Download or read book From Discourse Process to Grammatical Construction written by Ronald Geluykens and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1992-10-16 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study deals with interactional processes in conversational discourse, and the way they may get 'syntacticized' into grammatical constructions. It investigates the link between discourse function and syntactic form, and the ways in which grammatical form is a reflection on communicative function, through examining the communicative functions of Left-Dislocation in English. The investigation is corpus-based, and focuses on spontaneous conversation, but other discourse types are also taken into account. The overall perspective is resolutely empirical, and preconceptions about the possible functions of Left-Dislocation are avoided. Contents 1. Theoretical preliminaries; 2. Referent-introduction (1): interaction; 3. Referent-introduction (2): recoverability; 4. Referent-introduction (3): topicality; 5. Other functions of LD; 6. Prosodic aspects of LD; 7. LD in other discourse types; 8. A broader perspecitive; 9. General conclusion; Notes, Appendices, References, Subject and author indices.

Download or read book From Discourse Process to Grammatical Construction written by Ronald Geluykens and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1992 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study deals with interactional processes in conversational discourse, and the way they may get 'syntacticized' into grammatical constructions. It investigates the link between discourse function and syntactic form, and the ways in which grammatical form is a reflection on communicative function, through examining the communicative functions of Left-Dislocation in English. The investigation is corpus-based, and focuses on spontaneous conversation, but other discourse types are also taken into account. The overall perspective is resolutely empirical, and preconceptions about the possible functions of Left-Dislocation are avoided. Contents 1. Theoretical preliminaries; 2. Referent-introduction (1): interaction; 3. Referent-introduction (2): recoverability; 4. Referent-introduction (3): topicality; 5. Other functions of LD; 6. Prosodic aspects of LD; 7. LD in other discourse types; 8. A broader perspecitive; 9. General conclusion; Notes, Appendices, References, Subject and author indices.

Download or read book The Grammar of Discourse written by Robert Longacre and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While this volume is based on an earlier work, An Anatomy of Speech Notions (1976), the overall orientation of the present volume is distinctive enough to make it a new work. The former volume was essentially a half-way house to discourse. While including a chapter on discourse struc ture, it was not as a whole explicitly oriented towards con siderations of context. The present volume, however, strives to achieve a more consistently contextual approach to lan guage. A great deal of research and theorizing concerning discourse grammar or textlinguistics has characterized the past decade of linguistic studies. This recent work has, of course, influenced the present volume. In addition, my personal research in several areas has led to increased insistence on the indispensability of discourse studies. Crucial here was my direction of field workshops involving personnel of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, first in relation to languages of Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador (1974- 1975), and later in relation to languages of Mexico (1978). Of further relevance have been my own studies of narrative structure in Biblical Hebrew. Last but not least, is the stimulus and feedback which I have received from my graduate students (whose research is embodied in several theses and dissertations), especially Keith Beavon, Shin Ja Joo Huang, Larry Jones, Mildred Larson, Linda Lloyd, and Mike Walrod.

Download or read book Grammar Discourse Context written by Kristin Bech and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-12-20 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collected volume brings together a wide array of international linguists working on diachronic language change with a specific focus on the history of English, who work within usage-based frameworks and investigate processes of grammatical change in context. Although usage-based linguistics emphasizes the centrality of the discourse context for language usage and cognition, this insight has not been fully integrated into the investigation of processes of grammatical variation and change. The structuralist heritage as well as corpus linguistic methodologies have favoured de-contextualized analytical perspectives on contemporary and historical language data and on the mechanisms and processes guiding grammatical variation and change. From a range of different perspectives, the contributions to this volume take up the challenge of contextualization in the investigation of grammatical variation and change in different stages of English language history and discuss central theoretical notions such as gradable grammaticality, motivation in hypervariation, and hypercharacterization. The book will be relevant to students and linguists working in the field of diachronic and variational linguistics and English language history.

Download or read book Construction Grammar and its Application to English written by Martin Hilpert and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Construction Grammar explains how knowledge of language is organized in speakers' minds. The central and radical claim of Construction Grammar is that linguistic knowledge can be fully described as knowledge of constructions, which are defined as symbolic units that connect a linguistic form with meaning.

Download or read book Grammatical Constructions written by Mirjam Fried and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-12-14 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings into focus the conceptual roots of the notion ‘grammatical construction’ as the theoretical entity that constitutes the backbone of Construction Grammar, a unique grammatical model in which grammatical constructions have the status of elementary building blocks of human language. By exploring the analytic potential and applicability of this notion, the contributions illustrate some of the fundamental concerns of constructional research. These include issues of sentence structure in a model that rejects the autonomy of syntax; the contribution of Frame Semantics in establishing the relationship between syntactic patterning and the lexical meaning of verbs; and the challenge of capturing the dynamic and variable nature of grammatical structure in a systematic way. All the authors share a commitment to studying grammar in its use, which gives the book a rich empirical dimension that draws on authentic data from typologically diverse languages.

Download or read book The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction written by María de los Ángeles Gómez González and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume showcases new work on discourse analysis by big names in the field and promising early-career researchers. Arising from the latest in the series of IWoDA workshops in Santiago de Compostela, it provides novel insights into both the explicit and the implicit characteristics of discourse as used in verbal interaction. Discourse markers, as their name indicates, are among the explicit signals of coherence, while discourse relations may be either explicit or implicit. Similarly, the discourse used for purposes of evaluation, stance-taking and interpersonal engagement is either overt or covert, as is also true of the expression of emotions and empathy. This, in general terms, is the challenging terrain into which the contributors to this volume have ventured. The book combines theoretical issues with a practical orientation, comparing languages, analysing different registers, studying the openings of Skype conversations, and much more besides; it will prove highly relevant for postgraduate and advanced practitioners of discourse analysis, interaction studies, semantics and pragmatics.

Download or read book Discourse Structuring Markers in English written by Elizabeth Closs Traugott and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a contribution to the growing field of diachronic construction grammar. Focus is on corpus evidence for the importance of including conventionalized pragmatics within construction grammar and suggestions for how to do so. The empirical domain is the development of Discourse Structuring Markers in English such as after all, also, all the same, by the way, further and moreover (also known as Discourse Markers). The term Discourse Structuring Markers highlights their use not only to connect discourse segments but also to shape discourse coherence and understanding. Monofunctional Discourse Structuring Markers like further, instead, moreover are distinguished from multifunctional ones like after all and by the way. Drawing on usage-based work on constructionalization and constructional changes, the book is in three parts: foundational concepts, case studies, and currently open issues in diachronic construction grammar. These open issues are how to incorporate the concepts subjectification and intersubjectification into a constructional account of change, whether position in a clause is a construction, and the nature of constructional networks and how they change.

Download or read book Constructionalization and Constructional Changes written by Elizabeth Closs Traugott and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Graeme Trousdale develop an approach to language change based on construction grammar. Construction grammar is a theory of signs construed at the level of the phrase, clause, and complex sentence. Until now it has been mainly synchronic. The authors use it to reconceptualize grammaticalization (the process by which verbs like to have lose semantic content and gain grammatical functions, or word order moves from discourse-prominent to syntax-prominent), and lexicalization (in which idioms become fixed and complex words simplified). Basing their argument on the notions that language is made up of language-specific form-meaning pairings and that there is a gradient between lexical and grammatical constructions, Professor Traugott and Dr Trousdale suggest that language change proceeds by micro-steps that involve closely related changes in syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse functions. They illustrate their exposition with numerous English examples drawn from Anglo-Saxon times to the present, many of which they discuss in depth. The book is organized in six chapters. The first outlines the approach and the questions to be addressed. The second reviews usage-based models of language change. The third considers the relation between grammatical constructionalization and grammaticalization. Chapters 4 and 5 focus respectively on lexical constructionalization and the role of context. The final chapter draws the authors' arguments together and outlines prospects for further research. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes propounds and demonstrates a new and productive approach to historical linguistics.

Download or read book Information Structure Discourse Structure and Grammatical Structure written by Bart Defrancq and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a collection of papers that deals with the close connection between discourse and grammar, illustrating the many, sometimes conflicting, facets of that relationship in various European languages. This volume illustrates how rhetorical patterns in discourse give rise, through a grammaticalisation process, to new interclausal dependencies.

Download or read book Structure and Function From clause to discourse and beyond written by C. S. Butler and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume one of a two volume set outlining and comparing three approaches to the study of language labelled 'structural-functionalist': functional grammar (FG); role and reference grammar (RRG); and systemic functional grammar (SFG).

Download or read book Discourse as Structure and Process written by Teun A. van Dijk and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1997 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the structures of discourse and what are the functions of these structures in the communicative context? This volume explains how and why discourse is organized at various levels. The multidisciplinary contributions illustrate that discourse analysis goes far beyond the linguistic answer of designing grammars and goes hand in hand with the study of their uses and functions in the social context. Comprehensive and accessible, the volume covers a huge variety of discourse genres, including written and spoken, and storytelling and argumentation. The chapters also illustrate the necessity to examine the mental processes of the language users: How do people go about producing, understanding and remembering text or talk? The book stresses that both discourse and its mental processing have a social basis and can only be fully understood in relation to social interaction.

Download or read book Constructions written by Peter Auer and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-08-29 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume embarks on an exploration of the processual and dynamic character of grammatical constructions in emergence, both from an ‘emergent’ and an ‘emerging’ perspective. ‘Emerging’ constructions develop out of their discourse contexts. Talking of emerging constructions is compatible with a view of grammar as a stable system of rules and structures which may ‘emerge’ (i.e., come into existence) out of a pool of previously unordered elements. ‘Emergent’ constructions on the contrary are due to the on-line production of grammar in time. The term ‘emergent’ emphasises the fact that a grammatical structure is always temporary and ephemeral. In both senses, grammar is modelled as a highly adaptive resource for interaction. On the basis of empirical studies on spoken English, German, Hebrew, Swedish and French, the volume addresses the following questions: How can what initially appears to be construction x end up being construction y in on-line syntax? What are the local interactional needs which such processes respond to in the process of their emergence? Does the on-line (re-)modelling of a construction concern its syntactic or semantic side ‐ or both? And finally: Should emergent grammatical structures as they unfold in real time be seen as stages in the emerging of grammar?

Download or read book Request Sequences written by Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph provides a micro-analytic description of instances of requests in everyday German conversation. Using the framework of CA, the study systematically analyzes the grammatical and syntactical structure of the request-turn and its response and of the conversational exchanges before and within the request base sequence, and the placement of the request sequence within the larger social interaction. Through an empirical analysis of individual cases of request sequences in German, the monograph describes in detail: (a) how speakers employ grammar and syntax as resources to construct turns at talk and accomplish the social action of request; (b) how speakers use grammatical and syntactical forms of the language to coordinate the production of the social action of requests; (c) how speakers use grammar and syntax as interactional resources to manage affiliative and remedial work (i.e., face work) when performing delicate social actions such as requests; and (d) how the context of the request activity impacts the grammatical and syntactical constructions of speakers' utterances. Additionally, the monograph demonstrates that both the grammatical construction of turns and their placement within the talk are oriented to the sequential context of the interaction.

Download or read book Constructing Professional Discourse written by Concepción Orna-Montesinos and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the fascinating role that language plays in the construction of non-verbal objects by mapping out the ontological meaning of the specialised concepts and the domain-specific knowledge embedded in them. In doing so, it provides a comprehensive linguistic insight into the discourse of professional domain-specific communities and hence, into the communication practices and procedures of those communities. In this respect, the book offers a response to the claims made by many of the most influential applied linguists today, such as Vijay Bhatia (1993, 2004), John Swales (1990, 2004) or Ken Hyland (2002), among others, who have consistently defended the need for applied linguistic research into the textual, generic and social perspectives on the under-researched interrelatedness of the discoursal and professional practices of a discipline. Specifically, this book provides readers with an integrative multi-perspective approach to the study of professional, domain-specific discourses. While it mainly draws on the tenets of genre theory and discourse semantics, it also nurtures from the theoretical and empirical foundations of applied linguistics, cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics and ontological engineering. The book starts from the analysis of domain specific texts as final written products with specific lexico-grammatical, semantic and rhetorical features to later enquire into the written products as textual artefacts closely linked to the social context of production and interpretation of the text. This integrative approach provides fresh new insights into the way the processes of writing are affected by the community-specific, institutional and socio-historical circumstances in which domain-specific texts are produced.

Download or read book Varieties of Questions in English Conversation written by Elizabeth G. Weber and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-11-11 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines relations which hold between morphosyntactic form and communicative function in discourse by examining form-function correlations of noninterrogative questions in ordinary English conversation. So-called nontypical declarative and nonclausal questions are identified functionally. The role morphosyntax plays in the production and interpretation of these forms as doing questioning is then considered. Speakers are shown to use specific patterns of morphosyntactic marking to enable recipients to interpret noninterrogatives as functional questions. Explanations for morphosyntactic patterns found in the data are stated in terms of discourse use.

Download or read book Figurative Language and Thought written by Albert N. Katz and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our understanding of the nature and processing of figurative language is central to issues in cognitive science, including the relationship of language and thought, how we process language, and how we comprehend abstract meaning. Points on these and related questions are raised and argued by experts in the area of figurative language.