This book offers a diversification model of transplanted languages that facilitates the exploration of external factors and internal changes. The general context is the New World and the variety that unfolded in the Central Highlands and the Gulf of Mexico, herein identified as Mexican Colonial Spanish (MCS). Linguistic corpora provide the evidence of (re)transmission, diffusion, metalinguistic…
Case-systems all over the world exhibit striking similarities. In most lan- guages intransitive subjects (S) receives less overt marking than one of the two transitive arguments (agent-like A or patient-like P); the other one of these two arguments is usually encoded by the same form as S. In some languages the amount of overt marking is identical between S, A, and P. But hardly ever does the S…
African Linguistics on the Prairie features select revised peer-reviewed papers from the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Kansas. The articles in this volume reflect the enormous diversity of African languages, as they focus on languages from all of the major African language phyla. The articles here also reflect the many different research perspectives …
This volume of the series “Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing” includes most of the papers presented at the Workshop “Language Technology for a Multilingual Europe”, held at the University of Hamburg on September 27, 2011 in the framework of the conference GSCL 2011 with the topic “Multilingual Resources and Multilingual Applications”, along with several additi…
How can students be empowered to communicate professionally – as translators, journalists and CCOs? How can professionals engaged in crucial language interactions do the same – pilots, nurses, lawyers and many others? This volume gives answers to these questions, providing insights into critical situations and good practices from many years of research and teaching in a practice-oriented, r…
The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative na…
This book is intended as counter-evidence to the perception that Linguistics is a domain of dusty schoolroom grammar. It follows that linguistics can be characterised differently than as proponents of theoretical orientations who spend their brief breaks from their bone-dry work bashing each other over the head with their various favourite abstractions. The discipline may appear to outsiders as…
In any society, communicative activities are organized into models of conduct that differentiate specific social practices from each other and enable people to communicate with each other in ways distinctive to those practices. The articles in this volume investigate a series of locale-specific models of communicative conduct, or registers of communication, through which persons organize their …
The volume contains a selection of papers originally presented at the symposium on “Areal patterns of grammaticalization and cross-linguistic variation in grammaticalization scenarios” held on 12-14 March 2015 at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. The papers, written by leading scholars combining expertise in historical linguistics and grammaticalization research, study variation in gr…
This volume focuses on realisations of wordplay in different cultures and social and historical contexts, and brings together various research traditions of approaching wordplay. Together with the volume DWP 7, it assembles selected papers presented at the interdisciplinary conference The Dynamics of Wordplay / La dynamique du jeu de mots (Trier, 2016) and stresses the inherent dynamicity of wo…
This book presents a range of ongoing studies on atypical language development in Romance languages. Despite the steady increase in the number of studies on typical language development, there is still little research about atypical language development, especially in Romance languages. This book covers four main conditions causing atypical language development. Part I explores the linguistic a…
This volume focuses on the linguistic constructs involved in ethnic borders. Ethnic borders have proven themselves to be surprisingly long-lived: in nearly all European countries and beyond, border demarcation, exclusion of foreigners, and minority conflicts are some of the most persistent challenges for nations and societies. Which linguistic factors play a role in the formation of these borde…
It seems as if the fundamentals of how we produce vowels and how they are acoustically represented have been clarified: we phonate and articulate. Using our vocal chords, we produce a vocal sound or noise which is then shaped into a specific vowel sound by the resonances of the pharyngeal, oral, and nasal cavities, that is, the vocal tract. Accordingly, the acoustic description of vowels relate…
Although ‘hate speech’ is often incorporated in legal and policy documents, there is no universally accepted definition, which in itself warrants research into how hatred is both expressed and perceived. The research project synthesises discourse analytic and corpus linguistics techniques, and presents its key findings here. The focus is especially on online comments posted in reaction to n…
This book presents a major leap forward in the understanding of colour by showing how richer descriptions of colour samples can be operationalized in agent-based models. Four different language strategies are explored: the basic colour strategy, the graded membership strategy, the category combination strategy and the basic modification strategy. These strategies are firmly rooted in empirical …
The volume makes a major contribution to the field of Neo-Aramaic and significantly advances research. The articles present new analyses and new primary data from several endangered dialects, many of which have so far not been systematically documented, and in some cases have not been documented at all. It is good to see that the examples have been given glossing, so that this important materia…
Getting others to do things is a central part of social interaction in any human society. Language is our main tool for this purpose. In this book, we show that sequences of interaction in which one person’s behaviour solicits or occasions another’s assistance or collaboration share common structural properties that provide a basis for the systematic comparison of this domain across languag…
This book presents an in-depth description of information structure in Isthmus Zapotec, an Otomanguean language spoken by around 50,000 people in southeastern Oaxaca, Mexico, and represents the first book-length treatment of information structure in a Mesoamerican language. Three main observations motivate the study: Strong documentation and a relatively large and active speaker community creat…
"Voices and Practices in Applied Linguistics comprises a selection of original applied linguistics-based research on the theme of the diversity of Applied Linguistics and in Applied Linguistics. It is a unique collection of reflections and cutting-edge research relating to academic, policy and professional fields of Applied Linguistics, featuring chapters written by founders of the field, e…
This study makes substantial contributions to both the theoretical and computational treatment of information structure, with a specific focus on creating natural language processing applications such as multilingual machine translation systems. The present study first provides cross-linguistic findings in regards to information structure meanings and markings. Building upon such findings, the …
Rather than working at the usual scales of distant reading, this book shows what happens when we bring techniques from the digital humanities to bear on a single novel for close readings.
Corpus-based translation studies has become a major paradigm and research methodology and has investigated a wide variety of topics in the last two decades. The contributions to this volume add to the range of corpus-based studies by providing examples of some less explored applications of corpus analysis methods to translation research. They show that the area keeps evolving as it constantly o…
This book explores the discourse in and of translation within and across cultures and languages. From the macro aspects of translation as an inter- cultural project to actual analysis of textual ingredients that contribute to translation and interpreting as discourse, the ten chapters represent different explorations of ‘global’ theories of discourse and translation. Offering interrogations…
The book is a unique collection of research on sign languages that have emerged in rural communities with a high incidence of, often hereditary, deafness. These sign languages represent the latest addition to the comparative investigation of languages in the gestural modality, and the book is the first compilation of a substantial number of different village sign languages.Written by leading ex…
Drawing on both rule-based and constraint-based approaches, Voicing in Contrast examines typological differences in the laryngeal systems of Dutch and English and investigates the extent to which native speakers of Dutch acquire English obstruent voicing. The analysis is based on a substantial new data collection of conversational Dutch and English speech by speakers of different varieties of D…
This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period. Drawing on available textual and material evidence, the fourteen essays presented here, written by leading experts in their fields, span a significant chronological and geograph…
The comparison of sound sequences (words, morphemes) constitutes the core of many techniques and methods in historical linguistics. With the help of these techniques, corresponding sounds can be determined, historically related words can be identified, and the history of languages can be uncovered. So far, the application of traditional techniques for sequence comparison is very tedious and tim…
Language managers in their different forms (language planners, terminologists, professional neologists …) have long tried to intervene in the lexical usage of speakers, with various degrees of success: Some of their lexical items (partly) penetrate language use, others do not. Based on electronic networks of practice of the Esperanto speech community, Mélanie Maradan establishes the foundati…
This volume reports on the main results of the research project Inclusive epistemologies and practices of out-of-school English learning. The study reacts to low attainment levels in English as a foreign language among socioeconomically disadvantaged youth. The contributors to this volume research teenagers’ existing practices of using and learning English out of school time and implement new…
Despite the flourishing of epichoric studies on the Archaic Greek scripts in the 1960s, embodied by archaeologists Lilian Hamilton Jeffery and Margherita Guarducci, most scholarship on early alphabetic writing in Greece has focused on questions around the origin of ‘the Greek alphabet’ instead of acknowledging the diversity of alphabetic systems that emerged in Geometric and Archaic times. …
The Alor-Pantar family constitutes the westernmost outlier group of Papuan (Non-Austronesian) languages. Its twenty or so languages are spoken on the islands of Alor and Pantar, located just north of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Together with the Papuan languages of Timor, they make up the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. The languages average 5,000 speakers and are under pressure from the local Mala…
The present book comprises a number of studies centered around the topic of how knowledge diffuses from one culture to another, and how knowledge diffusion is connected with the spread of languages and the conceptual systems they carry by translation. This diffusion also takes place also over linguistic borders, in the way that a given receiving language may also absorb systems of knowledge fro…
This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contr…
This concise bibliography on Sign Languages was compiled on the occasion of the 20th international Congress of Linguists in Cape Town, South Africa, in July 2018. The selection of titles is drawn from the Linguistic Bibliography and gives an overview of scholarship on Sign language over the past 10 years. The introduction is by Myriam Vermeerbergen (KU Leuven & Stellenbosch University) and Anna…
The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers i…
The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers i…
Current grammatical knowledge about sign languages is fragmentary and of varying reliability and is scattered in scientific publications where the description is often intertwined with the analysis. Comprehensive grammars are rare. This work is an innovative tool for the grammar writer: a full-fledged guide to describing all components of the grammars of sign languages in a thorough and systema…
The purpose of this book is to present recent studies in the field of multilingualism and L3, bringing together contributions from an international group of specialists from Austria, Canada, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and United A All these chapters include several different languages in contact in an acquisition/learning context: Basque, English, French, German, Italian, La…
This book integrates insights from dialogic theory and systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to extend our understandings of engagement in medical research articles, going beyond notions of the role of verbal dialogue to encompass mathematical and visual semiotics and consider text not just as language but as multisemiosis. The volume begins by outlining the engagement framework and offering a …
This open access book presents novel theoretical, empirical and experimental work exploring the nature of mental representations that support natural language production and understanding, and other manifestations of cognition. One fundamental question raised in the text is whether requisite knowledge structures can be adequately modeled by means of a uniform representational format, and if so,…
This posthumous work by Jacques Arends offers new insights into the emergence of the creole languages of Suriname including Sranantongo or Suriname Plantation Creole, Ndyuka, and Saramaccan, and the sociohistorical context in which they developed. Drawing on a wealth of sources including little known historical texts, the author points out the relevance of European settlements prior to coloniza…
This open access book examines the complex relationship between education, media and power. Exploring the entanglement of education media and power structures, the contributions use various examples and case studies to demonstrate how subjectivation processes and digital structures interact with one another. The book asks which modes of subjectivation can be identified with current media cultur…
his volume includes chapters by junior and senior scholars hailing from Europe, Asia, North America, and Oceania, all of whom sought to understand the social and cultural implications surrounding how people take responsibility for the ways they speak or write in relation to a place—whether it is one they have long resided in, recently moved to, or left a long time ago.;The contributors to the…
Easy-to-Understand (E2U) text practices enable and facilitate accessible communication. E2U refers both to Plain and to Easy Language. These two powerful methods of language and content comprehension enhancement are illustrated through several examples in English, starting from the seminal role of the Anglophone world in promoting plain and lucid style. Originally implemented in written texts, …
This anthology brings the key writings on translation in Arabic in the pre-modern era, extending from the earliest times (sixth century CE) until the end of World War I, to a global English-speaking audience. The texts are arranged chronologically and organized by two historical periods: the Classical Period, and the Nahda Period. Each text is preceded by an introduction about the selected text…
This book offers a unique perspective on meaning in language, broadening the scope of existing understanding of meaning by introducing a comprehensive and cohesive account of meaning that draws on a wide range of linguistic approaches. The volume seeks to build up a complete picture of what meaning is, different types of meaning, and different ways of structuring the same meaning across myriad …
With forty-two extensively annotated maps, this atlas offers novel insights into the history and mechanics of how Central Europe’s languages have been made, unmade, and deployed for political action. The innovative combination of linguistics, history, and cartography makes a wealth of hard-to-reach knowledge readily available to both specialist and general readers. It combines information on …
This book explores the growing tension between multilingualism and monolingualism in the European Union in the wake of Brexit, underpinned by the interplay between the rise of English as a lingua franca and the effacement of translations in EU institutions, bodies and agencies. English and Translation in the European Union draws on an interdisciplinary approach, highlighting insights from appli…
This Element examines progress in research and practice in forensic authorship analysis. It describes the existing research base and asks what makes an authorship analysis more or less reliable. Further to this, the author describes the recent history of forensic science and the scientific revolution brought about by the invention of DNA evidence. They chart the rise of three major changes…
This open access book provides a detailed and up-to-date account of the relevant literature on the legibility of different kinds of typefaces, which goes back over 140 years in the case of reading from paper and more than 50 years in the case of reading from screens. It describes the origins of serif and sans serif styles in ancient inscriptions, their adoption in modern printing techniques, an…