Leuven Contributions In Linguistics And Philology

This book proposes a radically new account of clefts in English. Since the 1960s, functional as well as formal linguists have generally restricted clefts to constructions with an identifying matrix (it-clefts) and have claimed that they only code information structure. Clefts are assumed to unpack a simple proposition into a focus – presupposition structure. In this book, the authors reject these theoretical-descriptive assumptions, arguing instead that clefts form a field comprising it-clefts, there-clefts and ‘have’-clefts. They show that, like any other construction, clefts compositionally code propositional semantics, onto which a great variety of prosodically coded focus patterns may be mapped. The authors fundamentally challenge the existing approach by entering the debate with an in-depth account of the neglected specificational and presentational there-clefts, offering the first systematic data-based study of their grammatical and prosodic features. While the study is restricted to English, its findings have significant cross-linguistic relevance. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Functional, Cognitive and Formal Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and usage-based study of grammar and prosody.

John Dedrick, who lived and worked among the Yaquis for more than thirty years, shares his extensive knowledge of the language, while Uto-Aztecan specialist Eugene Casad helps put the material in a comparative perspective."--Jacket

The language of young people is central in sociolinguistic research, as it is seen to be innovative and a primary source of knowledge about linguistic change and the role of language. This volume brings together a team of leading scholars to explore and compare linguistic practices of young people in multilingual urban spaces, with analyses ranging from grammar to ideology. It includes fascinating examples from cities in Europe, Africa, Canada and the US to demonstrate how young people express their identities through language, for example in hip-hop lyrics and new social media. This is the first book to cover the topic from a globally diverse perspective, and it investigates how linguistic practices across different communities intersect with age, ethnicity, gender and class. In doing so it shows commonalities and differences in how young people experience, act and relate to the contemporary social, cultural and linguistic complexity of the twenty-first century.

Language Isolates explores this fascinating group of languages that surprisingly comprise a third of the world’s languages. Individual chapters written by experts on these languages examine the world's major language isolates and language isolates by geographic regions, with up-to-date descriptions of many, including previously unrecorded language isolates. Each language isolate represents a unique lineage and a unique window on what is possible in human language, making this an essential volume for anyone interested in understanding the diversity of languages and the very nature of human language. Language Isolates is key reading for professionals and students in linguistics and anthropology.

For more than two decades now, cognitive science has been making overtures to literature and literary studies. Only recently, however, cognitive linguistics and poetics seem to be moving towards a more serious and reciprocal type of interdisciplinarity. In coupling cognitive linguistics and poetics, cognitive poeticians aim to offer cognitive readings of literary texts and formulate specific hypotheses concerning the relationship between aesthetic meaning effects and patterns in the cognitive construal and processing of literary texts. One of the basic assumptions of the endeavour is that some of the key topics in poetics (such as the construction of text worlds, characterization, narrative perspective, distancing discourse, etc.) may be fruitfully approached by applying cognitive linguistic concepts and insights (such as embodied cognition, metaphor, mental spaces, iconicity, construction grammar, figure/ground alignment, etc.), in an attempt to support, enrich or adjust ‘traditional’ poetic analysis. Conversely, the tradition of poetics may support, frame or call into question insights form cognitive linguistics. In order to capture the goals, gains and gaps of this rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of research, this volume brings together some of the key players and critics of cognitive poetics. The eleven chapters are grouped into four major sections, each dealing with central concerns of the field: (i) the cognitive mechanisms, discursive means and mental products related to narrativity (Semino, Herman, Culpeper); (ii) the different incarnations of the concept of figure in cognitive poetics (Freeman, Steen, Tsur); (iii) the procedures that are meant to express or create discursive attitudes, like humour, irony or distance in general (Antonopoulou and Nikiforidou, Dancygier and Vandelanotte, Giora et al.); and (iv) a critical assessment of the current state of affairs in cognitive poetics, and more specifically the incorporation of insights from cognitive linguistics as only one of the contributing fields in the interdisciplinary conglomerate of cognitive science (Louwerse and Van Peer, Sternberg). The ensuing dialogue between cognitive and literary partners, as well as between advocates and opponents, is promoted through the use of short response articles included after ten chapters of the volume. Geert Brône, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; Jeroen Vandaele, University of Oslo, Norway.

This book contains 15 revised papers originally presented at a symposium at Rosendal, Norway, under the aegis of The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The overall theme of the volume is 'internal factors in grammatical change.' The papers focus on fundamental questions in theoretically-based historical linguistics from a broad perspective. Several of the papers relate to grammaticalization in different ways, but are generally critical of 'Grammaticalization Theory'. Further papers focus on the causes of syntactic change, pinpointing both extra-syntactic (exogenous) causes and – more controversially – internally driven (endogenous) causes. The volume is rounded up by contributions on morphological change 'by itself.' A wide range of languages is covered, including Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Dagestan), Zoque, and Athapaskan languages, in addition to Indo-European languages, both the more familiar ones and some less well-studied varieties.

The volume explores the semantics of nominalizations from different theoretical points of view: formal and lexical semantics, cognitive-functional grammar, lexical-functional grammar, discourse representation theory. Data from a variety of languages are taken into account, including Hungarian, Italian, French, German and English. The papers discuss the semantics of distinct readings of nominalizations and meaning differences observed between competing affixes.

The need for constructing a lexicographical theory with a particular focus on specialised dictionaries for learners is well documented in recent publications. This will imply paying attention to, at least, four basic lexicographic categories: learners; the learner's situation; the learner's needs; dictionary assistance. In one or other way, these categories are analysed in this book, whose eleven chapters are grouped into three parts. Part 1 reflects on some of the main ideas defended by the function theory of lexicography, perhaps the theoretical framework that has paid more attention to specialised lexicography. Part 2 presents some proposals that have already being explored in the field of general learner's dictionary and must be incorporated into specialised metalexicography: cultural aspects; figurative meaning; the inclusion of grammatical information; the use of corpora. Part 3 introduces the state of play regarding specialised dictionaries in China and offers some ideas for coping with the proliferation of terminological glossaries in Internet. The book also describes Enrique Alcaraz's academic achievements, together with some personal anecdotes, and a personal short tribute to his memory.