de gruyter mouton de gruyter okt 2008 (18 risultati)

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -This theoretically motivated approach to pragmatics (vs. semantics) produces a radically new view of culture and its role vis-a-vis society. Understanding what words mean in use requires an open-ended recourse to pragmatic cultural knowledge. Cultural knowledge makes up a productive conceptual system. Members of a cultural community share the system but not all of the system's content, making culture a system of parallel distributed cognition. This book presents such a system, and then elaborates a version of 'cultural models' that relates actions to goals, values, emotional content, and context, and that allows both systematic generative capacity and systematic variation across cultural and subcultural groups. Such models are offered as the basic units of cultural action. Culture thus conceived is shown as a tool that people use rather than as something deeply internalized in their psyches.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 292 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -This book reviews recent research on the second language acquisition of meaning with a view of establishing whether there is a critical period for the acquisition of compositional semantics. A modular approach to language architecture is assumed. The book addresses the Critical Period Hypothesis by examining the positive side of language development: it demonstrates which modules of the grammar are easy to acquire and are not subject to age effects. The Bottleneck Hypothesis is proposed, which argues that inflectional morphology and its features present the most formidable challenge, while syntax and phrasal semantics pose less difficulty to learners. Findings from the neurofunctional imaging (PET, fMRI) and electrophysiology (ERPs) of L2 comprehension are reviewed and critically examined. Since it is argued that experimental tasks in those studies are mostly in need of linguistic refinement, evidence from behavioral studies of L2 acquisition of semantics are brought to bear on comprehension modeling. Learning situations are divided into two types: those presenting learners with complex syntax, but simple semantics; and those offering complex semantic mismatches in simple syntactic contexts. The numerous studies of both types reviewed in the book indicate that there is no barrier to ultimate success in the acquisition of phrasal semantics.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 340 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -The book provides a theoretical and empirical evaluation of a field that has been the focus of generative theories on language acquisition: the acquisition of finiteness and related properties such as root infinitives, verb movement and null subjects. It contains a critical empirical assessment of the various hypotheses, lists the implications for linguistic theory and provides alternative analyses. Issues covered are: (i) the semantics of children¿s root infinitives (tense, modality and aspect), (ii) the relation between lexical, morphological and syntactic development in the domain of finiteness, (iii) the role of the input, and (iv) the interference of cognitive development. Typological focus is on Germanic languages.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 172 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -The contributions collected in this voume address central topics in theoretical and computational linguistics, such as quantification, types of context dependence and aspects concerning the formalisation of major grammatical frameworks, among others GB, DRT and HPSG.Allcontributions have in common a strong preference for logic as the major tool of analysis. The first main issue concerns the combination of DRT and HPSG styles of analysis into a single system for natural language processing. The second central issue concerns the logical and automata - theoretical foundations of descriptive formalisms presently in the focus of attention, for instance minimalism. A third issueis the significance of context and locality within an algorithmic notion of meaning.The last topic addressed concerns subclasses of empirically highly significant quantificational devices like proportionality quantifiers and quantifiers which give rise to sound and complete logicsfor non-trivial fragments of English.The volume will be of great benefit for theoretical and computational linguists, computer scientists, philosophers, and logicians.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 188 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The book provides a theoretical and empirical evaluation of a field that has been the focus of generative theories on language acquisition: the acquisition of finiteness and related properties such as root infinitives, verb movement and null subjects. It contains a critical empirical assessment of the various hypotheses, lists the implications for linguistic theory and provides alternative analyses. Issues covered are: (i) the semantics of children's root infinitives (tense, modality and aspect), (ii) the relation between lexical, morphological and syntactic development in the domain of finiteness, (iii) the role of the input, and (iv) the interference of cognitive development. Typological focus is on Germanic languages. 172 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The contributions collected in this voume address central topics in theoretical and computational linguistics, such as quantification, types of context dependence and aspects concerning the formalisation of major grammatical frameworks, among others GB, DRT and HPSG. All contributions have in common a strong preference for logic as the major tool of analysis. The first main issue concerns the combination of DRT and HPSG styles of analysis into a single system for natural language processing. The second central issue concerns the logical and automata - theoretical foundations of descriptive formalisms presently in the focus of attention, for instance minimalism. A third issue is the significance of context and locality within an algorithmic notion of meaning. The last topic addressed concerns subclasses of empirically highly significant quantificational devices like proportionality quantifiers and quantifiers which give rise to sound and complete logics for non-trivial fragments of English. The volume will be of great benefit for theoretical and computational linguists, computer scientists, philosophers, and logicians. 188 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book reviews recent research on the second language acquisition of meaning with a view of establishing whether there is a critical period for the acquisition of compositional semantics. A modular approach to language architecture is assumed. The book addresses the Critical Period Hypothesis by examining the positive side of language development: it demonstrates which modules of the grammar are easy to acquire and are not subject to age effects. The Bottleneck Hypothesis is proposed, which argues that inflectional morphology and its features present the most formidable challenge, while syntax and phrasal semantics pose less difficulty to learners. Findings from the neurofunctional imaging (PET, fMRI) and electrophysiology (ERPs) of L2 comprehension are reviewed and critically examined. Since it is argued that experimental tasks in those studies are mostly in need of linguistic refinement, evidence from behavioral studies of L2 acquisition of semantics are brought to bear on comprehension modeling. Learning situations are divided into two types: those presenting learners with complex syntax, but simple semantics; and those offering complex semantic mismatches in simple syntactic contexts. The numerous studies of both types reviewed in the book indicate that there is no barrier to ultimate success in the acquisition of phrasal semantics. 340 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This theoretically motivated approach to pragmatics (vs. semantics) produces a radically new view of culture and its role vis-a-vis society. Understanding what words mean in use requires an open-ended recourse to pragmatic cultural knowledge. Cultural knowledge makes up a productive conceptual system. Members of a cultural community share the system but not all of the system's content, making culture a system of parallel distributed cognition. This book presents such a system, and then elaborates a version of 'cultural models' that relates actions to goals, values, emotional content, and context, and that allows both systematic generative capacity and systematic variation across cultural and subcultural groups. Such models are offered as the basic units of cultural action. Culture thus conceived is shown as a tool that people use rather than as something deeply internalized in their psyches. 292 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -The book is an invitation to a genealogical understanding of the ideological and discursive processes that have emerged out of the regulation of linguistic minorities issues within an international context and, more precisely, at the United Nations. It highlights the contradictions, limits and possibilities in the elaboration of international measures within the universalist framework of human rights. The book also emphasizes the paradoxes between national interests and the elaboration of an international community - paradoxes in which minority issues fundamentally question the homogeneity of the state. It shows that despite the shift from national spaces to international ones, the fears of nation-states for linguistic minorities remain. Finally, the book reveals the importance of the reproduction of the interests of nation-states within an international organization and the reproduction of power through the legal management and regulation of minority rights in general, and those of linguistic minorities in particular.Through its presentation of the history of the United Nations, its vision of the protection of linguistic minorities, the underlying ideologies that have emerged, as well as the limits and possibilities of action, the book contributes to a better understanding of the complexity of the protection of linguistic minorities and the role of language ideologies within an international context.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 296 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -There are books on tone, coronals, the internal structure of segments, vowel harmony, and a couple of other topics in phonology. This book aims to fill the gap for Lenition and Fortition, which is one of the first phenomena that was addressed by phonologists in the 19th century, and ever since contributed to phonological thinking. It is certainly one of the core phenomena that is found in the phonology of natural language: together with assimilations, the other important family of phenomena, Lenition and Fortition constitute the heart of what phonology can do to sound.The book aims to provide an overall treatment of the question in its many aspects: historical, typological, synchronic, diachronic, empirical and theoretical. Various current approaches to phonology are represented.The book is structured into three parts: 1) properties and behaviour of Lenition/Fortition, 2) lenition patterns in particular languages and language families, 3) how Lenition/Fortition work.Part 1 describes the properties of lenition and fortition: what counts as such What kind of behaviour is observed Which factors bear on it (positional, stress-related) Which role has it played in phonology since (and even before) the 19th century The everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-lenition-and-fortition philosophy that guides the conception of the book supposes a descriptive, generalisation-oriented style of writing that relies on a kind of phonological lingua franca, rather than on theory-laden vocabulary. Also, no prior knowledge other than about general phonological categories should be required when reading through Part 1. The goal is to provide a broad picture of what lenition is, how it behaves, which factors it is conditioned by and what generalisations it obeys. This record may then be used as a yardstick for competing theories.Part 2 presents a number of case studies that show how Lenition/Fortition behave in a number of languages that include systems which are notoriously emblematic for Lenition/Fortition: Celtic, Western Romance, Germanic and Finnish.Finally, Part 3 is concerned with the analysis of the patterns that have been described in Parts 1 and 2. Given their analytic orientation, Part 3 chapters are theory-specific. They look at the same empirical record, or at a subset thereof, and try to explain what they see. Even though Part 3 chapters are couched in a specific theoretical environment that most of the time supposes prior conceptual knowledge, authors have been asked to assure theoretical interoperability as much as they could.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 612 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -The book offers a comprehensive account of how humor works in short stories, by presenting a model of narrative comedy that is pragmatically as well as semantically, grammatically and stylistically informed. It is the first study to combine a sequential analysis of the comic short story with a hierarchical one, merging together horizontal and vertical narratological perspectives in a systematic way. The book covers the main areas of linguistic analysis and is deliberately interdisciplinary, using input from philosophy, sociology and psychology so as to touch upon the nature, motivations and functions of humor as a cognitive phenomenon in a social context. Crucially, The Language of Comic Narratives combines a scholarly approach with a careful explanation of key terms and concepts, making it accessible to researchers and students, as well as non-specialists. Moreover, it reviews a broad range of historical critical data by examining the source texts, and it provides many humorous examples, from jokes to extracts from comic narratives. Thus, it seeks to anchor theory in specific texts, and also to show that many linguistic mechanisms of humor are common to jokes and longer, literary comic narratives. The book tests the model of humorous narratives on a set of comic short stories by British and American writers, ranging from Evelyn Waugh and Dorothy Parker, through Graham Greene and Corey Ford, to David Lodge and Woody Allen. The validity of the model is confirmed through a subsequent discussion of apparent counter-examples.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 276 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -The series builds an extensive collection of high quality descriptions of languages around the world. Each volume offers a comprehensive grammatical description of a single language together with fully analyzed sample texts and, if appropriate, a word list and other relevant information which is available on the language in question. There are no restrictions as to language family or area, and although special attention is paid to hitherto undescribed languages, new and valuable treatments of better known languages are also included. No theoretical model is imposed on the authors; the only criterion is a high standard of scientific quality.To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 1408 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -There are books on tone, coronals, the internal structure of segments, vowel harmony, and a couple of other topics in phonology. This book aims to fill the gap for Lenition and Fortition, which is one of the first phenomena that was addressed by phonologists in the 19th century, and ever since contributed to phonological thinking. It is certainly one of the core phenomena that is found in the phonology of natural language: together with assimilations, the other important family of phenomena, Lenition and Fortition constitute the heart of what phonology can do to sound.The book aims to provide an overall treatment of the question in its many aspects: historical, typological, synchronic, diachronic, empirical and theoretical. Various current approaches to phonology are represented.The book is structured into three parts: 1) properties and behaviour of Lenition/Fortition, 2) lenition patterns in particular languages and language families, 3) how Lenition/Fortition work. Part 1 describes the properties of lenition and fortition: what counts as such What kind of behaviour is observed Which factors bear on it (positional, stress-related) Which role has it played in phonology since (and even before) the 19th century The everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-lenition-and-fortition philosophy that guides the conception of the book supposes a descriptive, generalisation-oriented style of writing that relies on a kind of phonological lingua franca, rather than on theory-laden vocabulary. Also, no prior knowledge other than about general phonological categories should be required when reading through Part 1. The goal is to provide a broad picture of what lenition is, how it behaves, which factors it is conditioned by and what generalisations it obeys. This record may then be used as a yardstick for competing theories.Part 2 presents a number of case studies that show how Lenition/Fortition behave in a number of languages that include systems which are notoriously emblematic for Lenition/Fortition: Celtic, Western Romance, Germanic and Finnish.Finally, Part 3 is concerned with the analysis of the patterns that have been described in Parts 1 and 2. Given their analytic orientation, Part 3 chapters are theory-specific. They look at the same empirical record, or at a subset thereof, and try to explain what they see. Even though Part 3 chapters are couched in a specific theoretical environment that most of the time supposes prior conceptual knowledge, authors have been asked to assure theoretical interoperability as much as they could. 612 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The book is an invitation to a genealogical understanding of the ideological and discursive processes that have emerged out of the regulation of linguistic minorities issues within an international context and, more precisely, at the United Nations. It highlights the contradictions, limits and possibilities in the elaboration of international measures within the universalist framework of human rights. The book also emphasizes the paradoxes between national interests and the elaboration of an international community - paradoxes in which minority issues fundamentally question the homogeneity of the state. It shows that despite the shift from national spaces to international ones, the fears of nation-states for linguistic minorities remain. Finally, the book reveals the importance of the reproduction of the interests of nation-states within an international organization and the reproduction of power through the legal management and regulation of minority rights in general, and those of linguistic minorities in particular. Through its presentation of the history of the United Nations, its vision of the protection of linguistic minorities, the underlying ideologies that have emerged, as well as the limits and possibilities of action, the book contributes to a better understanding of the complexity of the protection of linguistic minorities and the role of language ideologies within an international context. 296 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -The book offers a comprehensive account of how humor works in short stories, by presenting a model of narrative comedy that is pragmatically as well as semantically, grammatically and stylistically informed. It is the first study to combine a sequential analysis of the comic short story with a hierarchical one, merging together horizontal and vertical narratological perspectives in a systematic way. The book covers the main areas of linguistic analysis and is deliberately interdisciplinary, using input from philosophy, sociology and psychology so as to touch upon the nature, motivations and functions of humor as a cognitive phenomenon in a social context. Crucially, The Language of Comic Narratives combines a scholarly approach with a careful explanation of key terms and concepts, making it accessible to researchers and students, as well as non-specialists. Moreover, it reviews a broad range of historical critical data by examining the source texts, and it provides many humorous examples, from jokes to extracts from comic narratives. Thus, it seeks to anchor theory in specific texts, and also to show that many linguistic mechanisms of humor are common to jokes and longer, literary comic narratives. The book tests the model of humorous narratives on a set of comic short stories by British and American writers, ranging from Evelyn Waugh and Dorothy Parker, through Graham Greene and Corey Ford, to David Lodge and Woody Allen. The validity of the model is confirmed through a subsequent discussion of apparent counter-examples. 276 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Toqabaqita is an Austronesian language spoken by approximately 13,000 people on the island of Malaita in the south-eastern Solomon Islands. This two-volume grammar is the first comprehensive description of the language, based on the author's field work. The grammar deals with the phonology, morphology, syntax, and discourse patterns of the language, as well as with its contact with Solomon Islands Pijin. It will be of special interest to typologists and to specialists in Austronesian linguistics. 1408 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -Interpersonal communication (IC) is a continuous game between the interacting interactants. It is a give and take - a continuous, dynamic flow that is linguistically realized as discourse as an on-going sequence of interactants' moves. Interpersonal communication is produced and interpreted by acting linguistically, and this makes it a fascinating research area. The handbook, Interpersonal Communication , examines how interactants manage to exchange facts, ideas, views, opinions, beliefs, emotion, etc. by using the linguistic systems and the resources they offer. In interpersonal communication, the fine-tuning of individuals' use of the linguistic resources is continuously probed. The language used in interpersonal communication enhances social relations between interactants and keeps the interaction on the normal track. When interaction gets off the track, linguistic miscommunication may also destroy social relationships. This volume is essentially concerned with this fine-tuning in discourse, and how it is achieved among various interactant groups.The volume departs from the following fundamental questions: How do interpersonal relations manifest themselves in language What is the role of language in developing and maintaining relationships in interpersonal communication What types of problems occur in interpersonal communication and what kind of strategies and means are used to solve them How does linguistically realized interpersonal communication interact with other semiotic modes Interpersonal communication is seen and researched from the perspective of what is being said or written, and how it is realized in various generic forms. The current research also gives attention to other semiotic modes which interact with the linguistic modes. It is not just the social roles of interactants in groups, the possible media available, the non-verbal behaviors, the varying contextual frames for communication, but primarily the actual linguistic manifestations that we need to focus upon when we want to have a full picture of what is going on in human interpersonal communication.It is this linguistic perspective that the volume aims to present to all researchers interested in IC. The volume offers an overview of the theories, methods, tools, and resources of linguistically-oriented approaches, e.g. from the fields of linguistics, social psychology, sociology, and semiotics, for the purpose of integration and further development of the interests in IC.Topics e.g.: Orientation to interaction as primarily linguistically realized processesExpertise on theorizing and analyzing cultural and situational contexts where linguistic processes are realizedExpertise on handling language corporaExpertise on theorizing and analyzing interaction types as genresOrientation to an integrated view of linguistic and non-linguistic participant activities and of how interactants generate meanings and interact with spaceExpertise on researching the management of the linguistic flow in interaction and its successfulness.Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Genthiner Strasse 13, 10785 Berlin 660 pp. Englisch.

Buch. Condizione: Neu. This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -Interpersonal communication (IC) is a continuous game between the interacting interactants. It is a give and take - a continuous, dynamic flow that is linguistically realized as discourse as an on-going sequence of interactants' moves. Interpersonal communication is produced and interpreted by acting linguistically, and this makes it a fascinating research area. The handbook, Interpersonal Communication , examines how interactants manage to exchange facts, ideas, views, opinions, beliefs, emotion, etc. by using the linguistic systems and the resources they offer. In interpersonal communication, the fine-tuning of individuals' use of the linguistic resources is continuously probed. The language used in interpersonal communication enhances social relations between interactants and keeps the interaction on the normal track. When interaction gets off the track, linguistic miscommunication may also destroy social relationships. This volume is essentially concerned with this fine-tuning in discourse, and how it is achieved among various interactant groups. The volume departs from the following fundamental questions: How do interpersonal relations manifest themselves in language What is the role of language in developing and maintaining relationships in interpersonal communication What types of problems occur in interpersonal communication and what kind of strategies and means are used to solve them How does linguistically realized interpersonal communication interact with other semiotic modes Interpersonal communication is seen and researched from the perspective of what is being said or written, and how it is realized in various generic forms. The current research also gives attention to other semiotic modes which interact with the linguistic modes. It is not just the social roles of interactants in groups, the possible media available, the non-verbal behaviors, the varying contextual frames for communication, but primarily the actual linguistic manifestations that we need to focus upon when we want to have a full picture of what is going on in human interpersonal communication. It is this linguistic perspective that the volume aims to present to all researchers interested in IC. The volume offers an overview of the theories, methods, tools, and resources of linguistically-oriented approaches, e.g. from the fields of linguistics, social psychology, sociology, and semiotics, for the purpose of integration and further development of the interests in IC., Topics e.g.: Orientation to interaction as primarily linguistically realized processes Expertise on theorizing and analyzing cultural and situational contexts where linguistic processes are realized Expertise on handling language corpora Expertise on theorizing and analyzing interaction types as genres Orientation to an integrated view of linguistic and non-linguistic participant activities and of how interactants generate meanings and interact with space Expertise on researching the management of the linguistic flow in interaction and its successfulness. 660 pp. Englisch.