Perspectives on English


Book Description

(Peeters 1994)




The Changing English Language


Book Description

Bringing together experts from both historical linguistics and psychology, this volume addresses core factors in language change from the perspectives of both fields. It explores the potential (and limitations) of such an interdisciplinary approach, covering the following factors: frequency, salience, chunking, priming, analogy, ambiguity and acquisition. Easily accessible, the book features chapters by psycholinguists presenting cutting edge research on core factors and processes and develops a model of how this may be involved in language change. Each chapter is complemented with one or several case study in the history of the English language in which the psycholinguistic factor in question may be argued to have played a decisive role. Thus, for the first time, a single volume provides a platform for an integrated exchange between psycholinguistics and historical linguistics on the question of how language changes over time.




Dialektologie in neuem Gewand


Book Description

Vorwort Zur Einleitung und Thematisierung des Symposiums Werner Abraham: Philologische Dialektologie und moderne Mikrovarietätsforschung. Zum Begriff des Erklärstatus in Syn- und Diachronie Josef Bayer: Klitisierung, Reanalyse, und die Lizensierung von Nullformen: zwei Beispiele aus dem Bairischen Ermenegildo Bidese, Andrea Padovan & Alessandra Tomaselli: Bilingual competence, complementizer selection, and mood in Cimbrian Federica Cognola: Limits of syntactic variation and Universal Grammar. V2, OV/VO and subject pronouns in Mòcheno Cecilia Poletto: On the internal structure of q-words Oliver Schallert: Infinitivprominenz in deutschen Dialekten Gunther De Vogelaer & Jan Klom: Mikrovariation beim Erwerb des niederländischen Genussystems Helmut Weiß: UG und syntaktische(Mikro-)Variation Heike Wiese: What can new urban dialects tell us about internal language dynamics? The power of language diversity Werner Abraham: Dialect as a spoken-only medium: what it means – and what it does not mean




Assessing Speaking in Context


Book Description

This edited volume investigates the nature and possible applications of an expanded and reconceptualized theoretical construct of speaking as a dynamic socially-constructed endeavour. It addresses both theoretical perspectives and methodological procedures to define and circumscribe the assessment of contextualized speaking. The chapters focus on the complexity brought about by actual interactional competence in speaking tasks and discuss how testing and assessment models and practices can incorporate recent research findings on the inherently dynamic and situated nature of language use. The volume presents research on language assessment in a variety of languages other than English, including French, Chinese and Japanese. It also examines the role that embodied action (gaze, gesture, orientation to materials and texts in the environment) plays in assessment practices, an area that has heretofore remained under-explored. Chapter 6 is free to download as an open access publication. You can access it here: https://zenodo.org/record/5163340#.YQvJ0IhKjcs




Language Contacts Meet English Dialects


Book Description

This book presents a collection of fresh research on language contacts and dialects, and the interface between the two. The volume celebrates the work of Professor Markku Filppula, an eminent scholar in the fields of Irish English, Celtic contacts in the history of English, and language contacts and vernacular universals in nonstandard Englishes. The articles in this volume explore theories and methods employed in the study of language contacts and variation, Celtic substrata in Irish and British English, and dialect in the British Isles. The writers’ perspectives range from cognitive processing to sociolinguistics, and from theoretical and comparative discussions to new empirical, corpus-based studies.




Fostering Language Teaching Efficiency through Cognitive Linguistics


Book Description

In contexts of instructed second language acquisition there is a need for teaching methods that are optimally efficient, i.e. teaching interventions that generate a maximal return on learners' and teachers' investment of time and effort. In the past couple of decades, many researchers have argued that insights from Cognitive Linguistics (CL) - when suitably translated for pedagogical purposes - can make a major contribution to fostering such language teaching efficiency. This collective volume assesses and supplements those CL proposals. The first part of the book positions CL-inspired language pedagogy vis-à-vis recent trends in mainstream applied linguistics and illustrates through several case studies that language-focused instruction (including CL-inspired instruction) is a useful - if not indispensable - complement to learner-autonomous, incidental acquisition. The second part demonstrates how CL research can help pedagogues identify hitherto neglected language elements that merit explicit targeting in second language instruction. The third part consists of contributions that put the pedagogical efficiency of several CL-inspired interventions to the test in classroom experiments. Additions to the currently available armoury of teaching methods are proposed. The kinds of target language items under examination in the book range from single words over multiword units to grammar patterns. Throughout, the volume illustrates how much pedagogy-oriented Cognitive Linguistics has matured in recent years.




Keeping Languages Alive


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Explores current efforts to record, collect and archive endangered languages which are in danger of falling silent.




Research Methods in Psycholinguistics and the Neurobiology of Language


Book Description

The first comprehensive guide to research methods and technologies in psycholinguistics and the neurobiology of language Bringing together contributions from a distinguished group of researchers and practitioners, editors Annette M. B. de Groot and Peter Hagoort explore the methods and technologies used by researchers of language acquisition, language processing, and communication, including: traditional observational and behavioral methods; computational modelling; corpus linguistics; and virtual reality. The book also examines neurobiological methods, including functional and structural neuroimaging and molecular genetics. Ideal for students engaged in the field, Research Methods in Psycholinguistics and the Neurobiology of Language examines the relative strengths and weaknesses of various methods in relation to competing approaches. It describes the apparatus involved, the nature of the stimuli and data used, and the data collection and analysis techniques for each method. Featuring numerous example studies, along with many full-color illustrations, this indispensable text will help readers gain a clear picture of the practices and tools described. Brings together contributions from distinguished researchers across an array of related disciplines who explain the underlying assumptions and rationales of their research methods Describes the apparatus involved, the nature of the stimuli and data used, and the data collection and analysis techniques for each method Explores the relative strengths and weaknesses of various methods in relation to competing approaches Features numerous real-world examples, along with many full-color illustrations, to help readers gain a clear picture of the practices and tools described




Logic, Language, and Computation


Book Description

Edited in collaboration with FoLLI, the Association of Logic, Language and Information, this book represents the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 6th International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language, and Computation, TbiLLC 2005, held in Batumi, Georgia. The 19 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous presentations at the symposium. The papers present current research in all aspects of linguistics, logic and computation.




Grammatical Approaches to Language Processing


Book Description

This book contains papers that were written to honor Professor Lyn Frazier on the occasion of her retirement from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Some were presented at the Lynschrift on May 19-20, 2018; others were written especially for this volume. The papers report original research on, or research-based theoretical analyses of, several of the domains that Professor Frazier contributed to during her career. The volume begins with a brief overview of Professor Frazier’s research contributions and an appreciation of the contributions she has made to the field of psycholinguistics and to her students and colleagues. The next several chapters discuss the roles that prosody plays in language processing, and the volume continues with chapters on the topic that established Professor Frazier as a major psycholinguistic theorist, syntactic processing. The volume then explores the roles semantics and pragmatics play in language comprehension, and concludes with reports of applications and extensions of research on language processing. All chapters were contributed by current and former students and colleagues of Professor Frazier in gratitude for the impact she has had on their lives and careers.