Language Form And Language Function

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.

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.

The monograph illustrates the language specific realization of plausibly universal principles of language structure. The study attempts to cover the most basic (regular) parts of English grammar as a whole consistently, within a single compatible framework, but at the same time to present empirically based arguments in favour of specific analyses. She utilizes as often as possible standard scientific argumentation leading to the most generally accepted and best supported analysis of the chosen phenomena. The study is intended for Czech academic audience and therefore it also contains several typologically relevant comparison of English and Czech structures.

This book presents a form-function mapping (FFM) model for balancing language and content gains within content-based language teaching (CBLT). It includes a theoretical part, which outlines the FFM model and, drawing on the analysis of eclectic teaching methods and interlanguage restructuring, proposes pedagogical tools for its implementation. These tools, which encourage mapping of language forms onto content knowledge, are hypothesized to facilitate interlanguage restructuring, thus helping CBLT learners in their struggle with L2 morpho-syntax. The empirical section presents the results of a quantitative–qualitative study conducted among adult L1 Polish learners of English in a CBLT context. It then goes on to translate the findings, which reveal that the FFM model has a positive and significant influence on interlanguage restructuring as well as a favorable reception among CBLT learners, into a set of pedagogical guidelines for practitioners.

The volume's central concern is grammatical voice, traditionally known as diathesis, and its classical manifestations as Active, Middle, and Passive. While numerous problems in the meaning, syntax, and morphology of these categories in Indo-European remain unsolved, their counterparts in more exotic languages have raised still further questions. What discourse functions and diachronic events unite 'voice' as a recognizable phenomenon across languages? How are they typically grammaticalized? What stages do children go through in learning them? How does 'voice' link up with ergativity and with other categories and constructions such as the Inverse and the Antipassive? The authors in this volume have different perspectives on these problems: they discuss voice, e.g., from a typological-universal view, in relation to language acquisition and to ergativity, and from diachronic and cross-linguistic perspectives.

Using the theoretical framework of systemic functional linguistics, the chapters of this book explore the nature of language, the relations of meaning and society, of form and meaning, and of grammar and lexis.

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.