Download or read book Topic Continuity in Discourse written by T. Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The functional notion of “topic” or “topicality” has suffered, traditionally, from two distinct drawbacks. First, it has remained largely ill defined or intuitively defined. And second, quite often its definition boiled down to structure-dependent circularity. This volume represents a major departure from past practices, without rejecting both their intuitive appeal and the many good results yielded by them. First, “topic” and “topicality” are re-analyzed as a scalar property, rather than as an either/or discrete prime. Second, the graded property of “topicality” is firmly connected with sensible cognitive notions culled from gestalt psychology, such as “predictability” or “continuity”. Third, we develop and utilize precise measures and quantified methods by which the property of “topicality” of clausal arguments can be studied in connected discourse, and thus be properly hinged in its rightful context, that of topic identification, maintenance and recoverability in discourse. Fourth, we show that many grammatical phenomena which used to be studied by linguists in isolation, all partake in one functional domain of grammar, that of topic identification. Finally, we demonstrate the validity of this new approach to the study of “topic” and “topicality” by applying the same text-based quantifying method to a number of typologically-diverse languages, in studying actual texts. Languages studied here are: Written and spoken English, spoken Spanish, Biblical Hebrew, Amharic, Hausa, Japanese, Chamorro and Ute.

Download or read book Coherence and Grounding in Discourse written by Russell S. Tomlin and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume seeks to expand our understanding of the relation holding between discourse relations, cognitive units, and linguistic coding. The twenty contributions in this collection explore one or more of the following themes: How point of view, or the salience of information in discourse, affects the organizational coherence of text and discourse; the concept of cognitive and linguistic event and how events are reflected in text and discourse organization; the nature of linguistic coding of events and other kinds of significant information; and the cognitive bases or cognitive correlates of the linguistic organization of discourse.

Download or read book Coherence Continuity and Cohesion written by Kim Sydow Campbell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a need for general theoretical principles describing/explaining effective design -- those which demonstrate "unity" and enhance comprehension and usability. Theories of cohesion from linguistics and of comprehension in psychology are likely sources of such general principles. Unfortunately, linguistic approaches to discourse unity have focused exclusively on semantic elements such as synonymy or anaphora, and have ignored other linguistic elements such as syntactic parallelism and phonological alliteration. They have also overlooked the non-linguistic elements -- visual factors such as typography or color, and auditory components such as pitch or duration. In addition, linguistic approaches have met with criticism because they have failed to explain the relationship between semantic cohesive elements and coherence. On the other hand, psychological approaches to discourse comprehension have considered the impact of a wider range of discourse elements -- typographical cuing of key terms to enhance comprehension -- but have failed to provide general theoretical explanations for such observations. This volume uses Gestalt theory to provide general principles for predicting one aspect of coherence -- that of continuity -- across the entire range of discourse elements, and also to outline the relationship between cohesion and coherence. The theoretical core of this book argues that the cognitive principles that explain why humans "sense" unity in a succession of sounds (a whole musical piece) or in a configuration of visual shapes (a complete object) are the basis of principles which explain why we "sense" unity in oral, written, and electronically produced documents.

Download or read book Describing Morphosyntax written by Thomas E. Payne and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-10-09 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the 6000 languages now spoken throughout the world around 3000 may become extinct during the next century. This guide gives linguists the tools to describe them, syntactically and grammatically, for future reference.

Download or read book Modes of Discourse written by Carlota S. Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-04-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In studying discourse, the problem for the linguist is to find a fruitful level of analysis. Carlota Smith offers a new approach with this study of discourse passages, units of several sentences or more. She introduces the key idea of the 'Discourse Mode', identifying five modes: Narrative, Description, Report, Information, Argument. These are realized at the level of the passage, and cut across genre lines. Smith shows that the modes, intuitively recognizable as distinct, have linguistic correlates that differentiate them. She analyzes the properties that distinguish each mode, focusing on grammatical rather than lexical information. The book also examines linguistically based features that appear in passages of all five modes: topic and focus, variation in syntactic structure, and subjectivity, or point of view. Operating at the interface of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, the book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in linguistics, stylistics and rhetoric.

Download or read book Listening to Speech written by Steven Greenberg and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human species is largely defined by its use of spoken language, so integral is speech communication to behavior and social interaction. Despite its importance in everyday life, comparatively little is known about the auditory mechanisms that underlie the ability to understand language. The current volume examines the perception and processing of speech from the perspective of the hearing system. The chapters in this book describe a comprehensive set of approaches to the scientific study of speech and hearing, ranging from anatomy and physiology, to psychophysics and perception, and computational modeling. The auditory basis of speech is examined within a biological and an evolutionary context, and its relevance to applied domains such as communication disorders and speech technology discussed in detail. This volume will be of interest to scientists, engineers, and clinicians whose professional work pertains to any aspect of spoken language or hearing science.

Download or read book Transitivity and Discourse Continuity in Chamorro Narratives written by Ann M. Cooreman and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 1987 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

Download or read book Topic Continuity in Discourse written by Talmy Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1983-01-01 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The functional notion of “topic” or “topicality” has suffered, traditionally, from two distinct drawbacks. First, it has remained largely ill defined or intuitively defined. And second, quite often its definition boiled down to structure-dependent circularity. This volume represents a major departure from past practices, without rejecting both their intuitive appeal and the many good results yielded by them. First, “topic” and “topicality” are re-analyzed as a scalar property, rather than as an either/or discrete prime. Second, the graded property of “topicality” is firmly connected with sensible cognitive notions culled from gestalt psychology, such as “predictability” or “continuity”. Third, we develop and utilize precise measures and quantified methods by which the property of “topicality” of clausal arguments can be studied in connected discourse, and thus be properly hinged in its rightful context, that of topic identification, maintenance and recoverability in discourse. Fourth, we show that many grammatical phenomena which used to be studied by linguists in isolation, all partake in one functional domain of grammar, that of topic identification. Finally, we demonstrate the validity of this new approach to the study of “topic” and “topicality” by applying the same text-based quantifying method to a number of typologically-diverse languages, in studying actual texts. Languages studied here are: Written and spoken English, spoken Spanish, Biblical Hebrew, Amharic, Hausa, Japanese, Chamorro and Ute.

Download or read book Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility written by Doris L. Payne and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For some time the assumption has been widely held that for a majority of the world's languages, one can identify a "basic" order of subject and object relative to the verb, and that when combined with other facts of the language, the "basic" order constitutes a useful way of typologizing languages. New debate has arisen over varying definitions of "basic," with investigators encountering languages where branding a particular order of grammatical relations as basic yielded no particular insightfulness. This work asserts that explanatory factors behind word order variation go beyond the syntactic and are to be found in studies of how the mind grammaticizes forms, processes information, and speech act theory considerations of speakers' attempts to get their hearers to build one, rather than another, mental representation of incoming information. Thus three domains must be distinguished in understanding order variation: syntactic, cognitive and pragmatic. The works in this volume explore various aspects of this assertion.

Download or read book Switch Reference 2 0 written by Rik van Gijn and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Switch reference is a grammatical process that marks a referential relationship between arguments of two (or more) verbs. Typically it has been characterized as an inflection pattern on the verb itself, encoding identity or non-identity between subject arguments separately from traditional person or number marking. In the 50 years since William Jacobsen’s coinage of the term, switch reference has evolved from an exotic phenomenon found in a handful of lesser-known languages to a widespread feature found in geographically and linguistically unconnected parts of the world. The growing body of information on the topic raises new theoretical and empirical questions about the development, functions, and nature of switch reference, as well as the internal variation between different switch-reference systems. The contributions to this volume discuss these and other questions for a wide variety of languages from all over the world, and endevaour to demonstrate the full functional and morphosyntactic range of the phenomenon.

Download or read book Processing interclausal Relationships written by Jean Costermans and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last 10 years, more and more linguistic and psycholinguistic research has been devoted to the study of discourse and written texts. Much of this research deals with the markers that underline the connections and the breaks between clauses and sentences plus the use of these markers -- by adults and children -- in the production and comprehension of oral and written material. In this volume, major observations and theoretical views from both sides of the Atlantic are brought together to appeal to a wide range of linguists, psychologists, and speech therapists. The volume presents contributions from researchers interested specifically in adult language and from others concerned with developmental aspects of language. Some contributors deal primarily with production, whereas others concentrate on comprehension. Some direct their attention to oral discourse while others focus on written texts. To preserve overall coherence, however, the contributors were given the following recommendations: * With regard to the level of linguistic analysis, the emphasis should be on the clause level -- more particularly, on the relationships between clauses. * Special emphasis should also be placed on linguistic markers (e.g., connectives, markers of segmentation, punctuation). * An overview of a given field of research should be offered, and current research should be put into perspective. * For contributors in the developmental field, attention should be paid to the fact that an account of the acquisition of some language functions throughout childhood should be included only if general principles of interclause relations that might be masked by the exclusive examination of adult evidence could be derived from it.

Download or read book Anaphora Analysis Algorithms and Applications written by António Branco and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-03-16 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes revised selected papers of the 6th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium, DAARC 2007, held in Lagos, Portugal in March 2007. The 13 revised full papers are organized in topical sections on human processing and performance, language analysis and representation, resolution methodology and algorithms, as well as computational systems and applications.

Download or read book Voice and Inversion written by Talmy Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection aims first to establish a structure-independent, language-independent definition of pragmatic voice, and more specifically then a universal functional definition of “inverse”. The grammar and pragmatic function of the four major voice constructions — direct-active, inverse, passive, antipassive — are surveyed using narrative texts from 14 languages: Koyukon (Athabascan), Plains Cree (Algonquian), Chepang (Tibeto-Burman), Squamish and Bella Coola (Salish), Sahaptin (Sahaptian), Kutenai (isolate), Surinam Carib (Carib), Spanish and Greek (Indo-European), Korean, Maasai (Nilotic), Cebuano and Karao (Philippine). The comparative quantified study of pragmatic voice functions tests the validity of a universal functional definition of voice and in particular of “inverse”. The cross-language comparison of grammatical structures that code the various voice functions then lays down the foundation for a non-trivial cross-language typology of “inverse”.

Download or read book Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies written by Maeve Olohan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-05 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by Maeve Olohan, a leading name in the field, and offering a comprehensive account of the use of corpora by today's translators and researchers, this book is the definitive guide to a fast-developing area of study.

Download or read book New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew written by Aaron D. Hornkohl and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the papers in this volume originated as presentations at the conference Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew: New Perspectives in Philology and Linguistics, which was held at the University of Cambridge, 8–10th July, 2019. The aim of the conference was to build bridges between various strands of research in the field of Hebrew language studies that rarely meet, namely philologists working on Biblical Hebrew, philologists working on Rabbinic Hebrew and theoretical linguists. This volume is the published outcome of this initiative. It contains peer-reviewed papers in the fields of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew that advance the field by the philological investigation of primary sources and the application of cutting-edge linguistic theory. These include contributions by established scholars and by students and early career researchers.

Download or read book The Determinants of Diachronic Stability written by Anne Breitbarth and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-03-20 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While much of the literature has focused on explaining diachronic variation and change, the fact that sometimes change does not seem to happen has received much less attention. The current volume unites ten contributions that look for the determinants of diachronic stability, mainly in the areas of morphology and (morpho)syntax. The relevant question is approached from different angles, both empirical and theoretical. Empirically, the contributions deal with the absence of change where one may expect it, uncover underlying stability where traditionally diachronic change was postulated, and, inversely, superficial stability that disguises underlying change. Determining factors ranging from internal causes to language contact are explored. Theoretically, the questions of whether stable variation is possible, and how it can be modeled are addressed. The volume will be of interest to linguists working on the causes of language change, and to scholars working on the history of Germanic, Romance, and Sinitic languages.

Download or read book The Verb in Classical Hebrew written by Bo Isaksson and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2024-09-17 with total page 751 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The consecutive tenses are fundamental in all descriptions of Classical Hebrew grammar. They are even basic to the textbooks on Biblical Hebrew. Being fundamental in the verbal system, and part of any beginner’s grammar, they pose a serious problem to a linguistic understanding of the verbal system, since grammars describe an alternation of ‘forms’ or ‘tenses’ in double pairs: wayyiqṭol alternates with its ‘equivalent’ qaṭal, and wə-qaṭal alternates with its ‘equivalent’ yiqṭol. This ‘enigma’ in the verbal system is handled in the book by recognising that the alternation of the consecutive tenses with other tenses, in the reality of the text, represents a linking of clauses. The ‘consecutive tenses’ are clause-types with a natural language connective wa- directly followed by a finite verbal morpheme, a type of clause that expressed continuity in the earliest stage of Semitic. The commonly held assumption that there is a special ‘consecutive waw’ is unwarranted. The use of the ‘consecutive’ clause-types in order to express discourse continuity indicates that Classical Hebrew has retained the old unmarked declarative word order of Semitic syntax. Seen in the light of recent research on the Tiberian reading tradition, the ‘consecutive’ wayyiqṭol can be analysed as a retention of the old Semitic past perfective *wa-yaqtul, which was pronounced wa-yiqṭol in Classical Hebrew. The ‘consecutive’ wə-qāṭal (pronounced wa-qaṭal in the classical language) constitutes the result of an internal Hebrew development into a construction (in the sense of Joan Bybee) already foreshadowed in the earliest Northwest Semitic languages. The book understands the ‘consecutive tenses’ as discourse continuity clauses, which typically form chains of main line clauses. Such chains can be interrupted by other types of clauses. This interruption is a clause linking that receives special attention in the interpretation of the Classical Hebrew verbal system. Chapter six presents a regenerated text linguistics founded on the new terminology. A clause linking approach is the central methodological procedure in this book. To this must be added diachronic typology in a comparative Semitic setting. The linguistic examples of clause linking are gathered from a large Classical Hebrew corpus, the Pentateuch and the Book of Judges, and made searchable in a database of 6559 non-archaic text records.