonistic, but rather complementary approaches to the same fundamental problem: the relationship between the amazing diversity of languages and the profound unity of language. Only if the true extent of typological divergence is recognized can universal laws be formulated. In recent years it has become more and more evident that a broad range of languages of radically different types must be carefully analyzed before general theories are possible. Typological comparison of this kind is now at the centre of linguistic research. The series empirical approaches to language typology presents a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. The distinctive feature of the series is its markedly empirical orientation. All conclusions to be reached are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. General problems are focused on from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Special emphasis is given to the analysis of phenomena from little known languages, which shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics. The series is open to contributions from different theoretical persuasions. It thus reflects the methodological pluralism that characterizes the present situation. Care is taken that all volumes be accessible to every linguist and, moreover, to every reader specializing in some domain related to human language. A deeper understanding of human language in general, based on a detailed analysis of typological diversity among individual languages, is fundamental for many sciences, not only for linguists. Therefore, this series has proven to be indispensable in every research library, be it public or private, which has a specialization in language and the language sciences. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.
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