Download or read book Spatial Demonstratives in English and Chinese written by Yi’an Wu and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-09-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a subject of universal appeal, spatial demonstratives have been studied extensively from a variety of disciplines. What marks the present study as distinct is that it is an English-Chinese comparative study set in a cognitive-linguistic framework and that the methodology features a parallel corpora-based, discourse analysis approach. The framework illuminates the nature of the demonstratives’ basic and extended meaning and use, the connections between them, and the mechanisms that govern and constrain their trends of extension. The corpora place the English and Chinese demonstratives in comparable discourse contexts and processes, providing an “ecological” environment for the observation of how their behavior fits into the respective structural and discourse systems of the two languages. The study also illuminates important issues such as the subjectivity of language, language as a representational system and a vehicle of communication, the interface between form and function, and the role of context in discourse comprehension.

Download or read book Spatial Demonstratives in English and Chinese written by Yián Wu and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a subject of universal appeal, spatial demonstratives have been studied extensively from a variety of disciplines. What marks the present study as distinct is that it is an English-Chinese comparative study set in a cognitive-linguistic framework and that the methodology features a parallel corpora-based, discourse analysis approach. The framework illuminates the nature of the demonstratives basic and extended meaning and use, the connections between them, and the mechanisms that govern and constrain their trends of extension. The corpora place the English and Chinese demonstratives in comparable discourse contexts and processes, providing an ecological environment for the observation of how their behavior fits into the respective structural and discourse systems of the two languages. The study also illuminates important issues such as the subjectivity of language, language as a representational system and a vehicle of communication, the interface between form and function, and the role of context in discourse comprehension.

Download or read book Spatial Demonstratives in English and Chinese written by Yi'an Wu and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The German Demonstratives written by Lin Lin and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores, analyzes, and compares the use of German and Chinese demonstratives. Discourse and textual uses of the forms are considered, as well as their locative and temporal uses. The author observes that in both languages the demonstratives can be used to refer to referents. However, she departs from the common assumption that proximal demonstratives refer to entities or places close to the speaker, while non-proximal demonstratives refer to entities or places far from the speaker. Having analyzed a representative sampling consisting of a German text and a Chinese text, the author argues that both German and Chinese proximal demonstratives can signal the meaning of HIGH DEIXIS in a system of DEIXIS in the Columbia School of linguistics framework, whereas their non-proximal demonstratives can signal the meaning of LOW DEIXIS. In addition, Chinese demonstratives can be used under more circumstances than German demonstratives due to the lack of articles in Chinese. The author also argues that Cognitive Linguistic analysis is more helpful for new language learners, whereas the Columbia School of linguistics may be better suited to advanced learners who wish to know more about the intrinsic differences between words with similar meanings and uses. This book aims to help German learners better understand the German reference system. Readers with a Chinese language background will definitely benefit more from the book, as well as Chinese learners with a German language background. For pure linguistic enthusiasts and multi-linguals, the book offers an extensive introduction to the Columbia School of linguistics, and can open a new horizon for learning a new language comparatively.

Download or read book Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom 1640 1760 written by Dawn Archer and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Printbegrænsninger: Der kan printes 10 sider ad gangen og max. 40 sider pr. session

Download or read book Stancetaking in Discourse written by Robert Englebretson and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contributes to the burgeoning field of research on stance by offering a variety of studies based in natural discourse. These collected papers explore the situated, pragmatic, and interactional character of stancetaking, and present new models and conceptions of stance to spark future research. Central to the volume is the claim that stancetaking encompasses five general principles: it involves physical, attitudinal and/or moral positioning; it is a public action; it is inherently dialogic, interactional, and sequential; it indexes broader sociocultural contexts; and it is consequential to the interactants. Each paper explores one or more of these dimensions of stance from perspectives including interactional linguistics and conversation analysis, corpus linguistics, language description, discourse analysis, and sociocultural linguistics. Research languages include conversational American English, colloquial Indonesian, and Finnish. The understanding of stance that emerges is heterogeneous and variegated, and always intertwined with the pragmatic and social aspects of human conduct.

Download or read book English Speech Rhythm written by Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-04-21 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph reconsiders the question of speech isochrony, the regular recurrence of (stressed) syllables in time, from an empirical point of view. It proposes a methodology for discovering isochrony auditorily in speech and for verifying it instrumentally in the acoustic laboratory. In a small-scale study of an English conversational extract, the gestalt-like rhythmic structures which isochrony creates are shown to have a hierarchical organization. Then in a large-scale study of a corpus of British and American radio phone-in programs and family table conversations, the function of speech rhythm at turn transitions is investigated. It is argued that speech rhythm serves as a metric for the timing of turn transitions in casual English conversation. The articular rhythmic configuration of a transition can be said to contextualize the next turn as, generally speaking, affiliative or disaffiliative with the prior turn. The empirical investigation suggests that speech rhythm patterns at turn transitions in everyday English conversation are not random occurrences or the result of a social-psychological adaptation process but are contextualization cues which figure systematically in the creation and interpretation of linguistic meaning in communication.

Download or read book Early Modern English News Discourse written by Andreas H. Jucker and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Printbegrænsninger: Der kan printes 10 sider ad gangen og max. 40 sider pr. session

Download or read book Information Highlighting in Advanced Learner English written by Marcus Callies and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the first detailed and comprehensive study of information highlighting in advanced learner language, echoing the increasing interest in questions of near-native competence in SLA research and contributing to the description of advanced interlanguages. It examines the production and comprehension of specific means of information highlighting in English by native speakers and German learners of English as a foreign language, presenting triangulated experimental and learner corpus data as corroborating evidence. The study focuses on learners' use of discourse-pragmatically motivated variations of the basic word order such as inversion, preposing, and it- and wh-clefts, an underexplored field in SLA research to date.The book also provides a critical re-assessment of the study of pragmatics within SLA. It has largely been neglected to date that L2 pragmatic knowledge includes more than the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities for understanding and performing speech acts. Thus, the book argues for an extension of the scope of inquiry in interlanguage pragmatics beyond the cross-cultural investigation of speech acts. It also discusses pedagogical implications for foreign language teaching and will be of interest to applied linguists and SLA researchers, language teachers and curriculum designers.

Download or read book The Nonverbal Shift in Early Modern English Conversation written by Axel Hübler and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-18 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first historical investigation on the nonverbal component of conversation. In the courtly society of 16th and 17th century England, it is argued that a drift appeared toward an increased use of prosodic means of expression at the expense of gestural means. Direct evidence is provided by courtesy books and personal documents of the time, indirect evidence by developments in the English lexicon. The rationale of the argument is cognitively grounded; given the integral role of gestures in thinking-for-speaking, it rests on an isomorphism between gestural and prosodic behavior that is established semiotically and elaborated by insights from neurocognitive frequency theory and task dynamics. The proposal is rounded off by an illustration from present-day conversational data and the proof of its adaptability to current theories of language change. The cross-disciplinary approach addresses all those interested in (historical) pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, cultural semantics, semiotics, or language change.

Download or read book Social Roles and Language Practices in Late Modern English written by Päivi Pahta and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a trailblazing volume. Too often do studies in historical linguistics adopt social (or other) theories of yesterday. But here we have cutting-edge research on social roles, identities and practices applied innovatively to historical data, leading to new insights-not just about Late Modern English but also about the dynamics of language, social phenomena and change-and lighting the way for future research." Jonathan Culpeper, Senior Lecturer, English Language and Linguistics, Lancaster University --

Download or read book Thou and You in Early Modern English Dialogues written by Terry Walker and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a corpus-based study examining thou and you in three speech-related genres from 1560–1760, a crucial period in the history of second person singular pronouns, spanning the time from when you became dominant to when thou became all but obsolete. The study embraces the fields of corpus linguistics, historical pragmatics, and historical sociolinguistics. Using data drawn from the recently released A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 and manuscript material, the aim is to ascertain which extra-linguistic and linguistic factors highlighted by previous research appear particularly relevant in the selection and relative distribution of thou and you. Previous research on thou and you has tended to concentrate on Drama and/or been primarily qualitative in nature. Depositions in particular have hitherto received very little attention. This book is intended to help fill a gap in the literature by presenting an in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of pronoun usage in Trials, Depositions, and, for comparative purposes, Drama Comedy.

Download or read book The Language of Daily Life in England 1400 1800 written by Arja Nurmi and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Language of Daily Life in England (1400–1800) is an important state-of-the art account of historical sociolinguistic and socio-pragmatic research. The volume contains nine studies and an introductory essay which discuss linguistic and social variation and change over four centuries. Each study tackles a linguistic or social phenomenon, and approaches it with a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, always embedded in the socio-historical context. The volume presents new information on linguistic variation and change, while evaluating and developing the relevant theoretical and methodological tools. The writers form one of the leading research teams in the field, and, as compilers of the Corpus of Early English Correspondence, have an informed understanding of the data in all its depth. This volume will be of interest to scholars in historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and socio-pragmatics, but also e.g. social history. The approachable style of writing makes it also inviting for advanced students.

Download or read book The Language of Business Studies Lectures written by Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New opportunities in the global workplace have heightened interest in business studies. In response to this trend, this book presents an in-depth analysis of a corpus of authentic business studies lectures, focusing on spoken, academic, disciplinary and professional features (e.g., speech rate, interactive devices, specialized lexis) that are crucial to comprehension, but often problematic for non-native speakers. The investigation adopts an original multi-pronged approach including quantitative, qualitative and comparative analyses. It utilizes techniques drawn mainly from corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, but also integrates observational and ethnographic methods to provide unique extra-linguistic insights. The study is thus a full-circle interpretive account of this dynamic spoken genre where academia and profession converge. The book shows how business studies lectures are characterised by a synergy of discourses and communicative channels that reflect the community of practice, highlighting the need to help international business students develop multiple literacies to overcome present and future challenges.

Download or read book Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish written by Rosina Márquez-Reiter and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish provides the reader with a representative spectrum of current research in the most dynamic areas of the pragmatics of Spanish. It brings together a collection of academic essays written by well-established as well as emerging voices in Hispanic pragmatics. The essays include applications of pragmatic concepts to sub-fields of (Spanish) linguistics (i.e., pragmatics and grammar; pragmatics and applied linguistics; pragmatics and cross- and inter-cultural communication), studies of 'traditional' topics in pragmatics (i.e., discourse markers, politeness, metaphor, humour) as well as a proposal to amalgamate the dominant pragmatic approaches, namely socio-pragmatics and cognitive pragmatics, into one comprehensive model. The essays in this collection represent both new theoretical and empirical research and as such they constitute a valuable contribution to the field of pragmatics in general and an essential reference to those researching the pragmatics of Spanish.

Download or read book Aspects of a Cognitive pragmatic Theory of Language written by Jan Nuyts and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1992 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about a theory of language that combines two observations (1) that language is based on an extensive cognitive infrastructure (cognitivism) and (2) that it is functional for its user (functionalism). These observations are regarded as two dimensions of one phenomenon that both need to be accounted for, simultaneously and coherently, in accounting for language. Chapter 1 presents the cognitivist and functionalist points of view and their interrelation and discusses the integration of language research under a cognitive umbrella; the issue of defining 'functions of language', and the formalism-functionalism debate. Chapter 2 criticizes the Chomskyan formalist conception of language and cognition from the perspective of cognitive-pragmatic theory. The focus is on different aspects of the competence-performance dichotomy, and in particular on the nature of linguistic knowledge. The ontogenesis and phylogenesis of language are also discussed. Chapter 3 deals with the potential contribution of a functional-linguistic grammar to an integrated conception of the cognitive systems of language, viz. Dik's Functional Grammar, and introduces the concept of a Functional Procedural Grammar as a more integrative model for language production. Special attention is also paid to the nature of conceptual knowledge and the relationship between language production and interpretation. The debate is illustrated by an analysis of negative-raising.

Download or read book Stance in Talk written by Ruey-Jiuan Regina Wu and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2004-06-22 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guided by the methodology of conversation analysis (CA), this book explores how participants in Mandarin conversation display stance in the unfolding development of action and interaction, and, in particular, how this is accomplished through the use of two Mandarin final particles. Through a close examination of the sequential environments of these two particles and the interactional work accomplished by their use, the research presented in this book seeks to demonstrate how a participant-oriented, action-based micro approach to data can help us gain analytic leverage in understanding the functions and meanings of these particles – an area which has long posed a challenge to Chinese linguists. On the other hand, in utilizing a CA-based framework applied to Mandarin, this study also seeks to contribute to conversation analytic research by revealing previously uninvestigated language-specific phenomena while at the same time showing how talk-in-interaction in a non-western language, i.e., Mandarin, can also display the same striking systematicity and orderliness as observed in many western languages. As one of the pioneering CA studies of Mandarin, this book will be of interest to researchers in Chinese linguistics and conversation analysis, as well as those in fields which touch upon the relationships between languages and cultures.