The Grammar of Discourse
The Grammar of Discourse

Author: Robert E. Longacre

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-21

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 1489901620

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In that The Anatomy of Speech Notions (1976) was the precursor to The Grammar of Discourse (1983), this revision embodies a third "edition" of some of the material that is found here. The original intent of the 1976 volume was to construct a hierarchical arrangement of notional categories, which find surface realization in the grammatical constructions of the various languages of the world. The idea was to marshal the categories that every analyst-regardless of theoretical bent-had to take account of as cognitive entities. The volume began with a couple of chapters on what was then popularly known as "case grammar," then expanded upward and downward to include other notional categories on other levels. Chapters on dis course, monologue, and dialogue were buried in the center of the volume. In the 1983 volume, the chapters on monologue and dialogue discourse were moved to the fore of the book and the chapters on case grammar were made less prominent; the volume was then renamed The Grammar of Discourse. The current revision features more clearly than its predecessors the intersection of discourse and pragmatic concerns with grammatical structures on various levels. It retains and expands much of the former material but includes new material reflecting current advances in such topics as salience clines for discourse, rhetorical relations, paragraph structures, transitivity, ergativity, agency hierarchy, and word order typologies.

Discourse as Structure and Process
Discourse as Structure and Process

Author: Teun A. van Dijk

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780803978454

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

The Anatomy of Meaning
The Anatomy of Meaning

Author: N. J. Enfield

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-03-26

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1139478699

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do we understand what others are trying to say? The answer cannot be found in language alone. Words are linked to hand gestures and other visible phenomena to create unified 'composite utterances'. In this book N. J. Enfield presents original case studies of speech-with-gesture based on fieldwork carried out with speakers of Lao (a language of Southeast Asia). He examines pointing gestures (including lip and finger-pointing) and illustrative gestures (examples include depicting fish traps and tracing kinship relations). His detailed analyses focus on the 'semiotic unification' problem, that is, how to make a single interpretation when multiple signs occur together. Enfield's arguments have implications for all branches of science with a stake in meaning and its place in human social life. The book will appeal to all researchers interested in the study of meaning, including linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists.

Linguistics Encyclopedia
Linguistics Encyclopedia

Author: Kirsten Malmkjaer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-01-08

Total Pages: 696

ISBN-13: 1134596995

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Linguistics Encyclopedia has been thoroughly revised and updated and a substantial new introduction, which forms a concise history of the field, has been added. The volume offers comprehensive coverage of the major and subsidiary fields of linguistic study. Entries are alphabetically arranged and extensively cross-referenced, and include suggestions for further reading. New entries include: Applied Linguistics; Cognitive Linguistics; Contrastive Linguistics; Cross-Linguistic Study; Forensic Linguistics; Stratificational Linguistics. Recommissioned or substantially revised entries include: Bilingualism and Multilingualism; Discourse; Genre Analysis; Psycholinguistics; Language acquisition; Morphology; Articulatory Phonetics; Grammatical Models and Theories; Stylistics; Sociolinguistics; Critical Discourse Analysis. For anyone with an academic or professional interest in language, The Linguistics Encyclopedia is an indispensable reference tool.

Natural Language Generation
Natural Language Generation

Author: G.A. Kempen

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 9400936451

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, August 19-23, 1986

Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse
Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse

Author: Wolfram Bublitz

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1999-06-15

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 902728380X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Until very recently, coherence (unlike cohesion) was widely held to be a ‘rather mystical notion’. However, taking account of new trends representing a considerable shift in orientation, this volume aims at helping relieve coherence of its mystifying aura. The general bibliography which concludes the book bears witness to this intriguing development and the rapidly changing scene in coherence research. Preceding this comprehensive up-to-date Bibliography on Coherence are 13 selected papers from the 1997 International Workshop on Coherence at the University of Augsburg, Germany. They share a number of theoretical and methodoligical assumptions and reflect a trend in text and discourse analysis to move away from reducing coherence to a product of (formally represented) cohesion and/or (semantically established) connectivity. Instead, they start from a user- and context-oriented interpretive understanding and rely on authentic data throughout in relating micro-linguistic to macro-linguistic issues. The first group of papers looks at the (re-)creation of coherence in, inter alia, reported speech, casual conversation, argumentative writing, news reports and conference contributions. The second group describes the negotation of coherence in oral examinations, text summaries and other situations that require special efforts on the part of the recipient to overcome misunderstandings and other disturbances. The third group discusses theoretical approaches to the description of coherence.

Diversity in Language
Diversity in Language

Author: Zaynab Ibrāhīm

Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9789774245787

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Arabic and English languages have developed along separate lines over the centuries. Thus, it is no surprise that even apart from purely cultural elements, there are distinctive characteristics of the two languages that pose particular problems to native speakers of one language attempting to learn the other. The scholarly papers of Diversity in Language: Contrastive Studies in Arabic and English Theoretical and Applied Linguistics offer new views on the contrasts between Arabic and English and on contemporary theoretical and applied linguistics. Contributors focus on an array of elusive features that make the Arabic language especially difficult for English speakers to understand fully and intuitively. Comparative studies of English and Arabic, including research on the acquisition of Arabic or English as a second language, underscore the concept of diversity. Contributors to Diversity in Language also investigate stylistics, a major source of diversity between the two languages. Practical observations and suggestions may help teachers of Arabic or English as a second language enable students to better understand their second language and become more persuasive and effective in using it. The papers assembled here will be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of scholars and students of Arabic, contrastive rhetoric, and linguistics. Teachers of English as a foreign language, even if their students are not primarily from an Arabic-speaking background, can likewise benefit from the insights made in these contrastive studies. Contributors: Jehan Allam, El-Said Badawi, Huda M. M. Ghali, Mona Kamel Hassan, Nancy G. Hottel-Burkhart, Christopher Horger, Salwa Kamel, Abdel-Hakeem Kasem, Nagwa Kassabgy, Mohammad Al-Khawalda, Nabila El-Taher Makhlouf, Maha El-Seidi, Cynthia May Sheikholeslami, Devin Stewart, Loubna A. Youssef.

Variation in English
Variation in English

Author: Douglas Biber

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1317884205

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Studies in Language and Linguistics General Editors- Geoffrey Leech, Department of Modern English Language, Lancaster University and Jenny Thomas, School of English and Linguistics, University of Wales, Bangor Broad-ranging and authoritative, Studies in Language and Linguistics is an occasional series incorporating major new work in all areas of linguistics. Variation in English- Multi-Dimensional Studies provides both a comprehensive view into a relatively new technique for studying language, and a diverse, exciting collection of studies of variation in English. The first part of the book provides an explanation of multi-dimensional (MD) analysis, a research technique for studying language variation. MD is a corpus-based approach developed by Doug Biber that facilitates large-scale studies of language variation and the investigation of research questions that were previously intractable. The second part of the book contains studies that apply Biber's original MD analysis of English to new domains. These studies cover the historical evolution of English; specialized domains such as medical writing and oral proficiency testing; and dialect variation, including gender and British/American. The third part of the book contains studies that conduct new MD analyses, covering adult/child language differences, 18th century speech and writing, and discourse complexity. Readers of this book will become familiar with the analytical techniques of multi-dimensional analysis, with its applicability to a wide variety of language issues, and with the findings of important studies previously published in diverse journals as well as new studies appearing for the first time.