Exploring Language Through Contrast

The volume portrays a panorama of recent linguistic research in Poland in terms of comparison and juxtaposition as driving forces in an attempt to grasp descriptive and explanatory aspects of linguistic use and organization. The spectrum of contributions spans all the levels of language. The constellation of methodological perspectives juxtaposes the generative theory and recent developments in cognitive linguistics, synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and a measure of freedom has also been allocated to a more traditional structurally-oriented and/or eclectic spirit. The notions of comparison and contrast have become the major force and the common denominator for all contributions in the service of explicating the central and the focal from what appears nebulous. A well-documented discussion on horizontal bonds between phonological primes and a refreshing new attempt to handle the phonology of Old English i-umlaut are complemented with equally illuminating topics in derivational morphology such as grinding, diminutives, suffix distributional preferences and compound nouns. In a similar fashion, drawing upon the fundamental phenomenon of dynamic alternating processes, syntactic topics focus on such problems as grammatical constructions with locatum verbs, the status of English NPN forms and a new typology of Old English verbs. Cognitively grounded phenomena are handled with equal zest, and range across the vast territory of backstage cognition: from the ‘slip-of-the-tongue’, through novelty of meaning achieved through collocation/construction environment, to a discussion on the emergence of metaphorical senses in Old English lexical concepts for ‘fire’ and ‘light’. This stage inevitably leads us to further juxtapositions championed in the volume embracing subjectification and objectification in viewing arrangement, as well as dynamically anchored viewing impositions of ‘the self’ of the textual narrator. The contributions dealing with levels of discourse aspire to bring us closer to goals and norms in politeness and co-operation strategies, and also to an in-depth analysis of stylistic features based on corpora. The coda falls onto normative linguistics and thus closes the territory of contrast and juxtaposition. It provides an insight into how a reflective thespian and a devoted linguist differ in viewing language without compromising the status and validity of their respective stances.

Proposing a new methodological approach to documenting languages spoken in multilingual societies, this book retraces the investigation of one unique linguistic space, the Creole varieties referred to as Takitaki in multilingual French Guiana. It illustrates how interactional sociolinguistic, anthropological linguistic, discourse analytical and quantitative sociolinguistic approaches can be integrated with structural approaches to language in order to resolve rarely discussed questions systematically (what are the outlines of the community, who is a rightful speaker, what speech should be documented) that frequently crop up in projects of language documentation in multilingual contexts. The authors argue that comprehensively documenting complex linguistic phenomena requires taking into account the views of all local social actors (native and non native speakers, institutions, linguists, non-speakers etc.), applying a range of complementary data collection and analysis methods and putting issues of ideology, variation, language contact and interaction centre stage. This book will be welcomed by researchers in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, fieldwork studies, language documentation and language variation and change.

This book explores the impact of language frameworks on learning, teaching and assessment, viewed from the perspective of policies, procedures and challenges. It brings together a selection of edited papers, based on presentations given at the 4th International Conference of the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) held in Kraków, Poland, in July 2011. The selected papers focus on the conference's core themes as follows: the effect of frameworks on teaching, learning and assessment; the value of frameworks for teachers, learners and language policymakers; the contribution of frameworks towards describing particular languages.

Introduces the key concepts of linguistics and applies these concepts to real-world settings. Numerous learning features provide extensive student support.

In this student-friendly text, Jones and Singh explore the phenomenon of language change, with a particular focus on the social contexts of its occurrence and possible motivations, including speakers’ intentions and attitudes. Presenting new or little-known data, the authors draw a distinction between "unconscious" and "deliberate" change. The discussion on "unconscious" change considers phenomena such as the emergence and obsolescence of individual languages, whilst the sections on "deliberate" change focus on issues of language planning, including the strategies of language revival and revitalization movements. There is also a detailed exploration of what is arguably the most extreme instance of "deliberate" change; language invention for real-world use. Examining an extensive range of language situations, Exploring Language Change makes a clear, but often ignored distinction between concepts such as language policy and planning, and language revival and revitalization. Also featured are a number of case studies which demonstrate that real-life language use is often much more complex than theoretical abstractions might suggest. This is a key text for students on a variety of courses, including sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and language policy and planning.

As the legislative bodies of democratic nations, parliaments play a fundamental role in society. Consequently the linguistic practices observed in parliamentary discourse are of importance to everyone. This volume brings together leading researchers in areas of corpus linguistics, big data, parliamentary discourse, and historical linguistics in a truly interdisciplinary exploration at the vanguard of big data and corpus methods with the aim to investigate the intersection between linguistic and social change. Making use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, the studies included in this volume range from a focus on explicitly linguistic phenomena to topics that contribute to our understanding of language and society more generally. It breaks new ground in its critical reflection on the conceptual and methodological challenges of using large corpora of parliamentary discourse to study both the specialised language of parliamentary speech and the societies that the parliaments in question represent and govern.

This is the first volume in a series of three books called Within Language, Beyond Theories, which focuses on current linguistic research surpassing the limits of contemporary theoretical frameworks in order to gain new insights into the structure of the language system and to offer more explanatorily adequate accounts of linguistic phenomena from a number of the world's languages. This volume brings together twenty-five papers pertaining to theoretical linguistics, and consists of three par ...

Despite a significant increase in interest over the last two decades in the English Noun Phrase, there are still many open questions and unexplored issues. The papers collected in this volume contribute to this ongoing research by addressing a range of topics concerning the internal structure, use and development of English Noun Phrases. The eleven chapters represent three main themes: 1. Determination, modification and complementation; 2. Shell nouns and the X-is construction; 3. Binominal constructions. These topics are approached in different ways: some chapters are synchronic in nature, others diachronic; and while most subscribe to functional-cognitive modelling, some take a more formal approach. In addition, different methodologies are employed, varying from qualitative and quantitative corpus analyses to experimental methods. As a result, the contributions to this volume represent both the main topics currently discussed in research on the English Noun Phrase, and the diversity in the way these topics are investigated.