Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions
Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions

Author: Pascal Hohaus

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2020-11-15

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9027260524

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Mood, modality and evidentiality are popular and dynamic areas in linguistics. Re-Assessing Modalising Expressions – Categories, co-text, and context focuses on the specific issue of the ways language users express permission, obligation, volition (intention), possibility and ability, necessity and prediction linguistically. Using a range of evidence and corpus data collected from different sources, the authors of this volume examine the distribution and functions of a range of patterns involving modalising expressions as predominantly found in standard American English, British English or Hong Kong English, but also in Japanese. The authors are particularly interested in addressing (co-)textual manifestations of modalising expressions as well as their distribution across different text-types and thus filling a gap research was unable to plug in the past. Thoughts on categorising or re-categorising modalising expressions initiate and complement a multi-perspectival enterprise that is intended to bring research in this area a step forward.

A Systemic Functional Study of Modality in Modern Chinese
A Systemic Functional Study of Modality in Modern Chinese

Author: Shu Yang

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-12-10

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9811680205

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This book presents a systematic and relatively comprehensive account of the system of MODALITY in Modern Chinese and the functions that realizations of modality serve in the clause and clause complex. Grounded in SFL, the research begins by introducing the system of types of modality in Modern Chinese, investigating the subtypes of modality and their realizations. The study then explores the systems of Orientations that characterize the realization of modalization and modulation in Chinese. After establishing the complete system of modality in Modern Chinese, the research finally examines the functions that realizations of modality serve in the textual structure of the clause and in the clause complex. The study finds that the system of MODALITY is an important interpersonal clause system at the lexicogrammatical stratum of Chinese. There are two distinct types of modality in Chinese: modalization and modulation. Modalization concerns the assessment of probability of the proposition; modulation is concerned with the assessment of the proposal in terms of obligation, inclination, and ability. The systems of ORIENTATIONS make a basic distinction between subjective and objective modality, and between the explicit and implicit realizations. The research also reveals that in the thematic structure of the clause, realizations of modality can serve as the interpersonal Theme in the clause, in the information structure of the clause, realizations of modality can function as the unmarked information focus of the clause or introduce the marked information focus, and in the clause complex, realizations of modality can encode modal meanings and simultaneously construct clauses into a clause complex.

Models of Modals
Models of Modals

Author: Ilse Depraetere

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-04-27

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 311073415X

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Modal verbs in English communicate delicate shades of meaning, there being a large range of verbs both on the necessity side (must, have to, should, ought to, need, need to) and the possibility side (can, may, could, might, be able to). They therefore constitute excellent test ground to apply and compare different methodologies that can lay bare the factors that drive the speaker’s choice of modal verb. This book is not merely concerned with a purely grammatical description of the use of modal verbs, but aims at advancing our understanding of lexical and grammatical units in general and of linguistic methodologies to explore these. It thus involves a genuine effort to compare, assess and combine a variety of approaches. It complements the leading descriptive qualitative work on modal verbs by testing a diverse range of quantitative methods, while not ignoring qualitative issues pertaining to the semantics-pragmatics interface. Starting from a critical assessment of what constitutes the meaning of modal verbs, different types of empirical studies (usage-based, data-driven and experimental), drawing considerably on the same data sets, shows how method triangulation can contribute to an enhanced understanding. Due attention is also given to individual variation as well as the degree to which modals can predict L2 proficiency level.

Evidential Marking in European Languages
Evidential Marking in European Languages

Author: Björn Wiemer

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-03-07

Total Pages: 714

ISBN-13: 3110726114

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How are evidential functions distinguished by means other than grammatical paradigms, i.e. by function words and other lexical units? And how inventories of such means can be compared across languages (against an account also of grammatical means used to mark information source)? This book presents an attempt at supplying a comparative survey of such inventories by giving detailed “evidential profiles” for a large part of European languages: Continental Germanic, English, French, Basque, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Modern Greek, and Ibero-Romance languages, such as Catalán, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish. Each language is treated in a separate chapter, and their profiles are based on a largely unified set of concepts based on function and/or etymological provenance. The profiles are preceded by a chapter which clarifies the theoretical premises and methodological background for the format followed in the profiles. The concluding chapter presents a synthesis of findings from these profiles, including areal biases and the formulation of methodological problems that call for further research.

Different Slants on Grammaticalization
Different Slants on Grammaticalization

Author: Sylvie Hancil

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2023-07-15

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9027252815

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This volume on grammaticalization focuses on new theoretical and methodological challenges underpinning language change. It provides new approaches and insights deepening our understanding of the cognitive, pragmatic, and socio-cultural mechanisms that trigger the formation and the change of grammars. In this volume, grammaticalization is dealt with diachronically, synchronically and as a by-product of dialogic interaction. Another key feature of this book is language diversity; as it includes studies on language families ranging from Niger-Congo, Koreanic, Japonic, Sino-Tibetan to Germanic and Romance. The novel aspects of grammaticalization addressed are new slants on the fundamental debate about grammaticalization as expansion vs reduction; the grammatical formation of ideophones; the semantic domain of fear as a source and a trigger of grammatical change, and many other aspects of semantic and morphosyntactic development.

The Constructicon
The Constructicon

Author: Holger Diessel

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-06-30

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 1009327836

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It is one of the central claims of construction grammar that constructions are organized in some kind of network, commonly referred to as the constructicon. In the classical model of construction grammar, developed by Berkeley linguists in the 1990s, the constructicon is an inheritance network of taxonomically related grammatical patterns. However, recent research in usage-based linguistics has expanded the classical inheritance model into a multidimensional network approach in which constructions are interrelated by multiple types of associations. The multidimensional network approach challenges longstanding assumptions of linguistic research and calls for a reorganization of the constructivist approach. This Element describes how the conception of the constructicon has changed in recent years and elaborates on some central claims of the multidimensional network approach.

The Future of Teacher Education
The Future of Teacher Education

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-05-25

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9004678549

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Twenty-first century processes, such as globalization and digitization, pose various challenges for primary, secondary, and post-secondary teacher education at both the formal and informal education levels. These challenges are addressed by innovators in the field of teacher education, i.e. teacher educators, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, scholars and policy-makers. This edited volume explores future trends in three different spheres of teacher education: 1) pedagogies (emotive, reflective, cognitive, and didactic practices), 2) technologies (digital competencies, artificial intelligence in teaching, and the transformative potential of digital tools in intercultural learning), and 3) societies (multilingualism, attitudes towards literacies, societal polarization, and teacher shortages). The suggested innovations aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice by drawing upon the critical evaluation of theoretical approaches as well as the discussion of best practice examples. The chapters are situated in various countries, such as Vietnam, Canada, Argentina, Spain, Germany, the USA, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, and, as a transnational cooperation, Palestine and the UK. The Future of Teacher Education: Innovations across Pedagogies, Technologies and Societies considers various models of teacher education (e.g. reflective model, competency-based model, etc.) and applies a multitude of different research methods (e.g. didactic analysis of teaching material, thematic analysis of reflections, etc.).

Multilingual Global Cities
Multilingual Global Cities

Author: Peter Siemund

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-29

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0429873913

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This volume sets out to investigate the linguistic ecologies of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai, with chapters that combine empirical and theoretical approaches to the sociolinguistics of multilingualism. One important feature of this publication is that the five parts of the collection deal with such key issues as the historical dimension, language policies and language planning, contemporary societal multilingualism, multilingual language acquisition, and the localized Englishes of global cities. The first four sections of the volume provide a multi-levelled and finely-detailed description of multilingual diversity of three global cities, while the final section discusses postcolonial Englishes in the context of multilingual language acquisition and language contact.

Building Modality with Syntax
Building Modality with Syntax

Author: Camille Denizot

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2023-09-18

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 3110778521

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Despite the intensive research carried out in recent years, modality remains an intriguing and challenging issue in linguistics. This book investigates modality from a syntactic viewpoint and with a bottom-up approach. A strong focus of the book is the interaction between the different linguistic tools that build modality (moods, modal verbs, modal adverbs, etc.), taking both the role of syntactic structure and the compositionality of modal meanings into account. The volume comprises corpus-based studies devoted to several syntactic aspects of modality in Ancient Greek, within different theoretical frameworks. The chapters shed new light on different modal categories (e.g. epistemicity, possibility, counterfactuality, evidentiality, subjectivity) and show how these modal meanings arise from the combination of different linguistic devices in specific syntactic contexts (e.g. combinations of modal elements, types of main and dependent clauses, types of illocutionary acts, etc.). By approaching modality from a different perspective and providing an up-to-date discussion of several aspects of modality, the book makes a significant contribution to current debates.